Editor’s Note: One of CleanTechnica’s awesome readers has provided us with this exclusive guest post on the “intermittency” of various power sources — renewable and non-renewables. The article “knocks it out of the park,” so to speak. Get into a discussion with someone about the “intermittency” of wind or solar power? Add this article to your list of pieces to share with them! (Also, I just linked to two others you can bookmark.) There are actually numerous very interesting and important points (and technologies) included in the article — it reads like a synthesis of much of what we have covered here on CleanTechnica for the past several years. It might well be my favorite article ever published on CleanTechnica. Enjoy! And share it with your friends!
by Victor Provenzano
After having been in denial for some time, the oil firms are now at wit’s end, it seems. For years, they denied that any warming was underway at all. Then when some of them finally admitted it, they said, inaccurately, that scientists were still “unsure” of the cause. Now, perhaps, some of them are becoming too subtle for their own good, or even too clever by half. At times, what some of the oil firms are saying of late, particularly about the “intermittency of renewables,” may even be a little above the public’s head. The “perils of intermittency” may only be a viable argument for a “niche market” of global citizens who are somewhat informed about energy issues, yet not fully apprised. This is a good sign, it seems to me. The oil firms are apparently running out of ideas to try to convince us to move slowly on climate change, even before they run out of conventional oil and natural gas.
With the price of wind power falling more and more, and the price of solar PV falling sharply and enticingly, what other arguments will the big oil firms still have left to try to slow the transition to renewables when even the cost of natural gas may soon be unable to compete with the cost of wind in the Midwest or solar PV in the Southwest? The “risk of intermittency” may be one of the only “reasonable” arguments that Shell or Conoco will still be able to make. And yet, who will even care? Soon, the US energy market, with its focus on price points, may simply say to the oil giants, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn about the ‘risk.’ ”
In short, if the wind is up and the light is right, the market will be sure to work out the kinks in the “intermittency problem,” if there are any.
So, how intermittent and reliable are renewables compared with the baseload power that is now furnished by coal, nuclear, or natural gas?
Read more at http://cleantechnica.com/2013/08/12/intermittency-of-wind-and-solar-is-it-only-intermittently-a-problem/#pcddLDlv4ZHKf9OO.99
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