
Wind and solar are attracting the most funding - barney54
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-06/wind-and-solar-are-crushing-fossil-fuels
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lumberjack
One nice advantage of wind and solar farms is that they can be added
incrementally. Maybe you would need just as many millions of investment in
infrustructure to get the same output capacity but you can start with 1/10 of
the required capital, set it up and have it online and keep adding as you go.

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marcosdumay
Last time I looked, inverters were the elephant on the room. They are a big
fraction of the costs, and the small end scales to power^(1/2) in price.

Not to say that you are wrong, but you'll need at a minimum a several hundred
thousand investment to stay competitive.

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jerven
Yes, but at utility level the difference is invest in million increments to
100 million increments for solar(pv) and wind. While gas is in the same range,
modern coal really starts at the top end of that range and nuclear is just an
order of magnitude higher.

Wind and solar projects often get cancelled and restarted, mostly because the
risk profiles allow for that. Committing to gas is dependant on existing
infra, if there is a good gas supply infra then unlikely to cancel if planning
permission ok. Once committed to nuclear, you either finish it or go
bankrupt...

Coal is getting to be very risky from a regulatory perspective which is why
power company execs don't like adding new capacity.

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terravion
It seems like this observation of Wright's Law in action should lead to more
politically palatable policy prescriptions. If cap and trade is out, just
shifting some energy incentives to favor renewable or large orders to grow the
market could push renewable to the place where it just straight out dominates
energy.

~~~
douche
Except that unless batteries and storage solutions get orders of magnitude
better, you have to back every megawatt of solar or wind with natural gas,
oil, or coal for the calm, cloudy days.

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Retric
Hydro is 6% of US electricity supply and is already used as built in storage.

Pumped storage is vastly better than batteries. Also the variance between
median days and calm days for wind is far less extreme than generally assumed.
PV solar also provides power in cloudy weather.

Anyway the US can get to ~99.99% from ~30% oversupply and ~6 hours of grid
storage which is vastly less than many people assume.

PS: Cloudy calm days over large areas are fairly rare. Heavy clouds are
generally associated with weather and increased wind. EX: Hurricane incoming,
solar down wind UP.

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Animats
_" Also the variance between median days and calm days for wind is far less
extreme than generally assumed."_

Actually, the variance is worse than assumed by enthusiasts. Here's today's
output from wind, hour by hour, for the entire CAISO area, which is about 400
miles across and covers most of California.[1] Today was a bad day; about 10x
variation between peak wind and minimum wind. 5:1 is typical; a good day is
2:1.

You can also see similar data for PJM, which covers the Northeastern US.[2]
Today's wind variation is about 2:1.

There's a myth that, with enough transmission distance, fluctuations in wind
will average out. The two largest power grids in the US aren't seeing that.
Maybe for the whole planet, but not for any area one can reasonably
interconnect.

[1]
[http://content.caiso.com/green/renewrpt/DailyRenewablesWatch...](http://content.caiso.com/green/renewrpt/DailyRenewablesWatch.pdf)
[2]
[https://dataviewer.pjm.com/dataviewer/pages/public/windpower...](https://dataviewer.pjm.com/dataviewer/pages/public/windpower.jsf)

~~~
Retric
At grid scale Peaks are unimportant, it's median and minimum numbers that
matter. The grid needs to meet demand anything past that point is useless.
Remember wind and solar don't use fuel they just need infrastructure. Hydro
does use 'fuel' but can act as defacto storage by ramping up when there is a
gap between supply and demand.

Also of note you can smooth out or shift solar by shifting power east-west
without involving storage.

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exabrial
Hey we got plenty of wind here in Kansas, how about investment in
storage/transmission so we can get it somewhere useful?

~~~
r00fus
Hey, remember Obama's campaign goal in 2008 to switch our power transmission
to HVDC?

What ever happened to that?

[0] [https://www.sindark.com/2008/01/07/hvdc-transmission-for-
ren...](https://www.sindark.com/2008/01/07/hvdc-transmission-for-renewable-
energy/)

~~~
greeneggs
An update: [http://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11322600/plains-eastern-
transmi...](http://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11322600/plains-eastern-transmission-
line)

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okyup
The obvious reason for this is government, not because they're great
technologies.

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ZeroGravitas
This is true.

They _are_ great technologies, but since they address the market externalities
around carbon and other air pollution, the non-free market created by this
situation won't achieve the aims that a theoretical free market would.

It's a bit embarrassing to free market boosters to see total global
catastrophe be an unintended consequence of their policies, but they've often
decided to dig in and deny obvious facts, which makes government intervention
ever more necessary and welcomed by the population. Bit of an own goal really.

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viraptor
OT: I hope that's not a new trend... "Renewables’ share of power generation.
Scale is shown in doublings."

It's a logarithmic scale, labeled as "doublings", with the background lines
suggesting linear scale, and confusing rounding on the left (0.03% is "double"
0.01%). Also the left chart starts at 0%, where i think they wanted 0.00625%
which got rounded.

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khattam
Sad! They are also the worst for the environment and most unreliable sources
of energy.

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Kenji
"The best minds in energy keep underestimating what solar and wind can do."

Of course wind and solar becomes "efficient" when the state arbitrarily funds
and supports it. I am certain there is an entire mafia behind this, from the
energy companies all the way to the politicians, ensuring that our public
funds flow into their hands and that other forms of energy are properly
discredited and taxed.

~~~
7952
In terms of financial efficiency renewable and nuclear are completely
different to fossil fuels.

With a gas power station their is a point at which the fuel is too expensive
to compete and the plant is turned off.

With renewable energy the cost is in capital expenditure rather than fuel. It
makes sense to run the generator as much as possible, regardless of how little
money it makes. In a market dominated by fossil fuels the effective price is
therefore always slightly less than the cheapest fossil fuel available. It
becomes more valuable as oil or coal prices rise and less valuable as they
drop.

Of course that is a ridiculous situation to be in. The only real reason to
ever promote renewable energy/ or nuclear is because it is a better product
with less negative impact. It is perfectly reasonable that this would cost
more than fossil fuel. The only way for a private company to pay off the debt
is to charge more than market rates for the energy produced.

~~~
frgewut
And just to add - there are a lot of areas where renewables are already way
cheaper or conventional generation just is not appropriate- like solar for
replacing diesel generators, offshore wind near large coastal cities(try
building a large nuclear plant near NY), there are also a lot of remote places
where grid is expensive to maintain etc, etc

Also PV is the simplest, least maintenance power generation source if you need
<few KW.

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Overtonwindow
I feel like we've been down this road before. If some may recall, the federal
government setup a giant loan program for alt energy companies. Many went bust
taking a lot of money with them. I worry if the investment dollars are going
to Just Another Solar Company, or is it demonstrated, proven technology that
has potential?

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astrodust
You would've been a gem in the 1920s shaking an angry fist at how many oil
companies were going bust and how fortunes were being squandered digging wells
that produced nothing.

That whole oil thing is just a fad! Why can't people be happy with coal?

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Overtonwindow
I think you misread the comment. Oil was proven and investment was pushing it
to new heights. Do we really want to spend a lot of money on the same
technology, and a new company, or new technology and innovation? I for one
don't want another Solyndra. I want a company that is pushing a demonstrated
advancement in technology.

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greglindahl
Solyndra pushed a demonstrated advance in technology. It just didn't end up
being cheaper than the rapidly-falling price of silicon solar cells. Sure, you
can play Monday-morning quarterback on that deal, but it was a reasonable bet
and the investors (who lost a ton of money) were not fools.

