"Renewable" energy isn't. It isn't renewable, it isn't reliable, and anybody who says it is inexpensive is smoking funny cigarettes. One need only look to the experiences of Spain and Germany (7 jobs lost for each green job created; soaring energy prices, now affectionately called 'the second rent') to see the end game in real life.
Green energy is an expensive boondoggle of epic proportions.
California doesn't use much wind and solar compared to the rest of the nation [1] but I will grant you that they pay a LOT more for their electricity then the US average.
Californian households currently pay about $0.21 per KWH, plus supply charges. At those rates, I would put an "off grid solar system" on my roof. Solar panels currently cost about $1,000 per KWH (and dropping) so if I average 5 hours of sunshine a day I would have them payed for in 3 - 6 years, this is without ANY subsidies and paying ALL applicable taxes assuming I get payed for the energy I supply to the grid. Now there are added cost like installation, batteries and/or grid tie inverter, However I am able to do all this work myself. Going of grid and using batteries (expensive) would make it even more reliable then having to depend on energy companies who are know to engage in market manipulation [2] It also increases the resale value of the home. [3] so financing with a bank should not be a problem. And if you are want to argue that sunshine in California is unreliable then you could simply use a hybrid system. It is far more complex then this and I advise you to do your own calculations if you want a more precise answer.
Of course you can argue that companies like google are just simply misguided and only do it for the PR when they are building solar and wind farms for their operations. [4]
But give me a good reason why you wouldn't install a solar system if you lived in California.
Glad we agree that it would be smart to put in solar on building and homes, if we lived in places with plenty of sunshine.
"ultimately fission or fusion will be the only way our world will have the power" Why limit our options to nuclear? Ultimately we will use the power source(s) that makes the most economic sense. While I agree that fusion looks promising it may not be the ultimate solution even when we do get it working economically. I am not worried about the energy sources, as there are plenty of options to choose from. All I care for is that it is safe and does not dump the waste products into the environment, when experts tell us those waste products will cause problems there. This has nothing to do with left/right wing politics and everything to do with ethics.
Let's broaden this question beyond renewables.
There's the nuclear power plant in San Onofre, which was shut down because Southern California Edison tried to sneak through a design change without a design review, and it ended up biting them when the design was found out to be seriously flawed, forcing the heat exchanger pipes to wear much faster than planned. In fact the engineering for earthquakes and tsunami at the plant located alongside the ocean was probably also flawed. Rather than fix the problems SCE has shut down the plant, and is trying to stick ratepayers with the bill.
Then there was the massive blackout of 2011, during which essentially the entire grid of far southern California, southwestern Arizona and parts of Mexico without power--about 7 million people. The only part of the grid that was still producing power was the parts connected to renewables.
Of course back around the turn of the 21st century Californians were being gouged by high energy prices and suffering rolling blackouts, all in the name of "energy deregulation", which instead of being a market-based solution to our energy problems, was actually massive fraud perpetrated by companies like Enron.
I'm sure there's plenty of things to complain about renewables for, but the problems with conventional energy undoubtedly dwarf them.
How much longer do you think that fossil fuels will remain cost effective? The Canadian Tar Sands oil have an estimated reserve to supply Canada with its energy needs for the next 400 years. That means Canada should have a cheap supply of fossil fuels for the foreseeable future, right? Well, they probably would IF the intent was not to export on the world market where it will be consumed much faster. Sooner or later fossil fuels will become too costly to use and still grow the world's economies. Just look at the extremes that the fossil fuel industries are taking now in order to bring fossil fuels to the market. Deep sea oil rigs. Expensive frackin techniques. Tar sands that provide very little return on energy. Oil sands require nearly as much energy to bring to market as they supply. Should we not make strong moves towards renewable energy sources now the future looks very bleak for growing economies around the world. One way or another, we will have to move off of fossil fuels or destroy the economies around the world. How is that going to work out for third world countries that are brought into the world economy and then have to shut them down because of the higher costs that are fairly soon coming with fossil fuels?
It looks like it, +65% for electricity, for instance: http://www.bls.gov/ro9/cpilosa_energy.ht...
Although that compares Los Angeles to the nationwide average.
Storage always was going to be a probem, as I have mentioned before. They have mountains and pump storage, though.
"$5 billion worth of batteries" sounds like $5 billion worth of pollution to me. How many tons of undesirable chemicals will that involve I wonder.
"Renewable energy" is in a honeymoon period at present. When the maintenance costs start to increase and fields of turbines need replacing then reality will finally strike home. How long before someone needs to dispose of $5 billion worth of batteries (and replace them with an equivalent), or many thousands of very large, non-bio-degradeable turbine blades (made of carbon fibre)?
Currently, downtown Los Angeles still has many active oil wells. Many are disguised by being inside buildings. I believe, that they also still import electricity from neighbouring Nevada. I would like to see California run as an experiment in the vangard of renewable energy. They are very keen on all things green so they should be up for giving it a good go. Why not shut down the oil wells and sever the power links then become self-sustaining on renewable energy. When they have worked out how to make it work then the world can follow without repeating all the mistakes - thus saving much energy in the process.
What is not to like?
Oh, cry me a river. As if we otherwise would never again have to spend another penny on energy. Your tabloid-like story might as well be headlined, “Bigfoot Really Exists: Creature Photographed Wind Surfing at Lake Tahoe.”
It is not as simple as the article implies. Here is a statement from San Diego Gas & Electric (a utility of one of my clients, Sempra – the largest natural gas utility in the US).
http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/NR/rdonlyres/F49E...
NPR also has a more balanced presentation:
http://www.npr.org/2013/12/11/250043599/...
And a benefit-to-cost analysis by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), while acknowledging the difficulties of calculating such estimates, nevertheless concluded that, “At the summary level, under the cost and performance assumptions assumed by the CPUC, most analysis runs return B/C ratios of greater than 1.”
http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/NR/rdonlyres/1110...
Nothing that has to be subsidized by the government is inexpensive. I never voted for that crazy subsidized green energy crap scheme when I lived there. Those windmills were supposed to solve the California electricity shortage problems but now the eco Nazis are trying to sue to shut down the windmills because they kill birds. Green energy environmentalism is a loser endeavor any time it's tried.
Kano...Leave it to libtard logic which claims to save a few bucks in electricity by requiring to spend $10s to 100s of thousands on infrastructure just to do it.
If these people were really serious about a cheap eco friendly way to store energy they would build cheap giant 500 ton or more flywheels and store it as kinetic energy instead of expensive caustic environmentally unfriendly chemical storage systems. But libtards love creating solutions that make problems much worse and costing much, much more in the long run. Kind of like burning an entire forest to the ground in order to save the trees.
Kind of.
I doubt it.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/12/california-planning-to-run-on-battery.html
