Quote:
Originally Posted by Tinordi
This is the most recent broad-based assessment of specific generating technology costs:
https://www.iea.org/Textbase/npsum/ElecCost2015SUM.pdf
Take a look at the wind numbers. If you believe the findings then wind looks to be right in line with competing generation technologies. Of course, this is an aggregate across many countries and the specific costs are, as you say, reliant on the local geography and wind resource.
However, it doesn't really stand to pass that wind is such a cost-outlier as you paint.
The point to really debate in that analysis is how accurate are the nuclear numbers? It seems incredibly cheap, but then you look at real world construction costs happening right now and something doesn't square.
Hinkley point in the UK is delayed again. EDF is effectively insolvent from the Flammanville nuclear plant it's trying to build. The only nuclear that looks to be in that cost range is in China. But why is so cheap in China, part of me just does not want to know. |
Correct me if I'm wrong, but your chart even shows wind to be around USD$0.07/kWh as a generation cost. Take a look at the spot price of electricity in Alberta and tell me if it makes money. It's simple math.
http://ets.aeso.ca. I'm not talking relative to other forms of generation either, I'm talking wind alone.
You can generate power over maybe 12 hours of the day, and when you're generating you are hoping the spot price is high or you're selling at a loss. Or you can contract your power to someone at a premium because it's renewable, but last I checked no one was going to do that when spot price is around $0.05/kWh. Enmax did it with their "green" program, but what people didn't understand was that they were just subsidizing construction costs of wind towers.
Wind was a VERY hard animal to deal with when coal was so cheap and ran 24 hours, where wind was "take what you can get". Add in natural gas turbine peak plants that could fire up at a moments notice during a price spike, and you can see why people were hesitant to spend money on it. Other forms made much, much more money.
Power price is also lower now than it was in the early 2000's, so without a huge increase in turbine efficiency or decrease in cost it leads me to believe it's even less viable these days than when I looked at it almost 2 decades ago. I'm ALL FOR renewable energy and I wish I was wrong, but wind generation was far too unpredictable with far too high start up cost to be viable. I would love to be proven wrong, I really really would, because I still have land next to our old site that I could stick 10 turbines on and make millions doing SFA if that were the case.
I have no dog in the nuclear fight either, I don't understand it and frankly don't want to look into that. I was just pointing out an economic assessment we did on wind generation.