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Wind Power Now Cheapest Energy In UK and Germany; No Subsidies Needed
Socguy writes: Bloomberg reports wind power has now crossed the threshold to become the cheapest source of energy in both the UK and Germany. This is notable because it's the first time this has occurred in a G7 country. In the U.S., wind and solar are still massively overshadowed by the power generated from fossil fuel plants, but the percentage is creeping up. It's gotten to the point where it's starting to affect the lifetime profitability of new plants.
The Fine Article also has an interesting graphic relating "Capacity Factor", which is "the percentage of a power plant's maximum potential that's actually achieved over time."
Notably, in the last 12 months, wind's capacity factor has risen from 32% to 37%. Even more interns of percentage gains, solar's capacity factor has risen from 16 to 20% in that same time frame.
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
"The BNEF report analyzes thousands of data points culled from individual deals and projects around the world to estimate the actual costs associated with each type of energy, excluding subsidies. "
"takes into account not just the cost of generating a marginal MWh of electricity, but also the upfront capital and development expense, the cost of equity and debt finance, and operating and maintenance fees." - http://about.bnef.com/press-re...
Wind power, including U.S. subsidies, became the cheapest electricity in the U.S. for the first time last year4, according to BNEF.
Why include subsidies? They don't lower the cost, they only chage who pays the bill.
However, in locations where wind is a good option the combination of wind, hydro, and natural gas makes a lot of sense. Especially if you have a few good nuclear plants to handle the load that wind and hydro can't supply at their peak.
I paid a premium for an electric car (fully EV, not a hybrid) and put up with the slight limitations it comes with in terms of range and recharge time. So yeah, I went zero emissions even though I was not legally obliged to.
I sometimes spray some weed killer on the public pavement outside by house, that's a public service I'm not required to perform.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I should clarify that that's retail pricing. Wholesale (production) pricing figures I've seen for wind put it at about $0.07-$0.11 / kWh. Slightly higher than natural gas and nuclear but falling rapidly. Coal is around $0.05, hydro the cheapest at $0.02-$0.04.
> Speaking of renewables in the U.S. why is hydro never mentioned when discussing renewables?!?
Two reasons. First, hydro at Niagra Falls and Lake Meade are great. Hydro is a good way to generate power in places where you have either huge waterfalls from a giant lake above a huge cliff or a giant canyon which can be dammed to make a lake that's 100 square miles. it's also a very good idea to make sure there aren't any cities downstream, so you don't kill 200,000 people (see Banqiao). There are a few such places in the US, so we built hydroelectric power stations at those locations. Built, as in past tense.
Computer models show that if we flooded the area from the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians - most of the continental US - that would provide enough power to replace most of our fossil fuel use. (Morris 2013). So while hydroelectric is certainly nice to have, we already have about as much as we can have in the US, it can never replace fossil fuels in any significant way.
That still leaves a related question - why does US discussion of renewable energy focus on solar-electric 99% of the time, despite the fact that solar-electric is approximately the least efficient possible solution in most cases? Fifteen gallons of hot water is plenty enough for a shower. Black pipe outside that's 8 feet long and 6" ID will provide that, no problem (at least in the southern half of the country, and northern summers). That costs $20. So why are we promoting having an electric water heater plugged into an inverter, which is connected to a big bank of batteries full of hazardous chemicals, which are connected to a charge controller, which is in turn connected to a bunch of solar-electric panels? Seriously WTF? Because right now the politicians aren't trading billions of dollars of tax money for millions in campaign contributions with plumbing suppliers, the slush funds are titled "solar-electric". Obama says we should give a billion of your money and mine to the solar-electric guy, the solar electric guy gives Obama a million of it. It just so happens the politicians chose to call graft "solar electric" this time around, so we're spending billions on solar electric and therefore talking a lot about solar-electric. Reasonable, effective, efficient uses of solar, such as solar heating, don't get talked about because there's no billion-dollar grant program for that.
Even though I know that a solar panel will never make the energy back that was used to produce it...
That hasn't been true for a long time.
Assuming you're a utility electricity producer, you need to have the gas plant anyway, as a supplement for your base load. Then you think about adding the wind plant, which is extra expense but produces electricity much less expensively. If the cost of the wind plant is less than what you expect to save by not running the natural gas plant, the turbines are a good deal.
Similarly, batteries are valuable in any power system as a way of smoothing peaks and valleys. If you've got them, you can increase your baseload power and use the batteries to even that out, saving the more expensive gas. The batteries are more useful with wind power, but the utility would get them even without wind.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes