All buzz words by non-engineers who fail to understand some of the real challenges associated with power generation....namely that it's all about generating at the right time to meet demand. Portfolio optimization using renewables is extremely expensive because you essentially need to consider the reduced capacity mode of each mode of generation. ie you need to build for cloudy days and not windy days if you are using wind and solar.
I think you'll need to justify that to me a little more. Why exactly is portfolio optimization 'extremely expensive'? It is about strategically selecting sites so that the aggregate power output is less variable than its components, while still achieving a high electricity yield per dollar invested. Nothing mysterious, and math is cheap. I didn't suggest that we could or should replace the rest of the energy mix with renewables, but we can certainly reduce the need for gas and coal plants as a part of baseline power needs.
And I suspect the cost of doing so is what's driving a lot of the conservation first pitch by government and environmentalists....not that conservation is not a worthwhile effort.
... and business. Conservation has the highest return on investment, and is rightly the area that should be most emphasized.
When it comes to wind though, there is nothing that can fix mother nature's tendency to blow a breeze when she feels like it, and not necessarily when the extra power is not needed. And global experience shows the havoc that wind farms can wreak on grid stability.
For the first part, I don't think anyone is suggesting otherwise. For your second point, I'm not convinced that that is due to anything other than poor implementation.
When it comes to batteries, the best we have are the mechanical kind (pumping water up hill). Sadly, those are rather prohibitive to build. And when it comes to batteries, it gets damn hard to build batteries that can economically store power from wind farms. The type of deep cycles that power consumption activities demand would make battery life design challenges for hybrid cars seem like a grade 3 maths problem.
It seems like the best storage mode absent any handy reservoirs are flow batteries. However, there is plenty of reason to be hopeful that battery technology will improve significantly in the next decade. R&D spending in battery technology has grown exponentially in recent years. If EEStor manages to deliver what it promises (and Lockheed Martin seems to think the technology has enough promise to buy exclusive defense industry rights to the technology), electrical storage will rapidly improve in cost and reliability. If not, there are many other avenues in battery technology being explored.
So are we prepared to take on the cost of building a system to compensate for cloudy days, low wind days, sunny days and windy days, all while incorporating significant storage capacity and the ability to near-instantly correct for a generation-demand mismatch? I'll love to put that question in a survey to be included in next month's electric bill....
There is no need to instantly correct for significant variations in generation and demand. Over a short time frame, both demand and supply can be forecasted quite accurately. Wind and sun forecasts tend to be quite reliable over a forecast period of a few days, leaving plenty of time to ramp up gas or coal fired plants if necessary. I don't think renewables would be any less reliable than our aged nuclear fleet.
Ultimately, the most effective form of power generation is hydro. But we have lost our penchant for small scale hydro and environmentalists have a disdain for large scale hydro. I hold more hope for solar (pro-cyclical in generation), geothermal, tidal power, and biomass in the long run. Large scale wind power is just a passing fad at best.
I rather doubt that Keith, given wind is currently the cheapest in kW/$ capital and the impending hybrid fleet is going to cause a significant increase in electrical demand overnight. Solar is great, and something that will likely be relied on more heavily worldwide. Canada isn't the best suited climate for solar, and I expect our mix will feature a larger wind component. But you're mostly right--we'll need all of them.