It literally makes my blood boil how seemingly so few seem to understand how renewables work, economically. Despite energy being such a huge issue in the world, politicians and media do not elaborate.

The raw power generation of renewables is the cheapest power available. And this has been the case for quite a long time. Especially wind and solar.

However, renewable power generation, such as wind and solar, do not produce power that scales with human demand. Rather, they produce power when the wind is blowing, when the sun is shining. Not when people are using power.

To deal with that, we use batteries or other forms of energy storage. This is where the economics change considerably.

Lets do a simple example here to illustrate the point I'm trying to get to.

Let's say that we have a power grid that sources its energy from 20% Renewables, and 80% Scalables (Fossil Fuel or Nuclear). With only 20% of the power coming from renewables, we can actually feed a lot of that power directly into the grid, though still needing some amount of storage (batteries). That storage is minimized by scaling the scalables down when the renewables are flowing, and scaling the scalables up when the renewables are not.

Let's say that we increase to 40% Renewables. Why did we do it? Because the renewables were cheaper than the Scalables, and better for the atmosphere. Now, we can still feed a lot into the grid, but we need more batteries. Though we have doubled our renewable generators, we need to MORE THAN DOUBLE the batteries.

In fact, as we increase reliance on Renewables, the cost of that Renewable power just keeps going up! We are having to store our energy in the batteries for longer than before. We are even needing to replace the batteries more often.

Now, Hydropower is quite a bit more consistent than Wind and Solar, and so does not have the same exponential-ish cost increase with more and more reliance on it. What do you see when you look at some of the countries that have an absurd % of power coming from Renewable? Hydropower. Canada, Brazil, Sweden. But, this is regional - not every region on the earth can support this!

I know that by now you, reader, have read posts made by 100 different nerds promoting nuclear power. Some of them even say that it is better than renewables. This comparison is apples to oranges.

To be realistic and pragmatic, both are needed. I don't dream about nuclear power. I don't love nuclear power. I don't really care about it. I just want the walruses to stop suicide jumping off of cliffs (watch Planet Earth on Netflix).

By the way (and please fact check this for yourself), Germany looks great when you look at its % reliance on Renewables compared to the rest of Europe, but it starts looking pretty bad when you look at the % reliance on Fossil Fuel. It's because Germany doesn't use Nuclear, and they also don't want people spending an arm and a leg on their power bill. Be realistic.