When looking at the rise of renewable energy, it would surprise some people to know that since 2000, global hydroelectric power additions almost match the increase in wind power and both have increased more than solar energy.
The global energy mix has shifted slightly away from coal power.
Wind and solar power are continuing to strongly increase and China will still add some hydroelectric power.
It seems likely that wind, solar and hydro will go from about 8400 TWh in 2022 up to about 10,000 TWh in 2025 and perhaps 15000 TWh in 2030.
SOURCES- IEA, World in Data
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=9318744
may offer some help for next try. Are fusion plants instantly transportable, and switchable, as their power would be with power beaming?
Power Beam is foobar. No way to maintain it in space or moon very well. Fusion is the only answer. We couldn't even get the mirror beams to work in Nevada and that was on earth!
Like Helion,but just in case we should go forward with SMR's like NuScale.Solar power today encourages China to pollute even more than they have, if they can't export any, they'd install it on their land and eventually wouldn't need so many coal plants.
No,most panels and equipment comes from China and fuels more coal burning,we've never been in worse shape as far as coal use, panels from China is a primary reason.
It is the responsibility of the US as leader of the free world to impose sanctions and tariffs that reduce their coal use 10% a year.
We can see Biden cares nothing about the climate.
Coal use has hit an all time high, especially in China.until the world gets together and puts punitive tariffs on every item leaving China there will be increasing extinctions from climate change.
If the free world can radically reduce the already low standard of living in Russia ,it will bod well for reducing China's coal use.
"add solar basically anywhere it isn't cloudy" lunar surface, L5, power beam.
http://www.searchanddiscovery.com/pdfz/documents/2009/70070criswell/ndx_criswell.pdf.html
The term "intermittent" takes on a whole new meaning as the projects are a larger part of the mix. Now, "intermittent" means that overall the project averages the load, but has extra much of the time, and not enuf about as often. Nite for solar is included in this concept. Earth to Earth power beaming balances the source intermittency as well as the load variability, as well as being destination switchable, as power conduction lines are not.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US8074936B2/en
Still need Earth to Earth power beaming to balance load requirements, emergency.
Helion Energy is on a fast track to demonstrate electricity from fusion around 2024. The next generation after that will be a full demo plant. They roughly have a 3 year tact rate, so around 2027. So I would say that around 2030, fusion will become the most desired power source. Will likely take a bit for production rates to catch up with demand though.
High generation tidal is only viable where there are areas where dams can be constructed across, sealing in the water and there are large tidal differences, like with fjords. Problem is that most of these are in low population countries/regions.
It can also be difficult to build, as you need a dam so you can build a dam. Not so easy to just redirect the ocean like they redirect rivers temporarily when they build regular hydro.
Maybe you are thinking about wave power? You can do that many places. The problem is that they have yet to come up with a good design that does not need a lot of maintenance, and generates a lot of energy. In effect, you are really just harvesting wind power another way, and you might as well just use wind turbines as the technology is mature. And buoy-type tidal is not competitive, for the amount of energy produced. They just can't hold enough water. The propeller ones are even worse and prone to being damaged. They also can injure whales. There are whale species that go right along the coast migrating.
Also, hydroelectric is baseload power, you can control when and how much to generate. Tidal is dependent on when the tides change. It is slightly better than solar or wind, in that you know precisely how much you will generate when, but it is not as flexible as hydroelectric.
I'd be interested in a study comparing the rise of intermittent renewables to power outages. It would have to control for rising demand in the areas fed by wind and solar (yes, solar is intermittent and it's efficiency drops significantly in winter) power generation. Add cost per kW to the graph too.
Yup and the batteries would pump your power rate from a dime to 30 bucks a kWh to cover long term low wind/solar weather events. Look at Tambora 1815 and beg for forgiveness for gaslighting us.
I'd argue that you are only partially correct.
Tidal power is a rising alternative to conventional hydro installations.
For certain land locked nations cannot benefit from this power generation method – but the sea coast bearing nations that surround them have so much potential tidal power that the surplus could easily supply the land locked nations, especially if batteries are used in combo to save the power when demand is low.
Adding hydro is great but you can only do it in certain places. You can add solar basically anywhere it isn't cloudy all the time and the infrastructure is cheaper to build and easier to replace. Pair with batteries and that's a winning combo.
I'd be curious how much of the added hydropower since 2000 was in the planning/approval stages before 2000. There are plenty of examples of long running dam plans that were delayed more than 20 years, from a variety of factors. Some were even planned, the plans mothballed due to various reasons, then the plans revived and pushed forward (sometimes at a faster pace than other peer dams also in the planning or construction phases due to precedence or lingering approvals)