Beware of claims that wind and solar are a cheap route to cleaning up our energy supply, some of the published studies don't stand up to close scrutiny.
There are many things to say about such study. Just to name a few:
- Target of 100% is extremely difficult. It might be much cheaper/easier to target 80/90%. Perfect is the enemy of good.
- I struggle to see how the economics of a system composed of 156.5 GW of wind power and a whopping 346.5 GW of solar power would work. Basically, you need some sort of centralized planning as investing in an additional GW of solar would bring you very low economical benefit (because of the existing solar surplus, check my substack for such considerations).
- Thermal storage is a great system. But let's be practical, there is no way that you can have such a huge system storage within 2050 (it would take decades to build and retrofit buildings).
Thanks for this article. Interesting.
There are many things to say about such study. Just to name a few:
- Target of 100% is extremely difficult. It might be much cheaper/easier to target 80/90%. Perfect is the enemy of good.
- I struggle to see how the economics of a system composed of 156.5 GW of wind power and a whopping 346.5 GW of solar power would work. Basically, you need some sort of centralized planning as investing in an additional GW of solar would bring you very low economical benefit (because of the existing solar surplus, check my substack for such considerations).
- Thermal storage is a great system. But let's be practical, there is no way that you can have such a huge system storage within 2050 (it would take decades to build and retrofit buildings).
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Great analysis, I’m always taking projections with a grain of salt so its good to see some realistic numbers put to them.