Two of the major challenges to the economics of dispatching renewable power using smart grids are:
1) Competition from the conventional and cheaper power from natural gas fired power plants and the non-conventional natural gas from fracking.
2) Renewable power sources (wind and solar PV) suffer from the intermittency issue and, thus, require energy storage technologies. The latter are not cheap.
Because of the aforementioned reasons, renewable power receive government subsidies and without these subsidies they would have a negative net present value (NPV).