World is adding more renewable capacity each year than coal, natural gas, and oil

Impetus

In 2013, 143 GW of renewable energy plant was installed -v- 141 of fossil fuel plant. There is no going back to the old ways.

More:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-14/fossil-fuels-just-lost-the-race-against-renewables?cmpid=twtr1

Capt'n Midnight

http://www.outsiderclub.com/the-future-king-of-energy-is/1273

The prices of solar photovoltaic (PV) modules have fallen 80% since 2008.
..
That follows the trajectory of Swanson's Law, named after Richard Swanson, the founder of SunPower (NASDAQ: SPWR), who noted that the costs of PV cells falls by 20% with each doubling of global manufacturing capacity.
...
U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). ... In 2011, for example, the EIA forecast the U.S. would have 8.9 gigawatts of solar installed by 2035.

As of 2014, the U.S. has 15.9 gigawatts installed — 80% more than the EIA projected, 21 years sooner.

Also note that panels are more efficient than in the past. 10% used to be a rule of thumb figure, it's now more like 17%, which of course cuts down on the installation size and hence costs.


For wind power it's only a 14% price drop when global capacity doubles. And that takes about three years at present.

Impetus

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

http://www.outsiderclub.com/the-future-king-of-energy-is/1273
Also note that panels are more efficient than in the past. 10% used to be a rule of thumb figure, it's now more like 17%, which of course cuts down on the installation size and hence costs.

For wind power it's only a 14% price drop when global capacity doubles. And that takes about three years at present.

New solar is around 47% efficient - though expensive and experimental or bordering on experimental. Wind seems to me to have less capability for "Moore's". New solar could even be big in Ireland.

Not least because of clean air. I have a second home with furniture, paintings and carpets and similar junk in the south coast of Ireland and fading of colours is a big issue because the sun is so strong, coming through the windows. A friend of mine has a house in the south of England facing south too, and she never experiences fading. Because the air there is polluted with carbon/traffic/old factories etc reducing solar energy hit on objects. In fact I hadn't even noticed the fading until she brought the matter to my attention after multiple visits to my place - because I grew up as a child in this environment. One doesn't notice micro-changes that occur every week as much as someone who visits every few months over the years.

The choice of renewable is down to the locality. In the south of France, there are about 25 hydro stations providing most of the power - aside from incinerators in big cities. No nuclear until one goes up around Lyon.

The south of France is equally lucky on water. Snow in winter stores water on the Alps. Mountain water flowing over rocks is clean and requires almost zero chemicals. Water is privately processed and delivered in France, in the last communist country in Europe, and the companies mainly use ozone to make the stuff near perfect before it arrives at the kitchen tap. The south of France used to be in the Barony of Savoy where Evian water comes from, and had the cleanest water in the world over a huge area stretching from Nice to Geneva. Before it was taken over by France. Evian is bottled up near Lake Geneva on the French side of the same mountain range (74500 Evian). [It still has extremely clean water, however it is no longer in Savoy...]

Capt'n Midnight

Impetus wrote: »

New solar is around 47% efficient - though expensive and experimental or bordering on experimental. Wind seems to me to have less capability for "Moore's". New solar could even be big in Ireland.

That's for multi layer cells for concentrated solar. Very, very expensive.

Wind too is on the learning curve or experience curve where install and O&M costs are dropping as people learn new tricks. Bigger turbines mean economies of scale and more wind higher up too.

All we need is an energy storage breakthrough.
At present all the grid batteries globally are about the same as a small pumped storage facility and totally dwarfed by hydro in dams. Hydro is expensive because it's big.