24/7 solar powered engines are being born. They will provide an alternative to solar panels and later to wind and solar farms. Since there is no combustion they can be made largely of polymers (plastic) using 3-D printing. See aesopinstitute.org

Storage used to be the major, if not the only, problem with this exponentially growing, economically superior, disruptive technology. It's no longer a problem, the tech across the board in this energy transition keeps getting better and the costs keep falling. The only relevant question is how long till the end of the fossil fuel era? Judging by the behaviour of previous exponentially growing, economically superior, disruptive technology, probably a lot sooner than people think.

A very good analysis. So-called Renewable are not THE solution of electricity producting. It's the clecrest mix that is the solution. Thinking of 100% renewable is still and for long a very costly utopia.

I just heard David Mooney, the Director of NREL's Strategic Energy Analysis Center who pointed out that China’s massive wind deployment (now twice that of the US at 145.4GW) achieves much smoother power delivery as the geographic and weather differences between wind sites average out. These scale effects take much of the sting out of the intermittency problem.

R&D needs to be poured into nuclear power. Power plants in the US all use tech developed from the 50's but nuclear systems such as the proposed pebble bed reactor cannot melt down, does not use water for cooling, and produce little in the way of waste. Nuclear has problems outside of waste in that its an all or nothing production unlike fossils that can be run at needed capacity.
All options should be on the table.

"If scientists can figure out a way to make it a reliable source of energy, every year could be a boom year for solar power"
Only way for that to work, is to have the sun be available 24/7. Or, somehow place the panels in space, and figure out a way to transmit their power back to earth.

I'm adding solar to my own house, but I'm aware at how little it really matters yet. The total of all solar installations in the USA can power only 210,000 homes, and only comes to 0.92% of power used. I think that as alternative energies grow, we need to add micro nuclear to take advantage of this and to provide power while the sun ain't shinin'. And we need to do it before the grid goes down due to nature, age, or terrorism.

It is a problem of storing the energy generated. Once that is accomplished fossil fuel generating plants will run less than they do now. But how should it be stored? In each customer's home or at a large utility owned battery park? Could not think of a better name for it.

Actually there is one obvious solution and we are working on bringing it to mass-production and worldwide markets. It is the micro-integration of solid-state solar panels, long life battery storage such as LTO SCiB batteries by Toshiba ( http://www.scib.jp/en/product/ ) micro inverters and charge controllers coupled with wireless micro-computers. We call it SunPax. We have already built a proof of concept and are trying to raise financial support to bring it to mass production. A description is available here: http://lightontheearth.org/sunpax.html This product will remove most of the soft costs of solar (engineering and permitting) and will provide electricity from solar 24/7 for less than 8 cents a kWh. A proof of concept has already been built. SunPax can be used as a distributed generator, or in solar farms. Its low cost will allow even people in developing countries to have a reliable source of electricity for charging phones, computers, TVs, lighting and refrigeration.
We need to deploy renewable energy very quickly to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change. Because of the benign nature of solar and the simplicity of manufacturing and distributing this type of integrated solar appliance as compared to nuclear, tidal, hydro-power, etc this approach must be quickly ramped up.
There is room for thousands of companies to be developing and supplying such integrated solar appliances. This is very similar to the beginning of the mass-produced automobile which engendered many thousands of manufacturers. That is what must happen now to avoid the collapse of the planetary eco-system and the related suffering that will fall upon the human race.

"negative power prices don't translate into cost savings for end users, since retail rates are based on averages."
finally - I always felt that negative numbers can't be counted into averages. now, since it's on the net - it became a fact.