Only nuclear power is outrageously capital intensive. Solar and wind are much, much less capital intensive.
>Certainly we can't become reliant on solar/wind supply as this would be disastrous.
Oh yea, running fully on renewable energy would be terrible :/
The way to look at capital in this respect is to look at $/W of installed power. So even if in absolute numbers you don't require a huge amount of $ to put a solar plant into production versus putting a (small) nuclear plant into production the capital costs are still considerable when you compare apples with apples. Also, nuclear scales better in this respect than solar. So capital costs are not per-se the best way to compare solar, wind and nuclear.
Endless volumes have been written about this, one of the biggest benefits in my opinion is that solar and wind put fewer apples into many more baskets which should - if properly implemented, which currently they are not - in theory result in a more resilient power infrastructure.
This is exactly what not being capital intensive means. You can start small and scale up. By contrast, you cannot build a small nuclear power plant and scale up to a larger one. You build a large, expensive source of power or you build nothing at all.
>Also, nuclear scales better in this respect than solar.
Nuclear is good for generating baseload but it cannot be scaled up or down easily, it is VERY capital intensive, it comes with significant risks (placed squarely on the public's shoulders) and is not significantly cheaper as a source of energy.
The fact is, a volatile generating capacity is a bad thing to have. There is no cost effective way for wind/solar to store energy - sure, solar is great at producing peak demand energy in suitable climates - but you cannot run factories and hospitals and large building climate control on such variable inputs.
I realise that a lot of folk love to talk about 'there's always wind blowing and sun shining' - of course it is true - but these fantasy grids are always designed out on a piece of paper with no regards to cost of construction and therefore cost of the ongoing power.
Unless you can force every country in the world to adopt similar systems, any country that adopts such expensive systems will certainly find themselves in serious financial trouble as all their industry will move to lower-cost places of production.
As has already been pointed out - it's not the total cost, it's the cost per lifetime generation that counts. That's where large scale but capital intensive generation wins out -it can produce lots of energy over a long period at fixed rates and lock in contracts on the same. However, the volatility of the market makes these more difficult to justify. This is a bad thing, particularly where it has been caused by government intervention into the marketplace for energy.
You'd be wrong. I'm well aware that it will require significant investment and a retrofit to accommodate this.
>The fact is, a volatile generating capacity is a bad thing to have.
For our current grid, which our current operators have zero interest in upgrading because they're quite happy running a monopoly with minimal investment expenditure. You're okay with this too I see?
>Unless you can force every country in the world to adopt similar systems, any country that adopts such expensive systems will certainly find themselves in serious financial trouble as all their industry will move to lower-cost places of production.
Yes, well, we're well overdue an overhaul of our trade policy and treaties that explicitly encourages and condones this behavior. Unfortunately too many people like you treat these treaties (like TTIP or CAFTA) as immutable facts of life. They can and ultimately will be reversed one day, just electricity can and ultimately will be sourced entirely from renewable energy.
The question is simply when.
>As has already been pointed out - it's not the total cost, it's the cost per lifetime generation that counts. That's where large scale but capital intensive generation wins out
Not really. Most forms of capital intensive power generation enjoy lavish subsidies on top of being highly polluting and still manage to only be (currently) a bit cheaper than renewables. By contrast those cheap solar panels imported from China? 30% tariff.
Maybe you could look up the last date when there was no wind across the whole of the continental US at the same time?
>when there's cloud cover
One of the biggest myths about solar panels is that they do not work when it is cloudy. They still produce power under clouds - not as much as a sunny day, but a LOT more than you'd expect.
http://pureenergies.com/us/home-solar/solar-basics/solar-myt...
>So you run the capital intensive parallel generators - and that's called running fully on renewable, is it?
Renewable energy already is transported between countries to handle different levels of load / production (Germany already exports it to France pretty frequently when it's sunny in Germany).
I assume this would continue to handle the different levels of sun, wind and load in various locations both nationally, across state borders and internationally.
Who knows though, maybe one day the whole world will go dark and windless at the same time?