https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-15/world-energy-hits-a-turning-point-solar-that-s-cheaper-than-wind

>A transformation is happening in global energy markets that's worth
noting as 2016 comes to an end: Solar power, for the first time, is
becoming the cheapest form of new electricity. This has happened in
isolated projects in the past: an especially competitive auction in
the Middle East, for example, resulting in record-cheap solar costs.
But now unsubsidized solar is beginning to outcompete coal and natural
gas on a larger scale, and notably, new solar projects in emerging
markets are costing less to build than wind projects...   [end]

  

Great news, I suppose, although the credibility of such is impacted a little because of its source, Bloomberg.  One thing to keep in mind about wind power, at least in America, is that there is a major impediment in getting the electricity from the generator to the market.  Easily available are maps of average wind speed, for instance:  http://apps2.eere.energy.gov/wind/windexchange/wind_maps.asp     Keep in mind that the amount of extractable power is proportional to the CUBE of the wind speed.    An 8 m/sec wind has 8 times the extractable energy as a 4 m/sec wind.   ((8/4)**3)) = 8

This band of high-energy wind, about 200-300 miles wide, has the unfortunate characteristic of being 1000-1500 miles away from the coasts, and it is difficult to efficiently transfer electric power over 1000 miles.

Some day, the material called "metallic carbon nanotubes" will open this up as a possibility.  They are called "metallic" not because of metal (they are pure carbon) but because they conduct electricity quite well.  But actually, they conduct electricity more like a room-temperature superconductor, not merely a metal.

A single "metallic" carbon nanotube (MCNT), typically 1 nanometer in diameter, has an electrical resistance along its length of about 6800 ohms.  That sounds odd, because I didn't specify how long that MCN is.  And that's the weird part:  The resistance is 6800 ohms, NO MATTER HOW LONG IT IS!!!   Even 6800 ohms sounds high, except that's the resistance of only a single tube.  A cable, with a cross-section of 1 square centimeters, would contain 100 trillion such fibers.  If those fibers were an average of 1 meter long, individually, that a given meter of cable would have a resistance of 6800/(1E14)ohms, or 68 pico-ohms.  1000 kilometers of such a cable would have a resistance of 68 micro-ohms.   Two such cables, 2000 kilometers long, would have a total resistance of 68 micro-ohms x 4, or about 270 micro-ohms.  

Currently, electrical power is transported at extremely high voltages, as much as 770 KV, to minimize transmission losses.  This requires a huge, wide right-of way, and tall towers to handle this voltage.  The advent of MCNTs as electrical conductors would allow such transmission over far less voltage, say 60KV, buried next to two-lane roadways.  Transmitting 6 gigawatts at 60KV requires 100,000 amps.  Total resistance losses over 2000 kilometers (two wires) would be I-squared-R, or ((0.000270 ohms)) x (100,000**2)).   or 2.7 megawatts, or a loss of about 0.05%.  This would make development of wind power in that region practical.

                   Jim Bell