How can you categorically say that something will never happen? Everything is possible.
Well.. maybe I'm just dumb, but the last time I checked, it was beyond human capability to make the sun shine 24 hours a day..
As for wind power, please tell us how you can guarantee 24x7 conditions suitable for driving a wind turbine?
The basic logic that neither solar or wind can provide is 24x7 reliability and availability without the additional costs of power storage systems (which would be just as useful for fossil and nuclear power plants in off-peak generation).
Here's the problem. Let's say a specific region required 1,000 megawatts of power during peak hours, and 600 mega watt off-peak.
Since solar can only provide power during the daylight hours, you need 1.6 megawatts of generation capacity; 1 million for the peak hours used, and 600 mega watts to be stored to for off-peak nightime hours, with additional costs incurred in providing 600 megawatts of storage capacity (not inconsequential).
Either that, or you have to kick on the fossil fuel generators to provide night-time power, which means you have to build double the infrastructure to meet your generation requirements.
Wind is a bit different.. Since we can rely upon the sun shining every day, with only cloud cover being a factor, we can plan for that. But Wind is a very mischievous energy source. You never know when it's going to blow with any certainly. It also might blow so hard that you have to shut down your windmills. So it's obviously never going to be a primary source of generation capacity. If anything, it will be an auxiliary source that will provide extra capacity that can be stored and used to reduce fossil generation requirements.
In sum, solar and wind might be great for AUGMENTING the current power generation capacity we have, but it never truly be able to replace those systems (fossil or nuclear) that can generated huge amounts of power 24x7, rain or shine.
Hawk |
