Slashdot Mirror
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...
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.
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.