Reply #34: You aren't taking the total picture into account.

[kristopher]

The infrastructure developed around central thermal generation has been managed pretty well over the years on a cost plus basis. The result is an efficient system that delivers dependable power at roughly 2/3s the cost of power 50 years ago. This monetary price comes with external costs that are impossible to *properly* account for in the retailing of electricity.

The traditional approach has been to require renewables to conform to the dispatchability standards of thermal generation; a situation that captures little to none of their value from lack of external costs.

The entire concept of dispatchability is challenged by distributed (solar home style) generation with individual storage capability.

However, the investment required for the products in that type of system can't compete with thermal generation under most current or proposed policy frameworks. In order for the amount of investment required to bring the price down to occur, there must be a restructuring of the policy framework that has developed around the dominance of thermal generation and it's priority on cheap dispatchable power generated centrally.

In my opinion (and others have different takes on this) the best way to achieve this is the type of program Gore is calling for where policy *commits* the direction of development towards renewables in order to ensure the market for renewable products.

This means a commitment, as Gore has called for, to END the system based on centrally dispatched power. A large part of the effort will be the construction of the "Smart Grid" that enables the system to micromanage all of the small connected sources of generation, small scale storage capability (batteries), larger scale generation facilities (wind and solar arrays, geothermal, wave/current/tidal) and larger scale storage/generation (CAES, traditional hydro etc.).

I hope that helps clear things up for you.

PS I'm in the 'reality' camp which recognizes that markets and governments are both needed.

PPS The Earth does, in fact, revolve around the Sun.