Exponential in the early years and then, let’s hope, a very steep straight line until we approach “enough” and the last part of the S-shaped curve appears.

What would happen if it is just 22% over the next 40 years? We will have to work with terrawatts of capacity. 90GW = .09TW.

.09TW x 1.22 = .1098

Now, just keep pressing enter (to multiply the previous number by 1.22)
=1.34
=.163
=.2
=.243
=.296
=.36
A pattern of exponential growth emerges. After 40 “enters” (years) at a sustained 22% growth rate, total global installed global capacity would be…

Over 250 TERRAWATTS ! Divide that by 5 to get an approximate 24/7 power generation capacity of about 50TW which should include the energy costs of storage as well. Currenetly, the total global generating capacity from ALL sources is far less than 50TW.

I’m just a little miffed that the media is pointing out the exception as an example when it’s a statistical anomaly at this point. Yes there are lessons we can learn, but the way they present it, it actually falls under mis-information IMO.

If ~40% wind/solar penetration is a rough estimate for when storage is needed the bottom end of that range might be more like 10 years.

Interestingly renewables seem to have postponed new storage in Switzerland. There were plans underway to build more pump-up but renewables have lessened the supply/demand differential and cut the price spread. They reported that unless the price differential was at least 5 euro cents (~6.5 US cents) new storage wouldn’t earn enough money to make it a good investment.

And by all means – I think all of the storage is worth discussing, the issue is presenting it as a necessity within the next 20-30 years.

However, home storage (which could revolutionize the grid a bit) and EV storage are of course worth quite a bit of ink.

Btw, from our coverage of the major University of Delaware & Delaware Technical College global renewable energy report:

“the report found that, creating more electricity than required during regular hours to meet high energy use (but during low wind hours) would have lower costs compared to storing the excess energy for higher consumption later (of course, this is based on the assumption we won’t see any storage breakthroughs in that time).”

http://cleantechnica.com/70-80-99-9-100-renewables-study-central/

Sheesh… pick up the pace of solar installation and bring those back up when we’re within 3 years of 70% renewables. Until then, the issues are rather minuscule. Now, to be fair, that does make some assumptions that won’t apply to every part of the grid, but this is just silly.

But yeah, I agree that far too much emphasis is placed on “what we need when the market is saturated with solar” — we’re really not close to that point yet, but focusing on it makes a lot of people think that we need those things now.

Solar is crossing the cost threshold. Up until now it took something more than finances alone to get solar installed. We’re now at the place where solar is going to be installed for the simple reason that the finances work.

The second is the very, very, VERY nice exponential growth development I’m starting to see with solar. 1% globally seems low, but we’re reaching tipping points in some places where it’s cheaper to generate solar energy, without rebates, than tap into the regular grid and can ameliorate some of the predicted rise in total pollution from developing countries while still increase quality of life factors. As exponential growth picks up, products can go from something people don’t think about to something people see everywhere.

Ok… I’m going to stop before I start.