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posted by
martyb
on Sunday May 24 2015, @08:12PM
from the price-of-sunlight-and-wind-is-pretty-constant dept.
from the price-of-sunlight-and-wind-is-pretty-constant dept.
Over the last 5 years, the price of new wind power in the US has dropped 58% and the price of new solar power has dropped 78%. Utility-scale solar in the West and Southwest is now at times cheaper than new natural gas plants. Even after removing the federal solar Investment Tax Credit of 30%, a recent New Mexico solar deal is priced at 6 cents / kwh. By contrast, new natural gas electricity plants have costs between 6.4 to 9 cents per kwh, according to the EIA.
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Renewables are Disruptive to Coal and Gas
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Cum tacent, clamant. When they are silent, they shout. -Cicero
(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Monday May 25 2015, @11:42AM
http://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_08_04.html [eia.gov]
A mill is a tenth of a cent. So figure half a cent per KWh to maintain a coal plant. That high pressure steam boiler ain't gonna inspect itself, ya know. The wear and tear on those things is incredible.
yeah yeah geologically speaking, natgas is a fossil fuel but when energy dorks write "fossil steam" they mean coal. Natgas used to (on a decades scale) be a rounding error and nobody runs primary base load on natgas (if they can avoid it) so it gets categorized into the ghetto of "small scale" which is usually where renewables get categorized too.
The best number I have for solar maint is take the capital cost and divide by 100 and thats a realistic maint figure and take the capital cost and divide by 30 and thats a realistic depreciation figure. Its an open argument if the panels will outlast the expensive mountings and expensive wiring and expensive inverter. I've been verbally told the biggest problem varies by region/climate and often is vegetation growth related. Vines block the sun, kudzu, whatever. Obviously mounted on house roofs results in different problems such as idiot roofers and the like.
The nuke operation figure is high because they quite reasonably insist on including armed plant guards and training and emergency testing in the figure. Its interesting that all that BS is still only about a fifth to a tenth of the cost of fuel for a coal plant. Security guards are expensive, but so is trainloads of coal!
I've been investing in energy companies for a long time. Its interesting that "in the old days" the cheapest way to pay your electric bill was about $20K worth of electric company stock, for some values of electric bill and company stock LOL, but its rapidly getting to the point where the overall cheapest way to pay your electric bill is $10K of solar panels. Looking at long term graphs of technological trends etc I'm probably going to sell my electric company stock in the next decade and buy panels. This financial issue has certain implications for legacy plant operators aka todays electric companies. You don't just need breakeven, you need enough free profit to buy another system every 25 years or so, because my electric company stock doesn't depreciate over time but a solar plant will.
Its also interesting to watch other trends. Coal used to be the cheapest source of energy, but the lines on the graph are crossing and its rapidly becoming the most expensive form of energy out there. Natgas fluctuates in price too quickly to be trusted, its a PITA. A plant could almost justify a huge battery bank to only burn natgas when the price is low, or a combined solar/natgas plant so you only have to burn expensive natgas at night and never pay daytime spot prices for natgas.