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We already know that renewables can handle the entire grid. There are plenty of papers out there exploring this matter. What we don't know yet is exactly what

by olau 8y ago

We already know that renewables can handle the entire grid. There are plenty of papers out there exploring this matter. What we don't know yet is exactly what particular technologies we're going to end up with, especially for the last few percentage points. Probably a mix depending on location. The reason for we don't know it is that wind and solar costs have been falling exponentially for many years now, while short-term storage is only now heating up and long-term storage not yet really started (well, except hydro). We know tech that can be used, we know an upper bound on the cost (not prohibitively expensive), but anyone trying to look 10-20 years out in such a rapidly developing cut-throat market are basically just guessing. 10 years ago I was thinking we'd probably have to pay somewhat more for energy, perhaps up to 50%-100%. But in 2014 the Danish energy oversight body (Energistyrelsen) did a complicated analysis that said around 5% more in Denmark. And it didn't take more than a couple of years for their projected 2030 cost of offshore wind turbines to be reached by the market, more than a decade before anticipated. So I'm beginning to think energy is probably going to be cheaper, perhaps a lot cheaper.

AnthonyMouse 8y ago
> We already know that renewables can handle the entire grid. There are plenty of papers out there exploring this matter. This is all inherently speculation. If you assume the current cost trends continue, maybe everything is fine. But what happens if you scale production by a factor of fifty or more? Do raw materials prices for things like lithium or rare earth metals go up due to demand? Do average operating costs rise once the most cost effective installation sites are already occupied and the low hanging fruit has been picked in general? Are we analyzing numbers from existing installations that have selection bias in favor of factors that the remaining sites don't have, e.g. lower vs. higher population density? Doing a long-term analysis on something with this level of complexity inherently has large error bars. Even if "everything will be alright" is a likely result, we still need to address the non-negligible probability that it isn't.

by olau 8y ago

AnthonyMouse 8y ago

> We already know that renewables can handle the entire grid. There are plenty of papers out there exploring this matter. This is all inherently speculation. If you assume the current cost trends continue, maybe everything is fine. But what happens if you scale production by a factor of fifty or more? Do raw materials prices for things like lithium or rare earth metals go up due to demand? Do average operating costs rise once the most cost effective installation sites are already occupied and the low hanging fruit has been picked in general? Are we analyzing numbers from existing installations that have selection bias in favor of factors that the remaining sites don't have, e.g. lower vs. higher population density? Doing a long-term analysis on something with this level of complexity inherently has large error bars. Even if "everything will be alright" is a likely result, we still need to address the non-negligible probability that it isn't.