I played in this thread while massively drunk.... You burn away. I actually dont care I will be dead before it matters as I see it.
Fuck the future ... let them all burn 
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So just shut down the smog-creating coal energy companies and replace them with geothermal, wind, or more solar power. There's tons of other efficient methods of renewable energy. Its the lack of change that's causing all of the congestion on the power grid.
That's what people want, but to do that quickly would require lots of cash, that we don't have.
Nope, renewable energy in it's current state isn't doing much, in times of surplus the one causing these congestion issues are the renewable energy systems. If we ditched solar/wind altogether (not advising that) we'd have no congestion.
Maybe it has been mentioned, might have missed it.
Storage though batteries is not great with the cost and so on but what about those massive spinning concrete weights that can store electrical energy as rotational energy when production is high and then spin that back out when demand is high evening out the spikes in production and demand that are rarely at the same time of day for solar energy.
all three of those are viable only in certain areas
Solar needs desert
Wind works in more places...because wind, but takes up an enormous amount of land so not cities
Geothermal needs to pretty much be Iceland
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@OP, So then if California is making so much solar power, why am I paying $0.27/kw?
I thought solar power was cheap, renewable and reliable?
@DastardlyMuffin Wind is quite ineffective.
Firstly, the hum of the motors induce headaches in people living nearby, so they can't be placed near residential buildings. Second, wind creates such small amounts of power compared even to Solar, per square mile, that it's just not worth it. Third, it only works when you've got strong winds. Fourth, it causes an ecological disaster because flying animals regularly fly into and get killed by the blades. It's gotten bad enough that there are species on population watch in areas where wind farms are deployed.
Now let's talk about the conditions that wind farms need. In order to start making power, you usually need 8-10mph of wind. That's all well and good, since most of the time, you don't get less than that in areas with regular wind. The tricky part comes in where at >25mph, the turbine shuts down. They do that because when the wind picks up in a storm, they don't want the turbines to continue producing power because the storm can damage them.
Let's look at the power generation of a single wind turbine rated at 10KW. Cap * Cap factor * hours/year is our formula to calculate annual generation. I've found the average us capacity factor to be 25%, so I'll use that.
10kw * 0.25 * 8670 = 21900KWh/year
So, 21MWh/year is our total production of a single turbine, not bad. Let's look at solar panels. I operate 8KW of solar panels on my property. My annual production average has been 15.42MWh over the last 3 years (I installed the panels in May 2014) And that's just what could fit on my house.
I paid ~$32,000 before government incentives for the complete system. I've found that final installation of a 10KW wind turbine will cost from $50,000 to $80,000 to install. Assuming the cost is somewhere in the middle, $65,000, I've saved 50% by getting solar panels with a 26% reduction in output.
The only thing that Wind power has on solar is that it works in the shade.
Don't even get me started on the environmental disaster that Solar Panels are.
I don't write this to say "don't use renewable energy sources" but to make the point that current renewable energy sources are not as effective and safe (environmentally and ecologically) as people would like them to be and they're causing new problems with the power grid that we need to solve.
Well, I meant to write a sentence or two about how wind is stupid and wound up with a wall of text 
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The technology is dependent on the region, some places may have very low solar input but high wind so it may be better off getting a windturbine. If allowed, I know there is quite a large anti wind turbine movement going on atm around the world because some birds get hit and they believe they are offensive to visually look at or something.
Ignorant to all over statistics might make those 2 issues seem like a show stopper. Personally I like the idea of underwater turbines, but again there complaints against those also, all invalid if you look at the grand scheme of things and open your eyes to the realization that OTHER CURRENT forms of energy production are MANY MANY times more devastating to the environment/ecosystem. BUT ignorance is bliss right?....until it kills at least.
That's fair. I'm a bit biased I think because I live in a desert.
I'm aware of the movement, honestly, I'm surprised that birds and whatnot don't get smart and avoid the areas. 
That's the difficulty. People read what they see online somewhere and take it as gospel. I'd like to think I'm knowledgeable about it because I did quite a bit of research before installing solar, but I'm no where near an expert, so I'm going to leave the regulation/statistics to an expert.
My verdict on energy is this: Coal sucks but is reliable. That makes it difficult to get rid of. I'd love to see it go away, but probably won't in my lifetime. I like solar, but I'm getting more wary of it based on a new study I've seen talking about long-term cost of solar being much higher than people say. Wind is meh to me, but again, I'm in a place where there's either no wind or too much wind. Nuclear is probably close to the cleanest solution we have, assuming we are able to maintain the reactors and keep them secure. (imagine what would happen if bad people got their hands on a nuclear reactor!?) And the difficulty of both of those issues make them not the greatest either. I guess that leaves hydroelectric as one of the best options if the region supports it.
Nuclear Reactor type 1 isn't as clean as you might think, the big issue is the waste material can't be broken down and disposed of easily so it accumulates over time, so much so that they have been trying to dump a fair bit of it in the middle of Australia for some time now.
It will be interesting if China manages to get a large scale thorium reactor going without too many issues, I think that is the next big nuclear race atm even thought American has had them for a while, they've not really been allowed to develop it into a real solution thanks to interests from fossil industry pushing back hard on it.
So that's why I say it will be interesting to see what tech China develops to get around the coal issue they have (they have a 10yr stock pile btw), BECAUSE they don't give two-fks what the fossil fuel industry wants.
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Birds with any level of wind turbine experience tend to be dead
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If that's the biggest issue, we've got deep bore hole disposal and we could always just launch it into deep space (I know that's expensive, but I've always loved the idea of it)
Yeah, that's one thing I'm looking forward to. In SoCal, we get bad air from China.
Hard to argue with this sentence, but a guy can hope, right?
Not sure about the deep bore disposal, I remember reading up about some issues with that in the USA where deep bore disposal of some other sort of toxin ended up resurfacing upwards. So you'd want to make damn sure its safe before attempting, also deep bore's cost a fair bit of money, no company will do that if they can just dump it somewhere on the surface.
Nononono 
Even ignoring the cost, a rocket with nuclear waste inside would be the ultimate dirty bomb. Rockets are still too unsafe for this to be viable.
Ah, dealbreaker.
True that. Maybe just don't put me in charge of hazardous waste disposal, huh?
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Its allot of trouble to just NOT go the thorium, even if the byproducts of thorium can't be reused for medical uses, they are at least ALLOT safer then the typical radioactive waste. Its the type of thing when those invested in one industry don't want to migrate to safer better methods simply because they would need to spend some money to do so.
It's a wait and see what China does type of situation, I believe the USA has lost the energy race because of all these political issues along with corruption. China is going to catch up tech wise and destroy some economies which relied on selling them energy.
I don't want this to be a political debate, but I'm feeling a "fall of Rome" sort of vibe with the USA right now. Not super optimistic about it lasting the century.
Anyways, I'm going to nip off to bed and hopefully get a bit more sleep than last night.
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I live in kansas so i can tell you one thing.
Wind sucks. Not as reliable as solar and takes up a fair bit of space
Yeah I would say solar is the future, its getting cheaper and better all the time whereas wind tech is kinda stand still, you just can't really make it all that better, nor much cheaper due to the huge constructional labor costs.
I hope that one day it becomes standard policy for solar to be installed on a house. There should be government run programs to install solar on top of houses, it generates power which slowly pays itself off and then ownership is given to the house owner. That be a great sustainability policy! You know, in a ideal non-corrupt-as-fuck world.
Fear the bird that can survive the wind turbine.
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I think it maight be just a bad set up in ca? Also in Germany?
Because here in Switzerland we're doing solar for a while now and it runs very good. Zürich where I live uses since 2015 100% renewable energy and so far bills got cheaper and they calculated that a person here uses less than 3900 watt a year. They had projects for years now where they tried to do it better. Like heating for instance. We all used to have this big bulky oil burning thingies and now there's just some heat pumps and pipes that heat most of the city