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

Re:I believe solar thermal does benefit from scale

[ShanghaiBill]

PV (photovoltaic) won't benefit much from scale, but some of the solar thermal options that use mirrors for heat that's then used for steam generation certainly do.

Solar thermal is dead. There are some existing plants, but no new plants are being built anywhere in the world. The cost of solar PV has fallen, and solar thermal is no longer competitive. While the cost of solar PV is expected to continue to fall, the cost of solar thermal is not. It is basically just a bunch of pipes and mirrors, so there really isn't much to improve.

Solar thermal has the advantage that the hot molten salt can be stored, and used to generate steam at night, thus providing round-the-clock baseload power. But this is not a practical benefit, since the price of electricity almost everywhere is highest during the day when the sun is shining.