RENEWABLES / 2026
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Energy / Technology / 2026

RENEWABLE
ENERGY

The cost-curve revolution.

From $100/W solar to $0.20/W. From 1-MW turbines to 15-MW giants. From "alternative" to cheapest. A 13-slide field guide to the technologies remaking the grid.

Solar Wind Storage & Grid
Solar PV   Slide 02

Wright's Law, in production.

Every doubling of cumulative solar capacity has knocked roughly 20-25% off price. The curve has held for four decades.

MODULE PRICE / WATT
$100/W
1980
→
$0.20/W
2024
A 500× cost reduction. Mass-manufactured silicon wafers, automated stringing, scale, scale, scale.
  • Crystalline silicon dominates — ~95% of new installs.
  • TOPCon & HJT cells push commercial efficiency past 23%.
  • Bifacial + tracker = ~15-20% extra annual yield.
SOLAR MODULE COST CURVE (LOG)
$100 $10 $1 $.30 $.20 1980 1995 2010 2024 $100/W · 1980 $0.20/W · today
Module ASP, log scale. Source: ITRPV, BNEF (illustrative).
Wind / Onshore   Slide 03

Bigger blades, steadier output.

Onshore turbines kept growing — longer blades sweep more air, taller towers reach steadier wind. Capacity factors climbed from ~25% to 35-50%.

MODERN UTILITY-SCALE TURBINE
Rotor Ø ~170 m Hub height ~150 m ~6 MW nameplate
35-50%
Capacity factor (modern)
~6 MW
Avg new onshore unit
~170 m
Rotor diameter
$30-50
$/MWh LCOE band
WHY BIGGER WORKS
  • Power scales with rotor swept area — r².
  • Wind speed climbs with altitude (~1/7 power law).
  • Fewer turbines → less wiring, less maintenance.
Wind / Offshore   Slide 04

15+ MW machines, in salt water.

Offshore wind blows harder and steadier. Modern direct-drive turbines now top 15 MW; the UK and China have built most of the world's fleet.

15+MW
Per-turbine nameplate. Single rotation can power a UK home for ~2 days.
~50%
Capacity factor for North Sea fleets. Higher and steadier than onshore.
UK·CN
Lead the world. China surged past the UK in installed capacity ~2021; both still building.
FOUNDATION TYPES
  • Monopile — up to ~60 m depth. Cheapest, ubiquitous.
  • Jacket — deeper, complex, oil-rig heritage.
  • Floating — the frontier; opens deep waters off Japan, California, Norway.
CHALLENGES
  • Specialized installation vessels are scarce.
  • Supply-chain steel + cable bottlenecks.
  • Permitting timelines: 6-10 years per project.
Hydro   Slide 05

The renewable that already won.

Wind and solar grab the headlines. Hydropower is still the largest renewable source globally — ~15% of all electricity, more than wind and solar combined for now.

~15% of global power
Quietly does the work: dispatchable, long-lived, and provides the natural pair to pumped storage. Costs vary wildly by geography.
REGIONAL LEADERS
China
Three Gorges — 22.5 GW
Brazil
Itaipu — 14 GW
Norway
~90% of grid is hydro
New large dams are rare in OECD — environmental + social costs are real.
Problem   Slide 06

The sun and wind don't follow demand.

Solar peaks at noon. Demand peaks at dinner. Wind blows when it blows. The cheap kWh is the easy part — matching supply to demand is the hard part.

SUPPLY VS DEMAND, A SUMMER WEEKDAY (ILLUSTRATIVE)
00:00 06:00 12:00 18:00 24:00 Demand peak (evening) Solar — midday surplus Wind — variable
Curtailment — throwing away free electrons when grid can't absorb.
Negative pricing — California & Germany see this regularly now.
Solution — shift it: store, transmit, or change demand.
Storage / Batteries   Slide 07

Li-ion: -90% in fifteen years.

Lithium-ion battery packs fell from ~$1,200/kWh in 2010 to ~$120/kWh in 2024. EVs paid the R&D bill; the grid is now collecting the dividend.

PACK PRICE / kWh
$1,200
2010
→
$120
2024
~90% reduction. Wright's Law for chemistry: every doubling of cumulative production cuts cost ~20%.
CHEMISTRIES IN PLAY
  • NMC / NCA — high energy density, premium EVs.
  • LFP — cheaper, safer, longer-cycling. Now >50% of new grid storage.
  • Sodium-ion — commercial in 2024 (CATL, BYD). No lithium, no cobalt.
  • Flow batteries — vanadium, iron. Decouples power × energy. Niche but useful for long-duration.
2-4 h
Typical grid Li-ion duration
~85 GW
Global BESS, end-2024
Storage / Pumped Hydro   Slide 08

Boring. Underrated. Dominant.

Two reservoirs, one elevation gap, a reversible pump-turbine. ~95% of all installed grid storage today is pumped hydro. Round-trip efficiency 75-85%, lifetime 50+ years.

SCHEMATIC
↑ PUMP (charge, surplus solar) ↓ GENERATE (discharge, peak) UPPER LOWER
~95%
Of grid storage today
75-85%
Round-trip efficiency
8-20 h
Typical duration
50+ yrs
Asset lifetime
Constraints: needs two reservoirs at different elevations, multi-billion capex, decade-long permits. Closed-loop designs (no rivers) are unlocking new sites.
Frontier   Slide 09

Long-duration storage: still unsolved at scale.

A 4-hour Li-ion battery can't handle a week of cloudy stillness. Multiple technologies are racing to fill the gap from 10 hours to 100+ hours — none has yet reached gigawatt commercial scale.

Iron-Air
Form Energy
~100 h duration. Rusts and un-rusts iron pellets. First MW-scale projects 2024-25.
Thermal
Antora, Rondo
Heat carbon or bricks to 1500°C. Discharge as electricity or process heat.
Gravity
Energy Vault
Lift heavy blocks with surplus power; drop them to generate. Modest commercial traction.
Hydrogen
Electrolysis → H₂
Multi-week / seasonal. Round-trip efficiency 30-40%. Best for hard-to-decarbonize industry.
The honest take: the LDES market is real but small. For now, overbuilding wind+solar plus a 4-8h battery beats most LDES on cost in most grids. That math is changing as renewable share rises past 70-80%.
Geothermal   Slide 10

Drilling unlocks geothermal anywhere.

Conventional geothermal needs natural hot water near the surface — a few lucky places. Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) use shale-fracking techniques to engineer reservoirs deep underground. Suddenly: geothermal almost everywhere.

FLAGSHIP PROJECTS
Fervo Energy — Cape Station
Utah, USA. Targeting 400 MW EGS by 2028. Demonstrated horizontal-well + frac at 200°C+ rock.
Eavor — Closed-Loop
Sealed pipe-in-rock; no fracking. First commercial plant in Bavaria.
Quaise — Millimeter-Wave Drilling
Vaporizing rock to reach 10 km / supercritical conditions. Long bet, big payoff.
24/7
Capacity factor >90%
Always-on
Pairs perfectly with solar
  • Borrows the entire shale-oilfield supply chain — rigs, frac fleets, geologists.
  • No fuel, no CO₂, no intermittency. Land footprint tiny vs solar/wind.
  • Risk: induced seismicity, drilling cost, learning rate still uncertain.
Grid   Slide 11

The wires are the work.

Generation is winning. The grid — transmission, distribution, dispatch — is the new bottleneck. Three technologies are quietly transforming it.

HVDC

Long-distance transmission

High-voltage DC moves bulk power 1000+ km with ~3% loss per 1000 km. China's ±1100 kV Changji-Guquan line: 12 GW across 3,300 km.
Why it matters: connects sunny deserts to cloudy cities, windy plains to coastal demand.
DR & VPP

Demand response

Smart thermostats, EV chargers, water heaters — aggregated into virtual power plants. Tesla, Octopus, Sunrun running fleets at 100s of MW today.
Why it matters: shifts demand to when supply is abundant. Cheapest "kWh" is the one you don't need.
DLR

Dynamic line rating

Existing lines have static ratings set for hot still days. Sensors measuring real wind & temperature can safely push 25-40% more current most hours.
Why it matters: capacity uplift without new poles or permits. The fastest fix on the grid.
Reality check   Slide 12

The technology is cheap. Deployment is the bottleneck.

SOLVED OR NEARLY SOLVED
  • Solar & onshore wind — cheapest electrons in history.
  • Li-ion for 4-hour grid balancing.
  • HVDC for long-haul transmission.
  • Pumped hydro where geography allows.
STILL HARD
  • Permitting — 5-10 years to build a transmission line in the US.
  • Interconnection queues — 1+ TW of projects waiting.
  • Long-duration storage at scale.
  • Heavy industry, aviation, shipping decarbonization.
  • Critical-mineral & supply-chain concentration.
The next decade is execution. The cost-curve revolution is mostly done. Now the question is whether legal, political, and supply-chain systems can deploy what engineering has already delivered.
Slide 13   /   Closing

Go deeper.

A starter set of YouTube searches and the broad idea behind this deck.

YT Solar cost curve & Wright's Law
youtube.com/results?...solar+cost+curve+wright+law YT Lithium battery grid storage
youtube.com/results?...lithium+battery+grid+storage
THE THESIS

Renewables didn't win on virtue. They won on the learning curve. The same curve will compound for batteries, electrolyzers, and EGS over the next decade. The challenge is now political and physical — permits, transmission lines, transformers, and people.

Numbers: BNEF, IEA, IRENA, Lazard LCOE, Our World in Data (illustrative).
$0.20/W solar 15+ MW turbines $120/kWh batteries Deployment > technology
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