The one subject we have not mentioned is hot rocks.
There is a lot of heat down there, so it makes sense to keep spending
on it to fix the problems.
If it can be made to work economically, all our troubles are over.
Global warming is not a problem, as the oil & coal deplete the CO2
emissions will fall.

Cocentrate on the main game.
How will we feed ourselves as oil demand exceeds supply ?
Will the governments have enough guts to ration fuel and give farmers priority ?
Will the governments wake up and realise that they cannot keep ignoring this problem as it will not go away.
At some point they will have to say;
"We are in an energy crisis and we cannot do anything about it except
try to find an alternative and ration what we can buy on the world market and ban the export of gas and coal."

Oh come on Anthy, send me an email when some of those projects get passed the promising, ready to be scaled up, or price falling rapidly, & I'll have a look at it.

How much has Obama wasted of his tax payers money on this rubbish. One solar cell manufacturer went down with over half a billion, yes billion of tax payers money. Another it was 250 billion. That should have subsidised a few cells, but where are they.

The fools paradise around here is the one the fools who believe this garbage will ever work live in, & the bl00dy idiots who think we need it. A few years time we'll be required to burn coal at home to try to warm up a cooling earth. It won't work then either, but some fools will believe it.

The problem is storage and its cost.
Even if solar and wind can be made economical the storage needs to be
where it can be switched on line rapidly and needs to be located at
a strategically located place.
It has to be of a size that could cope with a week or more of heavy
overcast and a string of windless days, like the last three days here.
The generation capacity has to be five perhaps ten times bigger than
the maximum load.
If not, it will not be able to keep the storage system charged.
Another point, storage systems will generally be electrical so it will
be DC and will have to be converted back to AC with some additional losses.
If not electrical storage there will be two conversions with even more losses.
It gets very messy !

Too many articles I read compare the cost per Mwhr between wind or
solar against steam. They do not seem to realise they might have to
multiply the figure of wind or solar perhaps by ten.

Bazz raises a good point.
One proven solution is to do as the Saniards have done and use a mirror array to focus the sun's rays on a (relateively) small heating area. This allows temperatures to be reached where salt (NaCl) liquifies. The temperatures achieved are hotter than the sun, as an indication.
This liquid salt is a hihgly efficient transfer method and stays hot long enough for the steam turbines to be driven at night.
Another solution, where the natural infrastructure exists is to use excess power during generation periods to pump water upwards.
The energy is stored as potential energy.
Later the water can be released to become a hydro generation source.
Solutions are appearing, and I remain confident that renewables will within our lifetimes become economically and environmentally attractive options.
Anthony
http://www.observationpoint.com.au

Yep, all that alternative, & extremely expensive, energy has been great for Spain.

Their ridiculously expensive energy has enabled them to actually pass the Greeks in unemployment rates.

They would be a good mob to use as an example of what not to do.

They may be learning though. They dragged all that wave power stuff, up into the sand dunes, where it is currently rusting quietly away.

Hasbeen,
You would have to be completely ignorant of the Spanish economy to draw a line between the use of solar power and its current state.
Ever heard of the real estate bubble in the South of Spain?
Did you know that the three fastest growing real estate markets in the world prior to 2008 were Spain, Ireland and Australia?
And that Spain and Ireland turned into classic real estate bubbles which subsequently burst?
Have you heard anything about the disastrous loan record of Spanish banks?
About their exposure to valueless Wall Street derivatives?
Have you been following the news that most of the city council in Malaga are in jail due to corruptly allowing unapproved high rise developments? Which after 2008 collapsed in value?
Obviously not or you wouldn't assert something so far divorced from reality.
But I guess reality isn't your strong suite, right.
Anthony
http://www.observationpoint.com.au