I think solar farms in general are a dumb idea. On the other hand, solar panels can be a real money saver when deployed on one's roof even when the production of cost of electricity is 6 times higher than coal.

The savings are realized by avoiding the distribution costs of electricity which are far higher in most cases than the production costs. In my case, my roof solar system produces electricity at the cost of 14.5 cents per Kwh assuming a 12 year amortization of the solar panel costs, after which the cost drops to virtually zero. Sweet deal compared to skyrocketing cost of public electricity regardless of how it is produced and the need to layer electricity prices with every increasing infrastructure cost as well as pension costs of utility employees.

Meanwhile the panels are getting better. My panels are a few years old and my neighbor's newer panels are 15% more efficient than mine. That matters since there is only so much space on the single-family home rooftop.

But it is increasingly apparent, that we will need carbon fuels indefinitely along with nuclear energy. Nuclear energy offers the most reliable abundant source of potential electricity and make far more sense at this point when compared to "batteries" to get us through the evening and night hours.

But carbon fuel is perhaps the best way to store energy and thus allow you not to be tethered to the grid. There will be times when the grid goes down and have an alternative way to secure energy is simple common sense.

Fossil fuels represent nothing more complicated than unused carbon fuels produced largely by plants a long time ago. Sugar represents carbon fuel produced by plants more recently. Fat in most instances reflects reconfigured carbon fuel stored in a more energy dense format than sugar. Our planet was designed to run on carbon fuel because it is so efficient.

To date we have not invested enough in exploring how to use catalysts, abundant sunlight, abundant CO2, and water to mass produce carbon fuels. But we are getting there.

https://www.permaculturenews.org/2017/07/20/artificial-photosynthesis-liquid-fuel-created-sunlight-bionic-leaf/#:~:text=Using%20sunlight%2C%20plants%20are%20able%20to%20create%20carbohydrates,and%20carbon%20dioxide%20to%20generate%20energy-dense%20liquid%20fuels.