Renewable grid thoughts

Thoughts on large scale power generation in the US:

• the US must move towards a sustainable and renewable power generation grid
• the US has a lot of work to do to research and develop this renewable power generation
• it will likely require MANY different types of energy sources due to limitations of each technology, mostly number of locations limiting the amount of generation that can practically be generated
• the US needs to put forth policy, provide funding and make sites available to enable commercial development and for building large scale deployments

requirements:

• diverse array of mechanisms
• flexible technologies
• scalable implementation
• pretty cheap
• extremely safe
• sustainable and harmless to land and life

goal:

• hydro
• wind
• solar
• geothermal
• tidal
• safe nuclear
• 3x next generation energy sources (hydrogen fuel, fusion, SBSP)

development sequence:

• develop or discover physics (science)
• small scale feasibility (paper)
• small scale R&D (engineering)
• small scale testing (funded and built)
• small scale deployment (on the grid)
• large scale feasibility (paper)
• large scale R&D (engineering)
• large scale testing (funded and built)
• large scale deployment (on the grid)
• <1% of grid total
• >1% of grid total
• ~10% of grid total

status:
Technologies are developing at different rates; some are far more mature (hydro, wind) and others are barely off the ground.

• [DONE] hydro: very mature; widely deployed
• [DONE] wind: fairly mature; widely deployed
• [DONE] solar: fairly mature; widely deployed
• [WIP] geothermal: fairly mature; but lacks wide scale deployment
• [WIP] tidal: in development; no deployments
• [WIP] safe nuclear: in development; no deployments
• [WIP] hydrogen: very early technology; no deployments
• [WIP] fusion: very early technology; no deployments
• [WIP] SBSP: very early technology; no deployments

conclusion:

• this plan did not look at storage for intermittent sources
• this plan did not look at security or reliability concerns
• each technology will need to supply at least 10% of grid power to completely displace non-renewable sources
• we could reduce our power consumption, although we really want to increase our consumption so this is not realistic
• we could also increase the efficiency of our electrical grid; this technology does not exist but could be worth another 5-50%
• this plan will take decades
• Unless a future technology has a major breakthrough this will not enable the "energy revolution" we were hoping for (e.g. 10x or 100x more available energy could transform our society)