This will be good news if it carries on.

[Workingman]

A report on Global green energy says that investment in hydro, solar and wind power was almost double that of coal and gas in 2015.

Last year almost 147GW of capacity was created, which is pretty impressive, but take care. Capacity is not the same as usable energy 24/7 or baseload; optimistic estimates put that at about 30%. Having said that, 45GW or thereabouts is nothing to sneer at, but a couple of other things need to be looked at before we get the Champagne opened.

For the intermittent producers a lot more work has to be done with storage technologies so that the energy produced can be used when the Sun doesn't shine or the wind doesn't blow. We are currently light years away from grid level storage. The nearest we have come is pumped hydro, a technology nearly 100 years old.

We are also woefully short of investment, research and application of geothermal and wave energy schemes. These can produce the baseload missing from wind and solar, and as an island nation surrounded by seas with some of the strongest tides on earth we should be doing so much more.

Obviously a lot more work needs to be done but we should not let that spoil the good news.

[Diflower]

I have noticed a lot more solar equipment all around here, not just houses but farms, business parks etc.
The business park where the local hospital is, the newer phases all appear to have solar panels as standard. I see to remember there were (are?) grants/tax concessions for it.

[Kaz]

I saw a fair few windmills down in Devon, that I don't remember seeing last time we were down there

[Suff]

They're causing peak power bubbles and low time shortages. Also they are distorting the energy cost market.

It's a total mess driven by political expediency and there is no coherency or joined up thinking...

So what's new we ask ourselves.

And, as WM says, there is no true baseload from any of this. So all the traditional infrastructure can't be removed. It just makes it more expensive for it to run. Which needs subsidies from the government. Which is paid for by us...

[Workingman]

They're causing peak power bubbles and low time shortages. Also they are distorting the energy cost market.

For us in the first world those problems do exist, but in Africa, S.E. Asia and S. America? These are the places where the % GDP spend on renewables far exceeds ours and with great results.

I was watching a video of some of the projects in Africa. Villages have installed just a few solar panels and small wind turbines to provide internal lighting for the huts and rudimentary street lighting outside saving on cutting down trees for wood burning. Just a few lead-acid batteries bring phone charging, TV and the Internet.

In Bamako the dangerous streets in their equivalent of favelas or townships are now lit by solar powered street lights. Locally sourced wooden poles have solar powered lighting. The shoebox sized light units with solar panel, light sensor, battery and LED lamp and reflector cost peanuts, but they have opened up night markets in the once pitch-black streets.

[Suff]

It's easy to make huge gains in areas where Electricity is virtually unavailable. However the same is not true of fully integrated, redundant, dense power networks in first world countries.

What would power a modern home in the UK would power a reasonable sized township in some areas of South Africa or South America. Where they still live by candle light and everyone doesn't have ovens, TV's, Stereo's Computers.

So whilst solar lamps for streets which don't have lighting is a really good win for renewables, all the solar power in a town of that kind would not power one Sodium street lamp in the UK.

We need to compare infrastructures when we talk about 3rd world "success" in renewables.. Because, if that is what they are restricted to, they will never grow.

[Workingman]

The point that was being made about the third world countries is that they are, in some ways, a tabula rasa. Rather than these countries damming rivers or building fossil fuel burning power stations and creating national grids, they can get (renewable) power locally. They do not have to go the "Western" way.

There is a big world out there and what works in one place might not work in another, indeed it might not be needed in another place. And let's be honest even the industrialised nations started off small scale and local. We did not suddenly wake up to find multi-MW coal fired power stations dotting the landscape.

With modern technology some of these third world countries might never need national grids and only to have large powers stations to service their cities.

[Suff]

Which is really good news.

Also if everything does go to hell they will be self sufficient with only repair and maintenance on the infrastructure. If they license the manufacturing, they could even use their own renewables to power their factories. Insulating themselves even more from the impact of a global mess.

[Aggers]

Wouldn't it be interesting if one could time-travel into the future
and see what is in store for the human race?
We would probably say, 'I told you so'.