3 ms·
There's two problems: (1) The bids include tax incentives. Without those it's much closer: The cost of wind without storage was $18/MWh, while the cost of so
by treis 9y ago
There's two problems:
(1) The bids include tax incentives. Without those it's much closer:
The cost of wind without storage was $18/MWh, while the cost of solar without storage was $29/MWh – both prices benefit from federal tax incentives, and would likely be around $US25/MWh and $US40/MWh without them.
(2) Solar and Wind are not 100% consistent producers. There are days where the wind doesn't blow, it's cloudy, or it's winter time. You have to have excess capacity in the grid for these events. So you can't just look at the price per mWh. You have to include this excess capacity in the cost of your wind/solar system
- colanderman 9y agoThe article's purpose is to draw attention to renewable solutions with energy storage (e.g. batteries). "The significance of the tender result is the small additional cost of storage – between $US3 and $US7/MWh."
- treis 9y agoStorage typically is only enough to store energy generated during the day for use at night. It's nowhere near enough to account for seasonal changes or extended bouts of cloudy weather.
- colanderman 9y agoPoint taken.
- blt 9y agoTrue, we need a global grid.
- Consultant32452 9y agoEnergy loss during transmission makes this unfeasible.
- Const-me 9y agoHVDC is not that bad. Siemens quotes 2.6% losses in 800km line @ 800 kV: https://www.siemens.com/press/pool/de/events/2012/energy/2012-07-wismar/factsheet-hvdc-e.pdf https://www.siemens.com/press/pool/de/events/2012/energy/201...
- sametmax 9y ago(1) I don't know how it's in the US, but in France the price for wind turbine projects must include underground electric cable setup and retirement of old turbines after x years. I don't think it's included for any other kind of energy source. (2) You are thinking the old way, the way fossil fuel formatted your thinking. There is always wind __somewhere__. There is always sun __somewhere__. We currently have very centralized way of harvesting energy. If we want to transition to alternative energy sources, it must come with changing the shape of the grid to accommodate a more decentralized system. Also partnership between countries would help a lot.
- treis 9y agoIt would be great if we had a continent wide grid that could efficiently transfer energy from one region to another, but we don't. Building one would be enormously expensive and we'd lose a lot of power in transit.
- disconnected 9y agoWouldn't it be great if such a thing existed? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_area_synchronous_grid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_area_synchronous_grid
- treis 9y agoThere's nowhere near enough capacity to transmit enough solar power from say Florida to power the Northeast. Besides, then you still run into problem 2. Florida has to have enough excess capacity to support the NE. And enough excess to make up for summer vs winter.
- sametmax 9y agoYou don't need that. A grid at the country scale is enough. Power is less consumed during the night, so using only wind by night is alright. Plus we already have "grid-contract" with neighbors in France to load balance. And even the biggest defenders of solar and wind don't advocate for going 100% at first. Mixing sources and increasing solar / wind gradually years and years is already nice.