Cost Works Against Alternative and Renewable Energy Sources in Time of Recession

[A]s Congress begins debating new rules to restrict carbon dioxide emissions and promote electricity produced from renewable sources, an underlying question is how much more Americans will be willing to pay to harness the wind and the sun.

[T]he Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit consortium financed by investor- and publicly-owned utilities, predicted in November that even for plants coming on line in 2015, wind energy would cost nearly one-third more than coal and about 14 percent more than natural gas. The cost of solar thermal electricity, made by using the sun’s heat to boil water and spin a turbine, would be nearly three times that of coal and more than twice that of natural gas. (It would be almost double the cost of wind energy, too.)

The institute’s study looked only at utility-scale power plants, not the solar photovoltaic cells used in far smaller rooftop installations. Power from photovoltaic cells is generally more expensive than solar thermal power.

A modern coal plant of conventional design, without technology to capture carbon dioxide before it reaches the air, produces at about 7.8 cents a kilowatt-hour; a high-efficiency natural gas plant, 10.6 cents; and a new nuclear reactor, 10.8 cents. A wind plant in a favorable location would cost 9.9 cents per kilowatt hour. But if a utility relied on a great many wind machines, it would need to back them up with conventional generators in places where demand tends to peak on hot summer days with no breeze. That pushes the price up to just over 12 cents, making it more than 50 percent more expensive than a kilowatt-hour for coal.

Lets set some facts straight here.

If you go any windmill energy expert and ask how much of the grid do you want to share with wind energy....he’ll be very quiet for a moment...and usually say no more than twenty percent maximum. The problem is that whatever amount you choose...you have to have an alternate “vehicle” standing by to produce the same amount of energy...whether coal, hydro, or nuclear. Wind energy, you see, is not dependable.

If you ask about the “Germany incident”....the wind energy guy will likely want to avoid the discussion. This episode from just a couple of years ago....triggered a massive grid outage. They had always anticipated “X” amount of power from the tens of thousands of windmills in the country. A sudden wind storm came through the country...and in a matter of minutes...they surged dramatically. The grid couldn’t handle it....so it shut down rapidly. It took hours across the whole country to bring the grid back up.

Now, lets focus on solar energy. At best presently....even if you gave me all of the available acreage in Arizona that was free to use (state and federal property)...and I put out solar collection devices across this entire range...it probably would only satisfy the grid needs of five to ten percent of the entire country.

What you see here by the environmentalists...is an effort to band-aid up the entire grid. Every single house has a solar panel or two. Every community has five or six giant wind-mills. They want to make this into a magic formula....which is precise. Fundamentally....things just don’t work this way.

I'm surprised we're seeing it at all, from the NY Times no less. Usually the libs try to spin wind and solar as free. Hardly.

Plus, these costs grossly underestimate the costs of renewables. The actual field generation from wind tends to be about 20% of nameplate (Source). So wind really costs five times as much.

Field performance for solar isn't much better. Solar farms generate about 1/3rd the nameplate (Source). Triple the costs for solar.

I wonder if the EPRI study takes into account the massive subsidies? If EPRI only looked at costs for the utility to generate a kWh, then the cost should be bumped again. Taxpayers pick up a big part of the tab to generate a kilowatt-hour of electricity using solar or wind.

Then, we have the transmission costs. No one wants solar plants or wind in their back yard. Fortunately, the best sites are remote, but this adds to the cost. It costs a lot to build the transmission lines to get the electricity to the grid. Who pays? T. Boone Pickens wants taxpayers to pay. I doubt EPRI included transmission costs, which they tend to regard as a separate area and issue.

Of course, the field efficiency for remote solar and wind projects drops with their distance from civilization. Transmission losses can be significant.

Even so, where will they be built? The Kennedys and other powerful, politically connected elite have effectively blocked off-shore win projects that might obstruct their view of an Atlantic uncluttered by the presence of man. Diane Feinstein is halting a solar project in the Mojave Desert out of concern for a desert turtle. As the governator commented, if you can build a solar plant in the Mojave Desert, where can you build one?

Lets face reality, not fiction. Despite hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollar sunk down a liberal rabbit hole, renewables are still not ready for prime time. When they are, the government won't need to ram them down our throats.

The United States is the Saudi Arabia of coal. We have lots of coal. We can supply our nation's electricity needs for centuries with the coal in the ground, within our borders.

To turn down a cost effective, abundant form of energy for an expensive, intermittent one based on the rantings of a delusional, mentally challenged former politician and a group of grant sucking scientific prostitutes who can't present facts, only unproven theories that can't model the past, let along predict the future, is tantamount to a crime against humanity. But then, that characterizes much of the activities of the government today. /rant

Wind energy, you see, is not dependable.

...and worse, wind energy is not efficient, IIRC current thought, rates it at about 30% efficiency.

So you spend the same or more on infrastructure, to support the production, but you get at best 30% of what coal, oil, gas, nuclear etc, are capable of producing all the time instead of the vagaries of the wind at any particular time of day or night.

No one in their right mind would put money into such a system, unless it was mandated by government, of course government can mandate all it wants too, but where will they get the money to carry out the mandate? Out of your pocket and mine, and those pockets should be shut to such insanity.

I’d agree with that on a system wide basis, but I’m considering making a jump to a 5kW PV grid-tied system in the near future myself. Currently, my state and the feds will soak up 50% of the installation cost and I feel pretty confident I can keep my use below the system output. Turning the meter backward would be nice, but a net use of zero is the goal. With cap and trade over the horizon and electrical costs about to jump $1,000-1,500 per year, I think the costs could be realized in under 15 years.

For me, in my situation, it makes some sense - especially from the standpoint of freedom.

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