Where2,
I think the wild card is going to be technology. Look at the technology of PV systems, which is a relatively new industry competing with a 100 year old one, fossil fuels. I remember 15 years ago, modified sine inverters were the only ones most of us could afford. Now we're all running pure sine with elite charge algorithms.
Germany is now selling power to France with France's aging nuclear industry that is starting to cost them dearly in maintenance and upkeep. The last modules I put in cost a fraction of the ones I put in 8 or so years ago. Installs are getting cheaper and cheaper. All of a sudden solar is a threat and again, it's an relatively new industry.
It's similar to the technology of sat. dishes. How many of you remember when they had 10 foot diameters? Now they sit on the side of your house. Electronics is changing the world and you can only extract so much oil out of the ground. Guess when the last big oil find was? The year we went to the moon, 1969!
In 2005 OPEC decide that a country can only sell oil quantities equal to their reserves. All of a sudden everyone's oil reserves doubled and tripled, you can check the charts. the thing is no one had any more oil then they had before 2005.
Now factor in the cost of wars to protect corporate oil interests and oil costs can't even come close to solar. It's only a matter of time before the millions of dollars that oil companies put into lobbying loses its effect. Oil is like a guy who just stopped running, his legs are still moving but he's not going very far.
What we're seeing right now with energy providers threatened by us small potatoes is just the tip of the iceberg. By the way this has happen before in history. When whale oil became to expensive we started using kerosene.
The world is looking at Germany, Portugal with a 52% leap in PV, and of course China. They are proving that PV is the solution.
Sorry for the long post.
Rob
|