Free Exchange: Sun, Wind and Drain

[xchrom]

http://www.businessinsider.com/free-exchange-sun-wind-and-drain-2014-7



Wind and solar power are even more expensive than is commonly thought.
SUBSIDIES for renewable energy are one of the most contested areas of public policy. Billions are spent nursing the infant solar- and wind-power industries in the hope that they will one day undercut fossil fuels and drastically reduce the amount of carbon dioxide being put into the atmosphere.

The idea seems to be working. Photovoltaic panels have halved in price since 2008 and the capital cost of a solar-power plant--of which panels account for slightly under half--fell by 22% in 2010-13. In a few sunny places, solar power is providing electricity to the grid as cheaply as conventional coal- or gas-fired power plants.

But whereas the cost of a solar panel is easy to calculate, the cost of electricity is harder to assess. It depends not only on the fuel used, but also on the cost of capital (power plants take years to build and last for decades), how much of the time a plant operates, and whether it generates power at times of peak demand.

To take account of all this, economists use "levelised costs"--the net present value of all costs (capital and operating) of a generating unit over its life cycle, divided by the number of megawatt-hours of electricity it is expected to supply.

***DOESN'T MATTER -- IT'S MORE EXPENSIVE TO KILL OUR SELVES WITH OIL.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/free-exchange-sun-wind-and-drain-2014-7#ixzz38ZiCZzcK

[Demeter]

1. Yes, they count every penny in renewables

but ignore the trillions of dollars of global costs of fossil fuels in pollution, environmental destruction, health deterioration form particulates, etc.

[Jim Lane]

2. The calculation appears to assume that renewables MUST have conventional backup.

Yes, intermittency is a problem (sometimes people need power when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing). Much of the current research, however, is devoted to storage methods. These systems generate excess power at times, and there are various ways to store it until it's needed. My guess is that storage, rather than a backup coal-fired plant, will be the future of renewables.

[hunter]

3. I'll repeat myself...

... a solar/wind/other "renewable" energy society wouldn't look anything like the high energy industrial consumer driven societies of the developed world.

I see a renewable energy society as a desirable utopia. But sorry, you probably won't own a car.

Unfortunately, so long as fossil fuels are legal renewable energy schemes will never replace them.

The only way to quit using fossil fuels is to quit using fossil fuels, and that will require outlawing fossil fuels, which will be the end of high energy industrial consumer driven societies. That's not going to happen except by natural disaster of the sort an exponentially growing novel species always experiences, often in very ugly ways.