[epistasis]

This is the key part that most people are missing.

Standard thermal electricity generation is a very mature technology, no matter the heat source. Turbine-based combined cycle natural gas generation was a bit of a step up, but it used already mature tech: jet turbines.

Solar and wind and batteries are fundamentally different, and more like integrated circuit technology or DNA sequencing: falling in cost at a tremendous rate.

Looking at current prices or current installed bases of solar or wind or batteries is not very informative for assessing the technologies. You really need to see the history of prices to project their future, then you need to start seeing that for each application, adoption is non-linear once the tech becomes the cheapest option for that application.

What I'm most surprised about on HN is how few commenters here seem to understand tech curves. The HN audience, of all audiences, should have the clearest view of how traditional energy industry assumptions are about to be disrupted in the coming decades. We don't know the full extent of the disruption, but views like Seba's of huge amounts of surplus energy, seem inevitable. Arbitrage in time and geography will be the money making opportunities.

[rawfan]

Working for one of the largest energy grid providers in Europe, I can tell you: This is the future we‘re currently building. We already have many areas with a huge energy surplus completely generated by renewables.

There is no one here that doubts the renewable future and we‘re quite sure we can finish building the necessary grid until the end of the decade (with around 6 times the capacity of the current European grid).

[epistasis]

That is very encouraging to hear! In the US we have a few forward thinking utilities, thou go perhaps not as forward thinking as imagining a 6x capacity grid. But it seems that most are stuck focusing on the disadvantages of change as opposed to the immense opportunity this transition provides.