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No. What is missing is batteries. Remember, photovoltaics only work part of the day, and not every day. Same with wind.

In reality, what is happening is that because of "alternative" sources of energy, electricity is plentiful during the day, and scarce during the evening. Also, only turbines (hydro/thermo power plants) can be adjusted to keep current and voltage in the network constant, so we still need them, but because of the "green" sources, they are becoming less profitable for the operators.

TL;DR: alternative energy sources cause us to have too much electricity during the day and too little during the evening, both of which is costing us money.




At some point the turbines may have to be treated as part of the infrastructure, rather than part of the production.

If you produce energy, you get paid for it, but also pay a levy depending on how well your supply fits the demand. The levy goes to whoever fills in the gaps.


Some deregulated markets are already paying for the turbines as infrastructure.

For example, the PJM interconnection holds an annual capacity auction. This essentially pays for the capital costs of keeping gas turbines around, at idle. The cost of actually running the turbines is covered by a separate daily auction for actual electricity production.




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