Reply #7: No - that should be "Eastern US could support at least 30% wind by 2024"

[bananas]

They analyzed four scenarios: 3 scenarios of 20% wind by 2024, and 1 scenario of 30% wind by 2024,
and found that the grid could support all scenarios.
That doesn't mean renewables can't provide "all of future generation" as you falsely claim,
the fact is that renewables can provide "all of future generation" and that should be our long-term goal
(although this is not discussed in the report - this report deals only with those 4 scenarios).

The report webpage is http://www.nrel.gov/wind/systemsintegration/ewits.html
From pages 27-28 of the report:

In general, though, the study shows the following:
• High penetrations of wind generation—20% to 30% of the electrical
energy requirements of the Eastern Interconnection—are technically
feasible with significant expansion of the transmission infrastructure.
• New transmission will be required for all the future wind scenarios in
the Eastern Interconnection, including the Reference Case. Planning for
this transmission, then, is imperative because it takes longer to build new
transmission capacity than it does to build new wind plants.
• Without transmission enhancements, substantial curtailment (shutting
down) of wind generation would be required for all the 20% scenarios.
• Interconnection-wide costs for integrating large amounts of wind
generation are manageable with large regional operating pools and
significant market, tariff, and operational changes.
• Transmission helps reduce the impacts of the variability of the wind,
which reduces wind integration costs, increases reliability of the electrical
grid, and helps make more efficient use of the available generation
resources. Although costs for aggressive expansions of the existing
grid are significant, they make up a relatively small portion of the total
annualized costs in any of the scenarios studied.
• Carbon emission reductions in the three 20% wind scenarios do not vary
by much, indicating that wind displaces coal in all scenarios and that
coal generation is not significantly exported from the Midwest to the
eastern United States; carbon emissions are reduced at an increased rate
in the 30% wind scenario as more gas generation is used to accommodate
wind variability. Wind generation displaces carbon-based fuels, directly
reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Emissions continue to decline
as more wind is added to the supply picture. Increasing the cost of carbon
in the analysis results in higher total production costs.

Even Exelon CEO John Rowe admitted that wind is cheaper than nuclear and that new nuclear does not make economic sense for this decade. Reducing emissions this decade is crucial - we have to build as much wind as possible as soon as possible. That goes for other renewables, too: solar PV will reach grid-parity this decade. New nuclear is not needed at all, and certainly not this decade. There is no good reason to advocate new nuclear.