Eastern US could get a third of its power from renewables within 10 years. Theoretically.

[Bill USA]

http://www.vox.com/2016/8/31/12721206/eastern-us-30-percent-renewables

The power grid in the Eastern US, known as the "Eastern Interconnection" (EI), is a technological marvel: an impossibly large, sprawling, and complex machine that’s been operating continuously for over a hundred years, now serving around 240 million people. When considered together with the Canadian EI, it forms what the National Renewable Energy Laboratory calls "the largest coordinated power system in the world."

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The EI was built around coal, nuclear, natural gas, and hydro power, which can be deployed whenever grid operators need them. (They are "dispatchable.&quot The pressing question facing today’s policymakers is whether the EI can, relatively quickly, accommodate much more renewable energy, which is variable, i.e., only available when the wind blows or the sun shines.

Prior to the question of how that might be accomplished socially or politically is the simple question of whether it’s technically possible.

That is the question examined by NREL in its newly released Eastern Renewable Generation Integration Study (ERGIS, if you’re nasty).
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