Last week I did a calculation on a hand calculator when wind was
6% of demand. I forget what the maximum demand was at the time which
was something like 40 gwatt.
I worked out what would be the cost of a battery for 24 hours at
$1 a watt.
I was shocked when it came up at 20,000 $Trillion.
I went wrong somewhere I hope.

That is just a bit of sillyness.

However more seriously it is true that renewables are the cheapest
source of electricity.
A turbine will produce electricity at low cost so long as the wind
blows at 25 knots permanently. Over that they shut down.

Over a year they produce on average 35% of the electricity that they
would if the wind blew at 25 knots all year long.
So how do you get the rated output you desire.
Easy buy three times as many turbines as you expected.
However no point in putting the extra ones on the same tite, they
have to be on two other widely separated sites.

Costs have gone up quite a bit have they not ?
However if the wind does not blow on two of the sites then you need
another site with three turbines on it.
Can you now see why with the hundreds of turbines we now have the
wind proportion of supply is in single digit percentages.
Oh correction, it is 12% at the moment !
It is the duplication required that makes renewables hopeless.
Anyone who suggests batteries are the solution usually does not
understand the difference between Kilowatts and Kilowatt/Hours.
They are OK for the passing cloud bank, or for frequency control
and things like inertia etc. (ie stiffening the supply).

Do some simple calculations yourself and you will see that renewables
are as big a con as global warming itself.

Bazz,

The key word in understanding wind and solar is "erratic". The renewable input is like a saw blade on top of the regular supply from coal.

I am at a loss to understand how the renewable fantasy is pursued and nuclear power dismissed. France went nuclear in a decade last century and continues to generate power from it at a fraction the cost of Europe's erratic renewables.

Just a bunch of spivs pushing erratic energy for a quick buck without a jot of concern for this country.

More converts are coming out of the woodwork now, joining Zion Lights from Extinction Rebellion, e.g.
http://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2022/06/26/chasing_utopian_energy_how_i_wasted_20_years_of_my_life_839185.html?fbclid=IwAR1MZAjnNTyl0bm03TuVEDRxuuooLsKVe66BxlkrrQr6tLdot17ZkfJIcU4

Yes Fester, I think our "betters" have gone stark raving.
Right now at 5 PM the total for wind and solar is 6% of
demand.
Now they have told us today that wind and solar have to be
increased 9 times.
Hmm that means 6x9=54 when I went to school, so when they
build the network up it will supply 54% of today's demand.
Hmmm, seems to be a bit short there.
Of course I forgot about the batteries.
How many Gwatt/hrs will be need between now and say 9am
tomorrow ?
That will be an interesting calculation.
I think all the info is on the AEMO website to enale that calculation.
At $1 a watt/hr I wonder that would cost ?

Agree Bazz. There are a wealth of wonderful ideas from growing algae to make oil, to biogas and catalysed pyrolysis to quantum dot solar and a number of battery "breakthroughs" like Aluminium/air batteries with a power to weight ratio better than gasoline. I even remember corn stover and pig muck being touted as energy sources, but it has to work and work economically to come to something.

The erratic energy revolution has all the hype, but nobody is asking "How the hell will it work?". Truly terrifying.

Dick Smith does good work. Thanks for mentioning him Luciferase.