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The cost of manufacturing energy is not the only cost when you need to distribute energy on a large scale. Electrical grids are prone to oscillations and having

The cost of manufacturing energy is not the only cost when you need to distribute energy on a large scale. Electrical grids are prone to oscillations and having less and bigger power sources makes things a lot easier and more reliable (and that means cheaper also). You can store energy but that again increases complexity of the grid and costs (even super-cheap storage will always be more expensive than no storage). To partially solve this you can concentrate solar into large solar farms, but than you have a problem with the space available, you need a lot of land for that - which is perhaps less of a problems in US or Australia or Africa, but in densely populated areas like Europe (which is also located more to the North and gets less sun) or Japan this creates problems. Also there is an issue that our climate is changing and becoming more and more unstable, which could cause lots of engineering and exploitation problems for renewables (hurricanes, hail storms, unexpected drops in temperature and periods of bad weather like this summer in Europe in May). So I don't think it's (yet) all that certain which is the best way to go long-term, and IMHO the clear win of renewables is more a picture painted by media than a solid science.

fpoling 7y ago
Grids must be very stable because there is no storage at the end points. If electricity consumers are very OK to be without electricity for few hours per day that alone makes grid much cheaper.
- ivanhoe 7y ago
  Ideal consumer, from the power network point of view, is as constant as possible. Each time you cut off a consumer node it creates harmonics and surges that need to be compensated upstream. Lots of nodes going on and off simultaneously (and they will as the whole parts of the city have the good sun at the same time) are engineering nightmare, existing grids are just not build to handle it, so they'll need to be upgraded, plus the maintenance costs will go up.
- URSpider94 7y ago
  If every endpoint has enough storage to go days without being online, then that’s going to distribute a very large cost to the edge of the grid. Part of the reason that we have a power grid is so that we can pool usage and build capacity based on overall statistics, no absolute peak. Additionally, the cost to operate the grid is based upon the size of the distribution network and maximum carrying capacity. If we all build local storage that takes us off the grid 90% of the time, we are still going to have to pay the utility roughly the same amount to maintain the network as we do today. Check your power bill, the generation costs are probably less than half of your monthly total, so the rest is going to come back to you one way or the other.

fpoling 7y ago

Grids must be very stable because there is no storage at the end points. If electricity consumers are very OK to be without electricity for few hours per day that alone makes grid much cheaper.

ivanhoe 7y ago
Ideal consumer, from the power network point of view, is as constant as possible. Each time you cut off a consumer node it creates harmonics and surges that need to be compensated upstream. Lots of nodes going on and off simultaneously (and they will as the whole parts of the city have the good sun at the same time) are engineering nightmare, existing grids are just not build to handle it, so they'll need to be upgraded, plus the maintenance costs will go up.
URSpider94 7y ago
If every endpoint has enough storage to go days without being online, then that’s going to distribute a very large cost to the edge of the grid. Part of the reason that we have a power grid is so that we can pool usage and build capacity based on overall statistics, no absolute peak. Additionally, the cost to operate the grid is based upon the size of the distribution network and maximum carrying capacity. If we all build local storage that takes us off the grid 90% of the time, we are still going to have to pay the utility roughly the same amount to maintain the network as we do today. Check your power bill, the generation costs are probably less than half of your monthly total, so the rest is going to come back to you one way or the other.