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That is not the case here. The term everyone in the energy industry uses now is the "LCOE" (levelized cost of electricity) that does an apples-to-apples compari
by diafygi 8y ago
That is not the case here. The term everyone in the energy industry uses now is the "LCOE" (levelized cost of electricity) that does an apples-to-apples comparison (e.g. removes subsidies). For example, the investment firm Lazard puts out an annual comparison report on the LCOE and last year wind was cheaper than natural gas on an unsubsidized LCOE basis and solar is getting within a dollar per megawatt-hour of natural gas[1].
However, raw solar and wind only gets you to about 50% penetration before you start having to add storage in addition to renewables, and that is still about 5-10 years away from being cheap enough to take us from 50% to >90%[2].
[1]: https://www.lazard.com/media/450337/lazard-levelized-cost-of-energy-version-110.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/450337/lazard-levelized-cost-of...
[2]: https://www.lazard.com/media/450338/lazard-levelized-cost-of-storage-version-30.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/450338/lazard-levelized-cost-of...
- barney54 8y agoIt is not accurate that LCOE provides apples-to-apples comparisons. For examples, there is no value for dispatchability. As EIA explains, “The direct comparison of LCOE across technologies is, therefore, often problematic and can be misleading as a method to assess the economic competitiveness of various generation alternatives because projected utilization rates, the existing resource mix, and capacity values can all vary dramatically across regions where new generation capacity may be needed.” https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.... The point is that care should be taken to compare various types of generation and LCOE isn’t a good measure to do that.
- specialist 8y agoFor the scope of this discussion, is there a better measure?