Solar battery is not by any stretch of any possible definition the cheapest generation to deploy. Not even close. We do a disservice to the entire conversation saying easily falsifiable things like that. At 90% penetration solar + battery has a LFSCOE somewhere around $800/mwh depending on the study. Natural gas is something like 30-60. Solar panels are cheap. Building the required transmission and storage to service those panels is far more expensive than the panels themselves.
Increased renewable generation is an important goal, but we need to let the facts guide the path, not the other way around.
A) I am an electrical engineer who makes a living designing control systems for renewable generation. I know more about most of this than just about anyone in this conversation.
B) the post I am replying to is specifically calling for a 98% solar grid.
You replied to: "The most cost efficient new-build grid is 90-98% solar/wind/battery depending on your locales insolation & wind coverage. (Source Ember Energy)"
There's a big difference between "letting the facts guide the path" and tilting at strawmen built out of straw nobody else even brought into the discussion.
If you'd like to make the point that "cost of panels" can be misleading when supporting components and interconnects begin to take up the lion's share of costs then that sounds like a noble thing to remind folk of, but ideally not as a segway into shilling more fracking which includes untold environmental costs as externalities.
Increased renewable generation is an important goal, but we need to let the facts guide the path, not the other way around.