Promoters of renewable energy failed to account for the return of cheap oil

The Washington Times ^ | May 10, 2015 | Stephen Moore

[Cry if I Wanna]

The green energy movement in America is dead. May it rest in peace. No, a majority of American energy over the next 20 years is not going to come from windmills and solar panels. One important lesson to be learned from the green energy fad’s rapid and expensive demise is that central planning doesn’t work.

What crushed green energy was the boom in shale oil and gas along with the steep decline in the price of fossil fuel that few saw coming just a few years ago.

[1010RD]

That 25 cents difference every gallon puts real money into people’s pockets. Taxes drain.

[trebb]

$2.39 in the Biloxi area

[Vince Ferrer]

Solar has come down dramatically but marketers won’t market it for what it’s good for- low power demand.

Solar and wind have a tremendous problem with indeterminacy of production, yet supporters want to just plug them into the power grid. I would think that keeping them disconnected from the power grid, and finding uses for them where the reliability problems can be worked around would be better.

For instance, one of the original uses for wind was to pump water. If you hooked up a windmill to a pump, you could not guarantee that on any particular day the pump would be pumping. But over a year, you would know the average amount of sun or wind at that location, and so you would know how much water you could pump over a year. If you had storage to even out the flow, it would work just fine, and would be able to remove the power required for the pumps from the grid.

[mrsmith]

As usual storage would be the key to it’s affordability. I imagine a 100 gallon cistern would be affordable.
But that would not be enough storage for a week of cloudy weather. You’d still need the grid.
However every time you pumped with the wind system you’d save money, and you could pump when the grid is down.
No idea what the payback would be.

Solar HW is the area that it really bugs me to see languish. It’s obviously effective.
But, simply, no one has a superior patentable design so they could recoup the cost of getting code approval from the NSF.