her apparent bias toward the industry's interests.

Bias or realistic observation that, like it or not, what we see around us is from cheap fossil fuels.

Look at this comment:
I think wind and solar should be called fossil fuel extenders, rather than renewables. Without fossil fuels, they will come to a screeching halt.

Wind/Solar don't need FF. But, with the large number of people and their high demand level - the only way to satisfy that demand level is with FF.

As the FF goes bye-bye either the demand level will drop, the people level will drop or both.

Your suggestion of 'micro-energy' projects reminds me of Chairman Mao's village iron smelters initiative. It's about as likely to be useful, IMHO.

The proposals I have seen for CSP are to have large group of them located in the desert, with dedicated transmission lines. To make this work, you have to have sufficient energy to get the workers back and forth to this remote location, and to bring food to them. PV located in a remote area has the same problem. Someone has to keep getting the dust off of both CSP and PV installations, to keep them operating. There is of course also the grid structure as well for these that is likely to need maintenance.

PV already located on top of someone's house will keep working for the lifetime of the PV, as long as they get brushed off often enough. These PVs don't need to be grid tied, so presumably could continue to provide energy during sunlight hours. I don't know anything about inverter operation. Presumably these would also continue to provide AC from DC current, at least until they get to the end of their lives, using captured solar energy.

With any of these devices, they eventually need to be replace. This requires a factory and transportation of the new finished product to the location where it is to be installed. This transportation works best if there is some established transportation system - highways and trucks, or railroads, or a combination of the two.

Maybe wind and solar could have been developed without fossil fuels, but not in their current form. The little windmills that used to around years ago (to pump water for animals) don't require much in the way of fossil fuels. The huge monstrosities of wind turbines that we have today, that require multiple length trucks to carry their blades, do. Small water mills were developed long before fossil fuels, and could be used again. Solar thermal can be used without fossil fuels. Reflective solar ovens don't require fossil fuels (especially if the metal is already available from used vehicles and other things.)

I still think that the renewable energy that we have without fossil fuels will be very much less than we have today.

I'm not sure of your point.

Without FFs there would be no significant wind and solar conversion systems.

Without solar, there would be no FFs, but there would also be no wind.

In fact there wouldn't be much of anything.

I expect that given appropriate plans an 18th century blacksmith could produce small electric motors and generators. They would be low efficiency and expensive due to the difficulty of drawing long stretches of wire by hand and the poor quality of the magnets and insulators available at the time, but quite possible. Keep in mind the levels of background technology in use when these devices were first being invented. Given even expensive motors and generators, wind, hydro, and several permutations of solar are possible.

I think that puts a pretty low minimum on electrical tech. Electronics are another kettle of fish entirely, but analog control devices for electrical systems are a matter of public record thanks to the patent system. There are an awful lot of cool widgets that were invented and superceded on our way up the energy curve that will be invaluable on the way back down. Silicon PV is probably a dead end tech, but it is possible that somebody working on a dye-based system will come up with a sustainable solution there as well.

Liebig's Law of the Minimum

I think that is a great Key Post subject. All the scenarios we might care to develop will fail once the weakest link is hit. It is at the back of my mind with virtually every post I see on what can or will be done in the future.

Let's take my micro-energy build-out. It depends on minimizing consumption of raw materials by recycling old automotive generators and alternators, for example, into rotors and/or stators for wind power or hydro power. But how many of these are there in wrecking yards? How many would need rewinding? How many stators and rotors could be made out of other materials such as wiring from abandoned homes, etc?

How close can we rally get to the ideal of micro-power in every household? (Keep in mind, most would use more than one kind and I don't assume one size fits all.)

Another issue is, most people are making analyses based on living as we do now. The underlying assumption is how do we stay as comfortable as we have become? Another aspect of this, as an example, is that homes just weren't kept toasty in the past. People dressed differently and didn't need as much heating to stay warm. (There have been two different programs, one in the US, one in Britain, where the people dressed as in the past and found they not only were warm enough, but were more comfortable - at least in terms of warmth - than wearing current fashions.)

I would love for someone to take a stab at assessing my plan. I've not the know how to do so beyond sketching out what's available in terms of DIY technology and new technologies that might be adapted. I can't do any energy analysis nor would I have any idea how to estimate available recyclable parts for various types of systems.

Liebig needs to be addressed for all proposed solutions, imo.

Cheers