mark-b…Sorry to disappoint you. Tire burning was tried, several times, and fails on several counts. They do not burn effieciently on a chain grate. Modern coal plants use pulverized coal, tires have stee belts…and there just isn’t enough of them. Waste grease? Same answer, not nearly enough. Further, the grease forms a cap on many types of sewage settlement ponds promoting good digestion of waste. Does a better job of that than as a bad fuel. Lots of diesels? It is called site power. You, the consumer, are not able to maintain the technology…and talk about the grid being complex now, add several millions of independent generators to the system.

RWE, eggplant. I have been talking about power density and the foolish chase of solar and wind power for years. Thanks for finally hearing.

Guys, take if from an old power house engineer, we have a do have a clue what is needed. Fuel. A fire. Somewhere, a fire.

Electical energy is first a rotating shaft, mechanical energy from some sort to heat engine, usually a steam turbine. To extract that energy something hot is cooled through the mechanical device and a shaft rotates. It is really very simple, been around since Hero’s engine.

Drill, refine
Liquify coal
Build nukes
Reprocess nuke fuel
Return totally spent fuel to the slag from which it came.

Have fun with solar power on your roof…it is a good hobby.

Forget the wind stuff…

(ps. Since entropy lives, nothing is free. If the huge percentage of power claimed for wind power is actually extracted, what do we do with the changed weather patterns? GigaWatts are big. Really big. Long live entropy.