How feasible are wind and solar?

[MDJH]

Not sure if here or another board would be a better place for this topic but whatever.

 

One popular argument against nuclear power is the possible risk of a nuclear meltdown makes it dangerous, no matter how less and less likely a nuclear accident gets as technology improves, because IF such an accident were to happen, the results would be disastrous.

 

Well, IF such people supported fossil fuels, recent events show their point to be quite moot.

 

But on other forums, I've found that those who actually address this tend NOT to be in favour of fossil fuels, but instead tend to be in favour of wind and/or solar power; which begs the question; how feasible are wind and solar?

 

I've heard many arguments for and against them, and I find it hard to tell who to believe. Some of the arguments I've heard on this subject are questionable at best; the argument that "we need power when the sun is down" obviously doesn't address that we could STORE the energy when it's sunny, and USE the energy when it isn't; in that case, it's a matter of whether or not the AVERAGE power the sun would provide would be more than the AVERAGE power people use. Same for wind; obviously we shouldn't rely on the wind blowing all the time, but on wind power accumulating energy over time.

 

But then again, the case against wind and solar doesn't necessarily rely on such arguments. The question is, how feasible are wind and solar, and why or why wouldn't they be feasible?

[swansont]

Wind and solar exist, but cannot be located at arbitrary places, so transmission is also an issue. The costs involved make them less attractive than fossil fuels (wind is closer to grid parity), partly because we do not (fully) include the cost of polluting in the cost of the energy.

 

The energy potential is there, but because we have not been doing much to encourage the development of these industries until relatively recently, we don't have the capacity to exploit this potential except for very slowly. Solar capacity is currently of order 10 GW, while worldwide electrical demand is about 2 TW, i.e. if worldwide electrical demand increases at just 0.5% per year, solar can only address the increase in demand, and do nothing about the baseline consumption (and that argument ignores what the 10 GW really means, i.e. is it average or peak, which means it could be too large by a factor of ~4 or maybe more). And if we want to transition from internal combustion engines to electrical, it's that much worse. OTOH, the capacity for production of electrical cars is also low, so there's not much potential for increased demand from them anytime soon.

 

IIRC wind is in somewhat better shape, in some ways, but not by much.

[jackson33]

But then again, the case against wind and solar doesn't necessarily rely on such arguments. The question is, how feasible are wind and solar, and why or why wouldn't they be feasible? [/Quote]

 

MDJH; Obviously they are both feasible, might throw in Geothermal or even Nuclear (all exist now) and at some point will be necessary for energy (well into the future), as resources diminish, based on today's science. However, in the meantime so is sequestering (CO2) the perceived problem with 'Carbon Based Fuels', which most the worlds current infrastructure is based on. Another question, might be practicality (cost/efficiency) which needs to be considered...

[cypress]

Feasible to a point. They are quite a bit more expensive and currently don't scale very well.