Brookings Study Calls Solar, Wind Power the Most Expensive Fossil Alternatives

turkeydance (1266624) writes A new study [PDF] from the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, argues that using solar and wind energy may be the most expensive alternatives to carbon-based electricity generation, even though they require no expenditures for fuel.....Specifically, this means nuclear power offers a savings of more than $400,000 worth of carbon emissions per megawatt of capacity. Solar saves only $69,000 and wind saves $107,000. An anonymous reader points out that the Rocky Mountain Institute finds the Brookings study flawed in several ways, and offers a rebuttal.

Comments

Funny money

[oldhack]

"$400,000 worth of carbon emissions", it says. What, monopoly money?

Re:Funny money

[mlts]

That $400,000 number is suspect. What conditions are what I wonder about.

Don't forget regulation. I can go get some wood pallets behind S-Mart [1], rip them up and make a frame that props a solar panel roughly south, have the wires go to a $10 charge controller, a cast-off battery, and an el cheapo inverter fresh off the Chinese slowboat... and I have a little bit of electric for an outbuilding, for the total cost for well under a C-note, especially if the panel is a cast off or factory second. This isn't a reliable setup, but for a redneck solution to keep a shed lit at night, it is workable.

There is no way in Hell one could ever approach anything nuclear related without billions of dollars in assets. Even a small reactor in the low megawatts will take tens to hundreds of millions of red tape fees, dealing with the anti-nuke lobby and the NIMBY people, then finding a contractor who will actually make a reactor head out of the correct materials and not pot metal, not to mention all the other costs with each step of getting the reactor up and running.

Nuclear power is great scaling up, because it provides the most energy generation for the least amount of real estate. However, it takes no regulation other than basic electrical codes to get solar operational.

[1]: Not Wal-Mart, they want $10 per pallet.

Re:Funny money

[ShanghaiBill]

Solar and wind kill the cash cow.

Solar, yes. Wind, no. Solar PV does not benefit much from scale, so roof-top units make sense. But efficient windmills are big, and getting bigger. The most efficient windmills have a hub height of over 100 meters, and multi-megawatt generators. These are not backyard units. The future of wind energy is in offshore installations, and stratospheric wind. Only big corporations have the capital for that.

Re:Funny money

[ShanghaiBill]

Does Brookings think tank take money from oil and gas interests?

The report is not really pro FF. It is more pro-nuke.

All the slants against making the switch to renewable energy seem determined to to thwart it any way they possibly can

They just show that current solar and wind projects don't make sense on a stand-alone basis. But they miss the point that these technologies are improving quickly. The cost of solar dropped 20% in the last couple years, and is expected to drop quite a bit more, due to both technological and manufacturing improvements. The cost of offshore wind is also falling, and we haven't even started to exploit stratospheric wind.

But they have a valid point that current subsidies for wind and solar are probably not very smart. It would be better to put that money into scientific research, and development of better manufacturing techniques, rather than just subsidizing something that doesn't make sense.

Re: Funny money

[caveqat101]

Asides from waking up, you should have mentioned, the cost of backup generators. The sun don't shine everyday, the wind don't blow every day, the load varies every day. Every one needs cheap available power every day.

And when you include end-of-life costs?

[ReallyEvilCanine]

Decommissioning costs (including storage, disposal, and demolition) never seem to figure into these numbers.

The Brookings Institution?

[jeff13]

The Brookings Institution??? Why would anyone give a damn what some think tank, er, thinks?

By definition, a think tank's job is to simply rationalize their clients opinion.

Re:Finally!!

[timeOday]

The reason this study found a higher cost for solar was they accounted for intermittency - the basic problem is that even if solar were generating 50% everybody's power, you'd still need about the same amount of baseline power available - nuclear or fossil fuels - for when the sun isn't out.

Early solar adopters aren't bearing this cost because the power company charges them same amount for power whether or not the sun is shining - it's not really an issue until solar is a bigger power source. Germany IS already there, leading the way with solar and wind, and has been paying outrageous prices for electricity at certain moments when there is a crunch - up to 400 times the normal rate! But as you can imagine this is a huge financial incentive to create new solutions.

I question the study because the transition to solar will be gradual, and it's hard to say what more efficient means we might come up with to store power. If we had a smart grid that could communicate fluctuating electricity prices to devices, there might be a lot they could do.

Re:I believe solar thermal does benefit from scale

[Fencepost]

Straight conversion efficiency isn't the only factor that matters by a long shot, and might not even be the most important factor. Maximum charge cycles / lifespan strikes me as important. Cost of materials. Safety. Regulatory complications. A 10% loss in efficiency is probably worth it to go from 3,000 charge cycles to 10000.