Goddammit its impossible arguing with some people who ignore all your previous posts, data and sources and state that renewables aren't possible without any sources to back it up other than his own opinion.

You even ignored my direct response about your worry of birds flying into wind turbines and all the other relevant points.

I don't know what you want from your subsidy argument. Despite being hugely underfunded in the past renewables have done remarkably well. I've pointed out that governments that use the feed-in tariff system don't pay a penny of the cost. The technology isn't fully mature yet. It will become cheaper. It has been becoming cheaper following a log-log curve of costs against time for the past 30 years. I addressed this in my last post. Its already at the stage where wind is on par for coal on cost. That's including the claimed 5x subsidies for fossil fuels. Once the technology is mature then it will be the cheapest form of energy generation we have.

I've told you that solar PV will be viable in 2020 following the same well known log-log price learning curve. It will probably be eventually cheaper than wind. Yet you blindly declare that its only useful for small isolated uses.

As for the cloudy day/non-windy day argument I've already addressed it in earlier posts so I won't repeat it all again. Don't blindly dismiss it as you have been doing. I'll summarise it for you as you probably won't look;
1. Don't build only solar and wind. That would be stupid relying on just two highly variable sources for your energy.
2. Spread everything around the country(ies) so that you aren't affected by localised weather systems over a few states.

All of that was probably pointless as you'll ignore it and continue to spout opinion that's 20 odd years out of date.

Yay for mr fusion who if we ever get it working will probably only be useful for 100 odd years until the supply of lithium for tritium runs out.

Fusion actually might be the killer app. For starters, it's safer with significantly lower risk of a lower nuclear fall out. The reason is quite simple: fusion reactions stop within seconds if anything is off. In fact, one of the biggest design issues with fusion reactors is figuring out how to maintain the fusion reaction.

That said it seems to be decades away and everything I've read indicates (well, popular science and scientific american basically) that a fusion-fission hybrid reactor will likely be built before a pure fusion one sometime in the next 20 or 30 years.

You mean our supply of banana peels, right?

tritium isn't required for fusion. The deuterium tritium fuel cycle is just supposed to be the easiest to manage. If we ever accomplish this step, then a deuterium deuterium fuel cycle is the logical next step.

Mr Fusion is a Back to the Future reference.

I'd love for fusion to work and hope it will. We've been 20-30 years away from achieving it for about 60 years now to keep investors interested, so I'm a little suspicious of the time estimates.
The deuterium-deuterium fuel cycle sounds like there won't be a problem with tritium then. Hooray.

I was born after the back to the future trilogy, haven't seen the films.

The problem with fusion, and to a lesser extent solar and wind power, is the technology is decades away from a major financial payoff.

That makes it very difficult to get private funding as most people like to get paid before they get old and/or die.

Like most other really long term research, fusion power research is going to need support, financially and intellectually, from the governments and academic institutions.

Youth is no excuse.

You are missing out. Im still waiting on the hoverboard

Fwiw the ITER plant which will be operational in 2018 (construction started in 2008) is really promising and there is HiPER which should begin construction next year.

Its starting to get to the point where full scale experimental plants are being made, but with huge leadtimes and initial expenses fusion isnt exactly "around the corner" but its probable that fusion and renewables will account for virtually all energy production by the close of this century.

Your feigned outrage is amusing but it would carry more weight if you actually talk-the-talk and walk-the-walk.

I asked you to provide sources for some of your claims and STILL I only get silence...
So are you going to provide sources for your claims or will you just give us more of your unsourced opinions?

You clearly had the initial energy to write this post but evidently you ran out of steam and were too exhausted to provide any sources for YOUR opinions... Perhaps another feigned outrage rant would be appropriate? Yes? But be sure to conveniently forget to provide sources to us....AGAIN...

And on those cold winter days in Europe where cloud covers the ENTIRE European continent then you would have us believe that solar power would still be viable... You may believe in Santa Claus but I stopped believing a long time ago...

Believe me. I would LOVE solar/wind to be viable energy solutions.
But they are not. UNLESS a major tech breakthough is achieve, then wind/solar/biofuels are just bottomless money pits that tax payers can NOT afford...

LOL....a lead block to capture/store heat?
Can we have a source for this assertion?
And it might be time for you to take a remedial course on thermodynamics...

I admire your enthusiam for renewable energies but you have lost all sense of reality if you believe the lead block scenario. Another kook renewable idea I read was using windpower to wind a giant metal spring that would serve as an energy storage device when the wind doesn't blow. It is one of many crackpot ideas that the greenies claim is feasible.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for thinking outside the box but don't tell us this ideas are feasible without proof...

I'm going to requote myself here since a lot of people seem to be ignoring this statement. And I'm not talking out of my ass. I'm talking from experience IRL.

No. There is already tons and tons of private funding for solar. Almost every single large solar plant you see in the news is privately funded. The electricity produced is sold to the offtaker at a prenegotiated price, but the plants themselves are privately owned.

Err, both of those are perfectly logical.

Everything that is on high ground is tsunami proof...

you're ignoring the mitigating effects that solar has on the stress of the grid during peak consumption times though. These ideas you're strawmanning are obviously useless as they're far less efficient than just allowing fossil fuel plants to run at night. However, renewables can eliminate the need for backup power plants that run at 10% most of the time (which is extremely inefficient for a power plant) but have to ramp up to higher production during peak consumption.

Also - peak consumption times are closer to 2-5PM in the summer. It's when people are starting to get home but most businesses are still running full steam AND its hot. By 7 PM, power consumption has shifted from commercial to residential.

4 years man, 4 years. Hoverboards, flying cars and Mr. Fusion. It'll all be here, just you wait.

Everything on the Moon is also tsunami proof. Beat that!

in be4 rising sea levels

This needs source. Almost everything I've read puts the estimate at 15c/kWh at the low end.

Even if you're right it's 14c/kWh and is competitive with oil/gas, it's not sufficient.

Given the lower dependability (and the resulting need to build excess capacity), solar power needs significant cost advantages to make economic sense.

Indeed, this is where subsidies come in. The subsidies make an otherwise losing/breakeven (in best case scenarios, using your numbers) proposition a profit making venture. What form the subsidies actually take is irrelevant.

Many of the same companies and farms would not exist if not for subsidies and government mandates. It's not a direct subsidy but it's still a subsidy.

What you're not registering is there still needs to be backups for when those solar panels and wind turbines are operating under sub-optimal conditions. Effectively, out of necessity, much of solar capacity will be redundant.

No, they actually can't, not as long as they are at the mercy of mother nature.

Fair enough.

It's very important to note my problem is not with renewable energies in general. My problem is with renewable energies that cannot be relied upon. Geothermal, fusion and tidal are less mature technologies but they are far more likely to become viable alternatives in the long term whereas solar and wind will almost certainly end up money sinks due to their natural limitations.

Fuel cells are improving along with solar so while solar is uneconomical at present (and even more so when it needs to be stored), it will become cheaper in the future, as will storing solar power. I wouldn't be surprised if solar was cheaper than coal in the late 2020s.

What we need is an orbital elevator transmitting power from solar farms in space.

Yeah all we need is Advanced Materials II and Advanced Energy I and we'll be all set!

The steam powered car was suppose to be the car of the future but it turned out to be a technological dead end. So why are you so confident that fuel cells and solar are not dead ends? It all boils down to wishful thinking on your part. These techs have made NO significant advances in years... The And likely they will be technologocal dead ends as well...

The windheads and solarheads who think we can mass produce these power sources with the current technology are proof that some members of our society are dangerously delusional...


I would LOVED to make a bet with you on this but waiting to 2020 to get my cash is more than my patience will allow.

You really just never know honestly.

The breakthrough might not even come from power generation R&D specifically.

Tens of billions of dollars are getting poured into power storage, not to support solar or wind, but to maximize battery life for computers, smart phones and (farther down the line) electric cars.

If they stumble onto something ridiculous cheap and efficient, it could be the killer app we need to change the equation.

Until such storage technology becomes available, dumping money into solar and wind is pretty ******ed; it would be the same as putting the cart before the horse. As things stand, solar and wind have no future beyond making tree huggers (not even all of them) happy.