Even if California “only” ends up with 25% renewable electricity within
the next decade or two, there is going to be a staggering amount of
investment pouring into wind and solar power, and with intermittant
sources of energy, massive storage infrastructure is just as necessary
as the generating infrastructure. In our analysis of Prop. 7,
California’s Proposition 7, the initiative that calls for 50% renewable
energy by 2025, we estimated compliance would require about 500
gigawatt-hours of renewable electricity generating capacity per day.
For wind power, based on installation costs of $2.5 million per
megawatt ($2.5 billion per gigawatt), and yields of 17.5%, this would
require a total investment of nearly $300 billion. The estimated total
cost for solar, at today’s prices, was considerably higher than this
(bear in mind the cost for solar energy is going to drop faster and
further than the cost for wind energy in the coming years). But what
about the cost for storage infrastructure?
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