But no big thing. Point is India is a player.

What you run into is the cost of storing solar to cover all the non-sunny hours. You’d have to be able to store solar (or ship it in from somewhere else) for a penny in order to make it as cheap as wind direct from the turbine.

We have no storage technology that gets anywhere close to a penny per kWh. Best is pump-up hydro at six cents.

The cheapest way to power a grid is to use whatever is available at the moment and avoid storage as much as possible.

And we’d have to install a massive number of panels. Consider that a particular spot on the globe is going to get about six hours of usable sunlight. During its six hours it would have to collect enough power for the “18 hours of planet” that would be “taking”.

What makes more sense is to use a mix of what is available in each area and do some sharing across areas. The wind, in good windy places, blows a lot more hours per day than the Sun shines. Rivers run most of the time. Tides ebb and flow and can produce power more than half the time. Geothermal is pretty much ‘always on’. Biomass and biogas can produce 24/365. We’re starting to make progress with harvesting wave power.

Then, there’s the problem that some of our sources just don’t supply all the time. Solar is great but there are times when an area is covered with clouds in the middle of the day. There are times the wind isn’t blowing in a particular place. Tidal flow stops at crest and trough.

Mix everything together and we get a more consistent supply of power. That reduces the amount of storage and backup generation we need.

There are plenty smart people everywhere.

In some cases, particularly where small turbines are needed e.g. below around 25 kW it may be possible to source locally made / assembled turbines where there are the local skills available to maintain without outside expertise.

Eos claims that they can “purchase” off-peak electricity and “sell it back”, all costs and profits included, for about $0.10/kWh.

That would mean their batteries are less than 50% as expensive as deep cycle “golf cart” batteries which are pretty much the cheap storage option for off the grid.

If we could cut the cost of storage by a significant amount then the micro-grid world changes.

Individual residences/stores will probably find solar the best option. Small villages/towns may find adding a small turbine makes sense for their location. If they’ve got good wind potential then that might decrease the amount of storage they need.

Something else that is happening is that older “developed world” wind farms are starting to upgrade their wind farms.

Since many early farms were built in some of the best wind locations there are lots of 15+ year old turbines installed. And they are shorter tower, less swept area turbines. It’s paying to pull those old, smaller rigs down and replace them with taller, longer blade units.

The removed turbines are being reconditioned and sold on to places where capital is not as available and there’s lots of available space. This is bringing much cheaper wind to places which probably couldn’t afford a state of the art turbine.

So at the “larger micro-grid” level, the town, installing a reconditioned turbine to supplement their solar could be an attractive option.

Why? Because a useful amount of generation will always occur every day so with a bit of self control and a modestly oversized array, only 1 to 2 days worth of energy storage are necessary to maintain service.

By contrast, whilst wind can deliver power at any time of day or night, it is far from unknown in less windy areas to have several days in a row with minimal opportunity to generate power. This necessitates far higher battery backup capacity as it must keep the system working without power generation for possibly a week at a time.

Where wind scores off grid is where activities which are not time critical need to be powered – water pumping, grinding grain and the like which with with appropriate storage of water / milled grain can wait a few days until the wind is blowing.

What you are suggesting is basically that I can buy wind power from a energy company cheaper than I can make my own which will always make a difference if you have some EV to charge per family.

But there are so many variables no one really seems to talk about at the moment. How is electricity/energy going to be taxed in future? Will you be taxed for an area of energy producing capacity you own as soon as you go over some sort of free capacity? Will there be a difference if I use electricity to heat my home or charge my Tesla? (being a “communist” European I actually think there should be a difference). There has to be a replacement for the tax on fossil fuels else I can’t see how social democracy can survive and I am not willing to give that up.

Interesting time are ahead.

Wind has a big head start on solar.

Solar will likely dominate in places which have no grid and where running a grid would be expensive.

We simply differ in our predictions of which will be more used, wind or solar. I suspect our grids will use about 2x as much wind as solar. The wind blows around the clock and storage, even if cheap, has a cost. If nothing else there is a loss of power moving into and out of storage.

Fractions of cents is a pretty harsh estimate. There are material costs, frame and cover glass, which would be hard to eliminate.

My current guesstimation is 40% wind, 20% solar, 20% assorted (tidal, hydro, bio-stuff) and 20% stored whatever is available (wind or solar). Those are just rough numbers, you understand….. ;o)

I can’t imagine owning a home without solar. I also can’t imagine that India will build wind turbines for all its citizens and connect them to the grid. Same goes for a lot of African countries. They will be on there own and solar allows them to get energy access step by step. If you now compare the populations you will see that they will very soonish consume more energy (well actually they already do) then what is now considered the developed world.

Solar will probably lift most of the weight. I think it is easily conceivable that prices will actually go more towards fractions of cents for countries with cheap labor and little regulations. There is no technical limitation to building plants that can produce 100GWp worth of PV panels a year or something in that area.

Power when we want it is quite possible 24/365 with a renewable grid. It’s just an issue of selecting the best sources in the proper amounts for each place and completing with storage.

My near term prediction (about 20 years ahead) is that electric cars and vertical farms are biggest electricity consumers. And they both can fully adapt to the intermittent supply of solar power.

There is very little industry that cannot shut down the production during the nights if the difference of the price of day and night electricity is large enough. Today factories are driven in three shifts because night time electricity is cheap.

Yes, but it probably never will. The Sun shines too few hours per day. The wind blows a lot more hours. Using direct from source will almost certainly be cheaper than storing for future use.

Wind is on its way to 5 cents/kWh, including transmission. Let’s say solar goes really cheap and hits 3 cents/kWh. Is there much chance we could store electricity at less than 2 cents? Unless stored solar is cheaper than wind, direct from the turbine, then solar won’t supply it all.
—

And Hurrah! for UCSD. The campus that just keeps kicking out good stuff.