> For example, HVDC. Interconnect and buy power from somebody with more sun.
Who is Japan interconnecting with, or any other country that doesn't trust its neighbors? What is Canada supposed to do when it's ~6000 km from the equator and might not want to rely on the US for electricity regardless?
> Or just overbuild solar by a lot. It's cheap, so chances are having too much of it still works out economically.
Solar is cheap per kWh but those kWh come disproportionately in the sunnier months of the year at any non-equatorial latitude. To build enough for January you'd then have oversupply and a price of zero for the nine months out of the year when you have the most output, requiring you to make back the entire cost in the three months when solar output is lowest. Then you're only getting paid anything for e.g. 12.5% of the kWh you generate (the 25% of the months that have 50% of the average output) which means you need the price during those months to be 8x the average price you need to break even, but then you're not cheaper than existing alternatives. And that's before you even deal with nights or cloudy winter days.
It obviously makes sense to use solar to reduce the need for natural gas plants during hot summer days with a lot of air conditioning demand, or for charging electric cars that can hold off a couple days if it's cloudy. It equally obviously doesn't make sense to try to generate 100% of electricity from the same intermittent source whose output is regionally correlated by season and weather systems.
> What is Canada supposed to do when it's ~6000 km from the equator and might not want to rely on the US for electricity regardless?
Most Canadians live quite far south. Toronto is on the same latitude as France’s Mediterranean coast and they of course have plentiful hydropower. Solar is surprisingly useful even in more northerly places like the UK or Denmark since it is anti-correlated with wind power.
> Most Canadians live quite far south.
"South" in Canada is still north. Calgary (third largest city) is almost 6000 km from the equator. Toronto is the major city furthest south and it's still almost 5000 km.
> Toronto is on the same latitude as France’s Mediterranean coast
Europe is also quite far north. The Mediterranean has warmer temperatures because of ocean currents carrying warm water from the south, not because of its latitude. Toronto is at the same latitude as Wisconsin.
> and they of course have plentiful hydropower.
They get a little over half from that. You still need something to do the other half.
> Who is Japan interconnecting with, or any other country that doesn't trust its neighbors? What is Canada supposed to do when it's ~6000 km from the equator and might not want to rely on the US for electricity regardless?
With space. By space-based solar power instead of HVDC.
I would really love to see your per kwh costs estimates. It currently costs about ~$2,700 to launch 1 kg of mass into orbit.
https://spacenexus.us/guide/space-launch-cost-comparison
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power#Launch...