IEA says wind and solar can carry bulk of energy transformation

[kristopher]

11. You're significantly misstating the findings of the study; which is one of probably hundreds...

...if not thousands globally.

You probably don't know about any of those others because, in spite of the fact that many have been posted here, you've spent at least the past 7 years engaging in unrelenting knee-jerk criticism of renewable energy in your zeal to promote nuclear energy.

Your memory lapses include not only the number of studies on the topic, but also, regarding the one you "cite":
- overstating the amount of generation required, it is 3X not 5X (How much excess capacity does the centralized system require?);
- that it is an optimum solution for that specific load and geographic distribution of resources - so there are other configurations that will be effective;
- is designed to seek a least cost solution and it found that one that can be implemented at electricity prices "comparable to today's.

If you are actually sincere about being curious, I'd recommend you contact the authors of the study and ask for the information you feel is missing. I've posted the abstract and a link to the full study below.

You might also want to contact MZ Jacobson, since he's one of the leading authorities on the kind of modeling you are asking about. He's a person of great integrity and knowledge that will happily share his time with you if your questions are legitimate. Don't worry, he won't know how mightily you attempted to smear his name and reputation because one of his studies produced a finding that was (correctly) unfavorable to nuclear power.
In fact Jacobson just released the results of a project that modeled the entire nation:

Stanford scientist to unveil 50-state plan to transform US to renewable energy
http://phys.org/news/2014-02-stanford-scientist-unveil-state-renewable.html

The Solutions Project
http://thesolutionsproject.org

Cost-minimized combinations of wind power, solar power and electrochemical storage, powering the grid up to 99.9% of the time
Abstract
We model many combinations of renewable electricity sources (inland wind, offshore wind, and photovoltaics) with electrochemical storage (batteries and fuel cells), incorporated into a large grid system (72 GW).

The purpose is twofold:
1) although a single renewable generator at one site produces intermittent power, we seek combinations of diverse renewables at diverse sites, with storage, that are not intermittent and satisfy need a given fraction of hours. And
2) we seek minimal cost, calculating true cost of electricity without subsidies and with inclusion of external costs.

Our model evaluated over 28 billion combinations of renewables and storage, each tested over 35,040 h (four years) of load and weather data.

We find that the least cost solutions yield seemingly-excessive generation capacity—at times, almost three times the electricity needed to meet electrical load.

This is because diverse renewable generation and the excess capacity together meet electric load with less storage, lowering total system cost.

At 2030 technology costs and with excess electricity displacing natural gas, we find that the electric system can be powered 90%–99.9% of hours entirely on renewable electricity, at costs comparable to today's—but only if we optimize the mix of generation and storage technologies.


http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378775312014759