Manhattan Contrarian by Francis Menton 2/21/2020
Information On The True Cost Of Electricity From Wind And Solar Is Just Not Getting Out There
Over the period from November 2018 to March 2019, I wrote a series of posts on the subject of the true costs of trying to get electricity from intermittent wind and solar sources. On November 29, 2018 it was “How Much Do The Climate Crusaders Plan To Increase Your Costs Of Electricity? — Part III†On February 5, 2019 it was “Eulogy For Roger Andrews.†(Andrews was a guy who made many detailed calculations of how intermittent renewables function to drive up the cost of electricity as their penetration of the electricity market increases. Unfortunately, Andrews had died just before that post.) And on March 8, 2019 it was “Why Do Renewable Energy Sources Need Government Subsidies?â€
The gist of all this was that you can’t realistically evaluate the cost of getting electricity using the intermittent renewable sources just by looking at the cost of making a kilowatt-hour of electricity when the source happens to be working at its best. Sure, a solar panel may generate some very cheap kilowatt-hours around noon on a sunny June 21. But now that you’ve invested a few billion in solar panels, what is the plan to provide the electricity people need on an overcast December 21, when the panels may work at only 3% of capacity during the day and nothing at night? If your plan is a backup system of fossil fuel facilities, now you are paying for both the solar panels and the fossil fuel plants, so you’ve close-to-doubled the cost of electricity no matter how cheap the power from the solar panels may be on the June day; plus your fossil fuel plants will still be running most of the time, and your emissions reductions will be minimal. If you want serious emissions reductions, you will need to push past 50% and on to 100% of your power from renewables, so you will need to phase out the fossil fuel plants. And replace them with — what?? And at what cost?
Batteries? The cost of those is a principal subject of the three posts linked above. The bottom line for getting to the 100% is that, due to seasonality of both wind and solar sources, to carry you through the low-wind and low-sun seasons, you will need sufficient batteries to store about a full month’s worth of power usage for your city, state or country. Even assuming major price declines from where we are now, that will run you around a full year’s GDP. And the batteries only last a few years! Impact on the cost of electricity? Get ready for the cost to multiply by around a factor of 15 or 20 or so.
More:
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-2-20-information-on-the-true-cost-of-electricity-from-wind-and-solar-is-just-not-getting-out-there
