Quote:
Originally Posted by Joenavy85
i would like to see more solar and wind power generation, but i'm not expecting to see more of it any time soon
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Why not?
I work for a company that supplies components to wind turbine manufacturers. There is a lot of development in this area and a huge number of wind turbines are being installed every year. In 2010, the US wind power capacity grew by 5 Gigwatts (GW), to a total of about 40GW.
While that's not a big percentage of our overall usage, it's still huge and growing fast.
That said, I don't see how Germany's "100% renewable energy" is feasible at this point. Wind power starts having problems over about 20% of the overall energy production. The inherent variablilty of wind (and solar) means you need some way of picking up the slack in off-peak times, and this means either energy storage (hydroelectric, batteries, etc) or additional energy production from other means (fossil fuels, nuclear, etc).