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World's Cheapest Energy Source Will Be Renewables Within Three Years (qz.com)
Morgan Stanley researchers predict renewable energy will become the world's cheapest form of power within three years. An anonymous reader quotes Qz:
Renewable energy is simply becoming the cheapest option, fast... "We project that by 2020, renewables will be the cheapest form of new-power generation across the globe," with the exception of a few countries in Southeast Asia, the Morgan Stanley analysts said in a report published Thursday... Globally, the price of solar panels has fallen 50% between 2016 and 2017, they write. And in countries with favorable wind conditions, the costs associated with wind power "can be as low as one-half to one-third that of coal- or natural gas-fired power plants." Innovations in wind-turbine design are allowing for ever-longer wind blades; that boost in efficiency will also increase power output from the wind sector, according to Morgan Stanley.
The researchers also predict America will reach its Paris Climate Accord targets in 2020 -- five years early -- simply because renewables are already becoming the cheapest option for power.
The researchers also predict America will reach its Paris Climate Accord targets in 2020 -- five years early -- simply because renewables are already becoming the cheapest option for power.
Utilities are already adding storage it became cost effective about a year ago. Cheaper then adding peaker plants.
Net metering at the residential scale. Forcing energy companies to pay retail instead of wholesale is a direct subsidy to residential solar. Requiring some fraction of renewable generation forces the power companies to pay wind even when Nuclear is cheaper. That's a direct subsidy. California, in particular, requires power companies to,buy all available renewable power, whether or not they need it. That subsidizes renewables by ensuring that they never have idle capacity. The EPA Andrew other federal and state agencies giving coal construction, particularly major repairs and upgrades, a pocket veto by just not responding to permit actions is an indirect subsidy, as they are deliberately driving up the construction cost to competition. Ignore direct congressional pressure on major landholders in the desert southwest to force them into leasing their land to politically connected renewable companies at well below market rates. And let's not get started with the average of a decade and a half of regulatory and judicial delays to nuclear construction which increase the cost ten-fold. No subsidies here.
You can get it from here - http://www.cc.com/video-clips/...
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
If you're talking about cutting edge stuff. It's mostly the Government. There's a good reason lots of STEM professors carry/carried some level of clearance.
Also see transistors (gov contract to Bell Labs to develop components for radar improvement, general purpose computers for ballistics calculations, ARPAnet, GPS, EPIPEN, etc....). Free market can't be bothered to see things veyond a fiscal quarter.
That's good, because most of the poor assholes who would otherwise mine coal are dying from either cancer, lung disease or opiate addiction. And you can thank the coal industry for all three.
Coal destroys communities.
All of what you said and literally. I give you the Centralia, Pennsylvania mine fire:
The Centralia mine fire is a coal seam fire that has been burning underneath the borough of Centralia, Pennsylvania, United States, since at least May 27, 1962.
The fire is burning in underground coal mines at depths of up to 300 feet over an eight-mile stretch of 3,700 acres.[1] At its current rate, it could burn for over 250 more years.[2]
The blaze has resulted in most of the town being abandoned. The population dwindled from 2,761 in 1890 to only 7 in 2013, and most of the buildings have been leveled.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Turning the region into a resourceless dump of poverty is unlikely to improve things for anyone.
Lifting the Resource Curse probably will improve things in the long run.
This! It is quite telling that several oil companies were critical of Trump for pulling out of the Paris accords. But it's quite obvious when you look at it. E.g. BP own and operate 2.4GW worth of wind farms in the USA (14 farms) and many more internationally. Total is the second largest solar generator in the world, and even late comers like Shell just invested close to $2bn in a green energy division.
The writing is on the wall for oil, and the oil companies and preparing.
How exactly is a solar farm supposed to black out in 100 msec? Do clouds move at orbital velocities over solar farms? Or if we're talking solar farms spread across large geographic areas, then relativistic velocities?
Most grid battery buffers have traditionally been used to stabilize frequencies on long lines, having nothing to do with supply constraints. The new, large-scale grid batteries are designed to function as peakers. Tesla's Australia battery, for example, is cited at 100MW with a cost estimate of $62M ($0.62/W), By contrast, a NG peaker usually costs $1/W or more. The former's batteries have an expected lifespan of about 15 years, with a current replacement cost of around $40M (presumably well lower 15 years in the future); otherwise they're largely maintenance free (unlike NG peakers).
At present, NG peakers are still the go-to solution for pairing with renewables. But the numbers on batteries are looking impressive, and they'll probably take over at some point in the future.
Dear Diary...today I was pompous and my sister was crazy.