I also agree with the general notion that we’re failing to think of this issue in broad enough terms. We quickly zero in on how a given energy source is constrained, based on all of the problems and hurdles that exist today … and then kind of toss it out as a possible (silver bullet) solution. And from there, the whole discussion devolves to how renewable resources “cannot” replace our current incredibly massive and ingrained infrastructure for any number of reasons, all of which boil down to them being hard to do. Not impossible, not even technically limited, just harder than what we have now. In other words: more expensive.

There is nothing that I am aware of that constrains our long-term ability to transfer the most significant and large majority of our fossil fuel energy to renewable sources. Short-term yes — lots of hurdles. Long-term, there are few remaining technical hurdles (including storage) that don’t have solutions. The problem is in most cases they are not yet cost-competitive … and perhaps we don’t have a clear understanding, as a populace, of why it’s important for us to change.

At some point, we’ll all get a clue. Until then, we’re working in an energy market. Only really far-looking investors can see opportunity in renewable energy.

Sigh

Utility scale CSP offers the potential for 24-hour uptime. I also believe that V2G technology and residential/commercial distributed storage (batteries, flywheels, compressed air, hydrogen, etc.) could eventually solve the intermittency problem.

A nuclear fission plant runs about 95% of the given hours in a year, a coal plant between 70% and 90%, a PV solar panel between 10% and 16%.

In the Southeast US, only about 4-5 hours a day are suitable for generating the peak amount of power out of any given solar system, in the Southwest US its about 5-6 hours a day… An average residential system might be in the range of 3.5-4kWpeak and installed in Arizona would generate only 20kWh a day. Since the average US household uses around 12,000 kWh/year, efficiency is clearly the way to go. If we could get average household energy usage down in the 3500 kWh/year range, renewables might be useful.