According to a 2006 presentation by pro-wind GE to the House Energy & Commerce Committee, the following is the pre-incentive cost of electricity by source per US cents/kWh:

Gas 7.0
Coal 4.5
Nuclear 4.0
Wind 7.0
Biomass 10.0
Solar 36.0

http://energycommerce.house.gov/reparchives/108/Hearings/05182006hearing1903/Abate.pdf

I’m for the kitchen sink as long as we know the cost of the source. I’m not switching from a $50 gas tank to a $300 battery bank.

craig on August 18, 2008 at 4:36 PM

I’m not taking issue with the accuracy of craig’s reporting, but the figures for “wind” and “solar” appear to be wildly optimistic (a polite word for “fraudulent”)!!!

I have studied the economics of wind some, and the figure given above excludes all of the amortized capital costs of building transmission and energy management infrastructure which is necessary to support wind farms, and also excludes the continuing operating and maintenance costs associated with these facilities.. With these cost in place, the real figure for wind is at least 21-28 cents/KWH.

Similarly, the figures for solar have also dishonestly excluded transmission and energy management costs. I suspect they have also excluded solar cell maintenance and replacement costs: all current solar cells actually degrade over time when you expose them to sunlight, so you need to track the degradation and replace cells which no longer function at an acceptable level. With these costs considered, I think you’d be hard pressed to produce large scale solar power within the next decade for less than $1.00 -$3.00 per KWH.

All of the analyses I’ve seen to date also exclude the cost of idling the large tracts of land necessary to support wind or solar, and I’ve never seen provision for natural catastrophes which will predictably destroy anything which occupies large tracts of land over a long period of time (such as tornados, hurricanes, hail storms, floods, etc.).

Until we get an honest, GAAP accounting for these projects which account for all the costs – the same kind of accounting we’d get for a new coal-fired plant – I’ll never believe that wind or solar power anything but a pipeline from taxpayers pockets to the pockets of “alternative energy” hucksters (and I don’t expect to believe it then)!!!

The most outrageous part of the “alternative energy” scam is that the hucksters want taxpayers to subsidize production!! In my opinion, the government should be involved in funding R&D only…and then only if private investors are furnishing most of the money!!! If the “alternative” is truly viable after suitable R&D, it will not need any operating subsidy!!! Operating subsidies just serve to make people think that bad alternatives are good…and they divert money away from better ideas which should be developed.

landlines on August 18, 2008 at 6:51 PM