Some key insights from the article:
Basically, what they did was to look at how much batteries would be needed in a given area to provide constant power supply at least 97% of the time, and the calculate the costs of that solar+battery setup compared to coal and nuclear.
Does the wind blow year round? I’m imagining a similar case for wind, then you can say that for the union of these two sets, renewables are cheaper than legacy energy
Maybe bump that number slightly for places with hydro that can serve as a battery
I would have loved that but having a wind turbine is… not easy. Permits, psychotic attitude from neighbours… but that have been my go-to given we don’t have a stream to go hydro. I’m still happy with covering 8 ou of 12 months with our setup but it’s still unnerving to swallow the costs of the setup + utilities for winter months…
Wind kinda has to go big for efficiency. It’s hard to beat the laws of physics on this. Not really feasible for individuals to do in a meaningful way unless you have a whole farm.
Solar panels are workable-ish. Residential rooftop is OK, but the real cost benefit is from filling big, flat fields with racks. Homes have to be a boutique setup every time, and labor cost adds up.
If you want to be (semi-) independent of traditional power utilities, the way to go is co-ops. You and all your neighbors go in on buying a field and putting solar/wind/storage on it
Residential wind for electricity generation is not really recommendable afaik, but it could be viable for some amount of heat generation, potentially: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/02/heat-your-house-with-a-mechanical-windmill/