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Re:Solar Surpasses Gas and Wind as Biggest Source of New U.S... by beat on Tuesday June 12, 2018 @10:22AM (#17293476)
Indeed. I'd say we are in the midst of a "revolutionary breakthrough" right now. The cost-per-kwh of solar/wind electric power is now lower than fossil, and still dropping. Consumer options are growing on the low end, and experience with industrial-scale installations is growing on the high end.

There's another breakthrough I'm looking forward to, however - really good instantaneous pricing and metering. When prices are set on demand and fully automated, then energy caching hooked to the grid becomes viable. This creates a good arbitrage financial model. Store energy from solar/wind when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, and sell that stored energy when demand is up and supply is down.

Once that's working, the whole grid gets remodeled. Then we can make a real dent in the coal-fired baseload plants and aging nuclear plants that desperately need retired. Economies of scale and experience will reduce production cost for whole suites of energy storage technologies (batteries, compression, thermal, flywheel, gravity, etc), even if they don't become more efficient.

That's an exciting future.

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