Renewable energy advocates often claim that wind and solar are cheaper than coal, natural gas and nuclear power. [emphasis, links added]
Such a claim raises the question of why heavily subsidized Ivanpah solar power facilities went bankrupt, and other renewable energy projects went bankrupt.
Also, if it is more expensive than wind and solar, why would most parts of the world continue to build coal power plants? The answer is that wind and solar are expensive, financial losers. Recent peer-reviewed analysis proves this.
A recent study published in the peer-reviewed journal Energy reported system-wide cost of power generation. The term “complete system” is key.
Many entities have evaluated the utilities needed to purchase or generate electricity from existing sources and pass it on to customers.
However, these cost assessments ignore the intermittentity of wind and solar energy, and how intermittentness adds significant costs to the entire grid.
Cost assessments also cannot explain how wind and solar projects are built only anywhere, and new, long, expensive and inefficient conversion lines are often required to deliver electricity from the power generation site to consumers. This also increases the cost of the overall grid.
Peer-reviewed energy research analyzes these factors and proposes the cost of apple to apple comparison of the system-wide cost of wind, solar, coal, natural gas and nuclear energy.
The judgment is devastating wind and solar power and explains why most people in the world prefer to build coal and gas power plants.
Geographic location is an important factor in generating wind and solar energy costs.
For example, solar energy is generated in Germany, whose northern latitude and frequent clouds are three times more expensive than solar energy produced in southern latitudes and in general sunlight in western Texas.
Indeed, Texas is as good as wind and solar. Especially for western Texas, southern latitudes, major sunlight and continuous wind energy make wind and solar conditions extremely favorable.
Even in Texas, however, energy research shows that wind and solar energy are expensive.
Peer-reviewed research shows that Texas produces solar energy The cost of nuclear power exceeds three times, four times the cost of coal, and more than 10 times the cost of natural gas power.
According to system-wide numbers, each generation of solar energy in Texas is priced at $413 (MWH). The price of wind energy is USD 291 per km/h. Nuclear power costs $122. The cost of coal is $90. The cost of a natural gas power supply is only $40.
This is a huge price difference between wind and solar energy and all other energy sources.
It would be less economical to close already paid coal, nuclear or gas power plants to build expensive fresh wind or solar projects.
In most places, the cost of generating wind and solar energy is higher than in Texas climates. Therefore, the difference is usually greater than the figures reported above.
Another important factor to consider is typical recommendations for new wind or solar projects, and there is no need to build wind and solar energy to meet the new power supply needs to come.
Typically, climate activists and monopoly utilities recommend closing a perfectly operated (already built and paid for) coal, nuclear or natural gas power plant and replacing it with wind and solar.
Building a new wind or solar project to provide power is much more expensive than building a new coal, nuclear or gas power plant to provide power.
It would be less economical to close already paid coal, nuclear or gas power plants to build expensive fresh wind or solar projects.
Utilities often support wind and solar madness because they can cause financial killing on wind and solar projects. Governments usually guarantee that the monopoly utility's spending profit is about 10%, including the cost of establishing fresh winds and solar projects.
Construction of large-scale solar projects could cost $2 billion, $3 billion or more. This means guaranteed utility profits per project are $200 million or more.
Utilities that drive more wind and solar energy have nothing to do with saving consumers’ money and stuffing the utility’s own pockets.
Next time, some climate activists, Wind and Solar Hill, claiming that wind and solar are cheaper than traditional energy sources, pointing them to peer-reviewed energy research and the real truth.
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