My country is moving towards 90% renewable energy within 20 years and the bulk of that energy will come from wind. We have an average utilisation rate of 41%, rising to 46% for some of the biggest wind farms which I hear is quite good when compared internationally. The difference between my country and others is we still have a 50-60% capacity backbone of hydro power which can be shut off and stored whenever the wind is blowing and turned back on within minutes.

The thing I like about wind power in the really really long term is that once the site is setup you essentially only have to maintain the wind power, you don't have to worry about say silt build up like with hydro power and when the generators wear out you can simply replace the tops of the pylons with more efficient models at a fraction of the initial install cost and increase your capacity and cut the cost per MW/H to negligable amounts as that would have already been paid for. To me its like the perfect long term investment when you think 50+ years.

@ BD it sounds like Finland would be better off buying their renewable energy from other more efficient parts of Europe instead!

But with regards to hybrids, every car with an internal combustion engine must have a catalytic convertor. I think they are quite expensive as they use a platinim (spelling LOL) catalyst. But yeah a combination of hybid and electric would work great and it would let people determine which best suits their needs as they essentially leverage the same technology they would both together incentivise the production of better batteries etc.

Btw how expensive/environmentally damaging is turf harvesting?

@Squilliam: Oh, you meant catalysator as in cleaning up the exhaust fumes. I thought you were meaning hydrogen cells to create the electricity, where the hydrogen is extracted from gasoline. The catalysator isn't that expensive, and isn't necessarily needed with ceramic (combustion or) thermal power engine, since the combustion temperature can be set so high, that the exhaust would already be "clean".

Well, you have good resources of renewable energy in use, that can be practically used. And that's a good thing.

Turf harvesting isn't locally very environment friendly. What you do, is dry out a swamp and harvest the turf. Basically it's around the same level with farming bioenergy.
Expenses should be rather low, since there's not that much work involved.

Actually EU plans to build a solar power plant to Sahara, i believe, so at some point there should be quite a lot of solar power available in the grid.

@bdbdbd: I heard about that Sahara power plant before... It looks a bit crazy to me. I mean, it's already bad enough that we rely on unstable countries for oil supplies, but relying on a power plant in Africa with a big cable in between... it just seems too easy for a terrorist attack to cause a lot of disruption.

NJ5 said: @bdbdbd: I heard about that Sahara power plant before... It looks a bit crazy to me. I mean, it's already bad enough that we rely on unstable countries for oil supplies, but relying on a power plant in Africa with a big cable in between... it just seems too easy for a terrorist attack to cause a lot of disruption.

I do agree that there are certain risks involved, but i think there will be maintainance and security staff, which will lower the risk. Then again, there will likely be reserve power (this is basics in planning power production), in case the plant goes down.

In my opinion, we are on the right track. They'd just need to find a good way to store the energy. There are some good ways to do it. I was planning one myself, when thinking how would i make the best and cost efficient use of solar power in my (possible) future house.