We're almost there with PV Solar price/performance.

[Kevin]

Though to speak a little more directly to Jester's point. Solar and wind will at times be offline at the same time, but wind can be 24/7, and of course when solar is offline demand is usually lower. There are even times when solar isn't online where wind will be more available, such as storms. Though that requires wind generation to be more variable than it currently is. I know some turbines have to be shut off or heavily governed if the wind speeds get too high.

Convenient though that is, it doesn't solve the problem. Even if 99% of the time, when solar is down, wind is up, and vice versa, that's still 1% of the time when both are down. (Warning: Numbers pulled out of nowhere for sake of argument!) When that happens, we still need 100% of our grid capacity to be fulfilled through some other means - at the same cost in backup capacity, either spare plants or batteries, because supplying that load once a year requires roughly the same amount of spare capacity as doing it every day. Some brownouts here or there is bad, but total output dropping to near zero because it's a miserable, windless day? That's going to shut everything off at once.

-Jester

Oh I'm in complete agree with you. It's not a simple problem, I was just point out that the tow major solar sources (because wind is the results of solar energy too) are somewhat complimentary. As you say, regardless of source of generation you need 100% of capacity to be filled 100% of the time. Distributed generation runs into some of the same problems. Joe is on the grid with his solar panels that generate on average what his house needs, but there are times he is dumping 90% of his generation into the grid and times when he is pulling 100% of his needs from the grid, or he is off grid and just has brown/black outs or wasted generation, or his own batteries or gasoline generator or whatever to stay off the grid.

I didn't mean to imply that it was the answer. Maybe the gap is filled by orbiting solar collectors that beam power down, but that feels like a fusion reactor solution too, if we can do that, we don't we just do it all that way? Weather effects (depending on the transfer mechanisms) and generation prediction become trivial or pointless. But again, I'd rather we get more distributed generation now while we keep working towards better solutions. Fighting the money trail isn't the easiest thing to do, oil companies have more of it than anyone else besides some governments.

On an environmental impact level, as Kandrathe was saying, we still have vehicle issues to clean up, but that problem, like coal, is also going to be more of a China and India issue than an US and Europe issue if it isn't already. Doesn't mean I don't want the US to attack the problems. There are battery technologies that are in theory and some cases demo stages that look to triple the life of cell phones, and one of the primary researches has a final goal of improving car batteries for electric cars. The goal is to triple the range of the electrics that are out there now. Some of the scuttlebutt is that Telsa is hoping some of this will be a reality before they release the Model X and that is part of the delays that has seen. Who knows.

It would be nice though, the model S has a 265 mile range, you get that to just 700 and that pretty much gives you full driving freedom, especially for a Tesla specifically as they already have great coverage on their rapid charge stations. I think 500 miles is the goal for a lot of manufacturers for the break even point. That beats the range of a lot of gasoline powered vehicles for a single tank. It gets you to a full day of driving. Sure I've done over 1,000 miles in a day but most people will do 500 a day a handful of times in their life.

There are all kinds of technologies in developing that are converging to points where I'm expecting things to look very different in 50 years. I know not much of prediction as 50 years has seen lots of changes regardless of what 50 you pick since at least 1600 or so. We've been stuck burning old long dead plant and animal material for a lot longer than 50 years as our primary source of energy. I can see a majority of the power generated, for everything, being from other sources in 50 years. I'm hoping the "fossil fuel age" doesn't get much longer.