4 ms·
A no-nonsense title like "building and operating wind farms is cheaper than building and operating natural gas plants" wouldn't have been clickbait-ish enough.
by lazyjones 7y ago
A no-nonsense title like "building and operating wind farms is cheaper than building and operating natural gas plants" wouldn't have been clickbait-ish enough.
- Brakenshire 7y agoThat’s not the claim they’re making, they’re saying wind is cheaper than just buying the fuel for a pre-existing natural gas plant.
- perl4ever 7y agoI don't understand how you can compare the cost of a wind farm to fossil fuel. The former provides megawatts, and the latter provides megawatt-hours. You would have to incorporate assumptions on lifespan, maintenance and/or amortization.
- Brakenshire 7y agoYes, that’s what they do, it’s called a levelized cost. These costs usually come with a sensitivity analysis of the impact of the different assumptions. Wind or solar is actually often commissioned using a power purchase agreement for a certain price per kWh, guaranteed over a certain period.
- inflatableDodo 7y agoUnless the wind turbines are trapped in some sort of time freezing status field, I would generally assume that they both can be measured in megawatt-hours. Or you can multiply out by 3.6 to get to gigajoules if you want more sensible units to play with.