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US Wind Capacity Surpasses Hydro, Overall Generation To Follow (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Wind power is now the largest source of renewable energy generating capacity, passing hydroelectric power in 2016. And since the two sources produce electricity at nearly the same rate, we'll soon see wind surpass hydro in terms of electricity produced. Wind power capacity has been growing at an astonishing pace (as shown in the graph above), and 2016 was no exception. As companies rushed to take advantage of tax incentives for renewable power, the U.S. saw 8.7 Gigawatts of new wind capacity installed in 2016. That's the most since 2012, the last time tax incentives were scheduled to expire. This has pushed the U.S.' total wind capacity to over 81 GW, edging it past hydroelectric, which has remained relatively stable at roughly 80 GW. Note that this is only capacity; since generators can't be run non-stop, they only generate a fraction of the electricity that their capacity suggests is possible. That fraction, called a capacity factor, has been in the area of 34 percent for U.S. wind, lower than most traditional sources of electricity. But hydropower's capacity factor isn't that much better, typically sitting at 37-38 percent. As a result, wind won't need to grow much to consistently exceed hydro. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Electricity Data Browser
I did some work at one of those places you appear to think don't exist in 1996, and that pump storage plant was not new at the time. We certainly have the technology but you are looking at things the wrong way around. Since all storage methods are lossy the answer that has already happened is having a lot of little distributed generators (since gas is currently cheap that's where that huge percentage of gas has come from) that can be switched in as required by demand. The problem you are going on about has really already been solved at both ends.
What I see in a lot of posts here is one dimensional thinking of single windmills (what do you do if there is no wind people cry - the blatantly obvious answer, already done, is build in more than one place!) or similar that ignore the existence of grids and interconnections between grids so assume that their single generator from their 1D thinking should have it's stuff stored when there is no demand for it. That's a very limited way of looking at things and it's almost always going to lead to very unrealistic conclusions. For a start, the low hydro number ignores the vast amount of power coming into the grid from Canada.
Read it again. The claim is that capacity factor for both is not that different. Hydro tends to be seasonal, especially if you're doing run-of-river but even reservoirs have low periods so you can't get close to 100% for very long
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
This is why hydraulic fracturing has been attacked in order to drive the prices back up.
No. Fracking has been attacked because it runs the risk of poisoning the groundwater.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.