
The tipping point for renewable energy is nearly here - ph0rque
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-tipping-point-for-renewable-energy-is-nearly-here-2017-02-15
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philipkglass
This is a pretty good roundup of recent trends. Of course projecting past
growth numbers to the future needs to be taken with a _huge_ grain of salt;
don't try estimating solar capacity in 2035 by taking the 50% annual growth
rate since 2001 and plotting the results over another 18 years.

There are a couple of qualitative predictions (observations?) that I didn't
see in the article that I'd like to make for posterity.

One observation is that increasing numbers of electric vehicles and plugin
hybrid electric vehicles can actually _help increase_ an electrical system's
integration of intermittent renewables. Currently, solar/wind power become
marginally less valuable as more is installed because at their peak production
times they don't find enough demand to match supply. Peak demand time in most
systems occurs in the early evening when people get home from work, start
using appliances, and adjust home temperature up or down depending on the
region and time of year. Late night generation from high concentrations of
wind power, and mid-day generation from high concentrations of solar power, go
wasted and discourage further installations that will increase oversupply. But
if you add charger-connected EVs with a dynamic pricing system, you can signal
"discount power -- charge now!" to EVs whenever supply is high relative to
demand. Each depleted EV can offer ~1-10 kilowatts of dispatchable demand to
help match non-dispatchable supply. In terms of balancing the grid that
complements the traditional method of dispatching supply to match uncontrolled
demand. It also means that you probably don't need to upgrade distribution
infrastructure for a long time even as EVs become more common: late night
charging with can be scheduled for hours where distribution infrastructure is
traditionally under-used and the vehicle will still be charged to drive when
people wake up.

I also predict that big infrastructure projects for long distance transmission
are going to enable more and (eventually) more _diverse_ energy resources to
compete with fossils. For example, Texas's big Competitive Renewable Energy
Zones transmission projects started in 2005 with a legislature that was
looking to bring wind power from rich Western Texas resources to Eastern Texas
load centers. Solar was so expensive back then that it wasn't really part of
planning. But now that the transmission infrastructure is built and solar
continues to fall in price, I expect future Western Texas solar projects to
cluster around that already-built transmission capacity. Since wind output
typically peaks at night and solar peaks mid-day, solar and wind production
can get complementary uses out of the same infrastructure. And if storage
continues to fall in price, I predict that _storage projects_ too will
eventually cluster around the endpoints of CREZ transmission, so they can save
a little of the late-night wind peak or the mid-day solar peak and use it to
serve the early evening demand peak.

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astrodust
Projecting is difficult, I'll give you that, but I also think the 35% number
might be low.

There's going to be an enormous uptick in renewables being deployed in new
markets, Africa is absolutely huge in this regard. Many countries lack the
natural resources to keep coal or oil fired power plants running, they don't
have uranium not the budget to build nuclear plants, and most are without
large rivers they can tap for hydroelectric power.

What you're left with is wind and solar. These can be deployed just about
anywhere it's windy and/or sunny. It's also something you can deploy on a very
tiny scale or a very large one, it just depends on the packaging. You can also
build it up incrementally as your needs grow which makes it easy to scale.

As the price of these technologies continues to plunge you're going to see
some dramatic shifts taking place.

