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Can someone ELI5 why renewables are more expensive for consumers where I live? In Pennsylvania my electric utility allows me to choose my supplier. Invariably,

Can someone ELI5 why renewables are more expensive for consumers where I live? In Pennsylvania my electric utility allows me to choose my supplier. Invariably, the renewables are more costly than the fossil fuels. What gives? Is this just a regional phenomenon?

gameswithgo 5y ago
putting variable inputs like solar and wind on the grid makes the grid more expensive to manage.
microdrum 5y ago
Same reason internet bandwidth if more abundant and cheaper than ever, but your Comcast bill seems to actually only go up. Local rooftop solar, with no reliance on utility monopolies, is the most important thing in the global energy picture, and I'm afraid it isn't even close. And I'm pro nuclear. But it's past time to recognize that it's the distribution monopolists that are the problem. Solar and batteries free you from that.
- jdauriemma 5y ago
  Let’s stipulate that I don’t know why broadband bills are getting more expensive, if you don’t mind.
  - microdrum 5y ago
    https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/05/ajit-pai-promised-cheaper-internet-real-prices-rose-19-percent-instead/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/05/ajit-... The phenomenon is that consumer prices for broadband go up, even as the wholesale cost of bandwidth (what Comcast is reselling to you) goes down. The cause of this is a mix of two things: 1. Cable companies have regional monopolies. Without a choice, they can raise prices on consumers without losing customers 2. Cable companies face ever increasing 'infrastructural' costs, such as environmental review, trenching, construction, permitting, easements, etc... These costs are well established as going up in excess of inflation (part of why we can't build new infrastructure anymore) and therefore even while the product itself (internet access) gets cheaper, the 'last mile' of distribution keeps getting more expensive.
    - jdauriemma 5y ago
      Forgive me but I’m not understanding the example. Would you mind explaining why this comparison is valid for renewables but not fossil fuels?
- dwighttk 5y ago
  That is what 5 year olds around you understand?
  - microdrum 5y ago
    Yes, I violated eli5 rules. Sorry
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
xyzzyz 5y ago
Renewables are cheap per kWh, but they are only intermittently available, and since storage is basically nonexistent at grid scale, these kWh are only worth anything if there is demand for them, and are useless when there is demand, but sun is not shining or wind is not blowing. In effect, you still need to have some other way to produce electricity on demand, when there is no renewable supply. What’s worse is that if these more flexible sources of electricity (typically coal or gas) cannot compete with renewables when they do produce, they need to charge much more when renewables are out, in order to stay profitable — otherwise, they’d close, and we’d wouldn’t be able to meet the demand at all times. This would result in customers getting disconnected with very little notice, making them very unhappy. To sum up, it’s more expensive, because even as renewables grow in installed capacity, we cannot reduce installed capacity of fossil sources on 1-1 parity, and also we pay more per fossil generated kWh than we used to in all-fossil grid. Cheap grid-scale storage would solve this, but it’s no going to happen any time soon.
- jdauriemma 5y ago
  Thanks! Hopefully that means that, if renewables keep getting cheaper, then the economics will keep getting better.
  - xyzzyz 5y ago
    Not really, unless we can figure out how to make sun shine or wind blow 24/7. The intermittency is fundamental problem of solar and wind, and unless we figure out cheap storage, prices of electricity will not go down.
    - jdauriemma 5y ago
      But if the price keeps falling for electricity generation, isn’t there some sort of break-even point where you overcome the increased distribution costs?
      - xyzzyz 5y ago
        This is not about distribution. When sun is not shining, there is no solar energy to distribute. You can build as much solar as you want, but you won’t get any electricity from it during the night. Peak demand, however, is right after sunset, and only slowly peters out until midnight. Where are you going to get energy during that time? If you build enough wind all across the country, so that it is by itself enough to cover the peak demand even during low wind conditions, then it could work — but it’s cost prohibitive, and you wouldn’t then build any solar anyway (if wind was enough to cover peak demand in the evening, it would also be enough to cover demand during the day, no solar necessary). In practice, until cheap storage is invented, and as long as nuclear energy is eschewed, renewables will be paired up with fossil, and prices will stay up.
pfdietz 5y ago
Pennsylvania (particularly western and northern PA) is right on top of the Marcellus shale, which is loaded with frackable gas. Your renewables are competing with cheap gas, locally sourced with low pipeline cost, that isn't being charged for CO2 emissions.
- jdauriemma 5y ago
  Makes sense, thanks for that perspective
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
Political corruption. You may think I'm joking, but one of the fuels that meets Pensylvania's Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard is "waste coal": https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08941920903443335 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0894192090344333...
- jdauriemma 5y ago
  That’s interesting and pretty outrageous
- tialaramex 5y ago
  For people wondering what "waste coal" is like I was: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_refuse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_refuse
travisb 5y ago
I presume by "renewable" you really mean solar and wind. Hydro is generally pretty cheap, but also mostly tapped out. With that in mind, renewables are often more expensive for consumers due to a combination of a few factors: 1. The sun doesn't shine at night and the wind doesn't always blow strongly 2. People want to use power at all times of the day 3. Fixed costs in fossil fuel electricity generation are non-trivial 4. The utility scale electricity storage story is dire The result is that renewables need to be overbuilt compared to their nameplate capacities to make up for less-than ideal weather and expected daily and annual weather cycles. I've heard those renewables produce something like 30% of their annual nameplate where a coal or gas plant will produce 90+%. This overbuilding then ruins the wholesale price of electricity during high production times. For example, on a bright sunny spring day solar might push wholesale spot electricity prices negative. So the generating companies don't make as much money as you would expect from looking at average wholesale prices. But people still want to use power after the sun has gone down and even if the wind has stopped blowing. So those generating companies need generating capacity to fill in that several hour long gap. Utility scale power storage in batteries isn't anywhere near being able to affordably store several hours worth of electricity. Also a cloud can roll across quickly or the wind might die suddenly. Therefore that backup generation is almost uniformly natural gas turbines because they can spin up and down quickly. But even if no power is being sold by those plants, they need to be kept running to be instantly ready. So they are constantly burning some fuel to keep hot and spinning. The maintenance hours still keep racking up. There still needs to be people working 24/7. The costs of all that "idle" time need to be made up in the twelve hours of active generation. So you end up with essentially double the generating capacity, half solar/wind half natural gas, and are continually paying the costs for both. Obviously that's going to be more expensive than simply burning a bit more fuel to run the natural gas plants near capacity full time. Or even build more efficient base-load plant types like coal or nuclear which have troubles scaling up and down quickly enough to balance out changeable renewable generation.
- froh 5y ago
  Renewables need buffering capacity, indeed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectric... Or decentralized battery packs.
rr808 5y ago
Also there are a lot of renewables just sold on the grid without consumer marketing. The only reason the have a "renewable consumer plan" would be to charge people more. It wouldn't make sense to have a consumer plan with renewables and charge people less than the market rate.

gameswithgo 5y ago

putting variable inputs like solar and wind on the grid makes the grid more expensive to manage.

microdrum 5y ago

Same reason internet bandwidth if more abundant and cheaper than ever, but your Comcast bill seems to actually only go up. Local rooftop solar, with no reliance on utility monopolies, is the most important thing in the global energy picture, and I'm afraid it isn't even close. And I'm pro nuclear. But it's past time to recognize that it's the distribution monopolists that are the problem. Solar and batteries free you from that.

jdauriemma 5y ago
Let’s stipulate that I don’t know why broadband bills are getting more expensive, if you don’t mind.
- microdrum 5y ago
  https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/05/ajit-pai-promised-cheaper-internet-real-prices-rose-19-percent-instead/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/05/ajit-... The phenomenon is that consumer prices for broadband go up, even as the wholesale cost of bandwidth (what Comcast is reselling to you) goes down. The cause of this is a mix of two things: 1. Cable companies have regional monopolies. Without a choice, they can raise prices on consumers without losing customers 2. Cable companies face ever increasing 'infrastructural' costs, such as environmental review, trenching, construction, permitting, easements, etc... These costs are well established as going up in excess of inflation (part of why we can't build new infrastructure anymore) and therefore even while the product itself (internet access) gets cheaper, the 'last mile' of distribution keeps getting more expensive.
  - jdauriemma 5y ago
    Forgive me but I’m not understanding the example. Would you mind explaining why this comparison is valid for renewables but not fossil fuels?
dwighttk 5y ago
That is what 5 year olds around you understand?
- microdrum 5y ago
  Yes, I violated eli5 rules. Sorry
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

xyzzyz 5y ago

Renewables are cheap per kWh, but they are only intermittently available, and since storage is basically nonexistent at grid scale, these kWh are only worth anything if there is demand for them, and are useless when there is demand, but sun is not shining or wind is not blowing. In effect, you still need to have some other way to produce electricity on demand, when there is no renewable supply. What’s worse is that if these more flexible sources of electricity (typically coal or gas) cannot compete with renewables when they do produce, they need to charge much more when renewables are out, in order to stay profitable — otherwise, they’d close, and we’d wouldn’t be able to meet the demand at all times. This would result in customers getting disconnected with very little notice, making them very unhappy. To sum up, it’s more expensive, because even as renewables grow in installed capacity, we cannot reduce installed capacity of fossil sources on 1-1 parity, and also we pay more per fossil generated kWh than we used to in all-fossil grid. Cheap grid-scale storage would solve this, but it’s no going to happen any time soon.

jdauriemma 5y ago
Thanks! Hopefully that means that, if renewables keep getting cheaper, then the economics will keep getting better.
- xyzzyz 5y ago
  Not really, unless we can figure out how to make sun shine or wind blow 24/7. The intermittency is fundamental problem of solar and wind, and unless we figure out cheap storage, prices of electricity will not go down.
  - jdauriemma 5y ago
    But if the price keeps falling for electricity generation, isn’t there some sort of break-even point where you overcome the increased distribution costs?
    - xyzzyz 5y ago
      This is not about distribution. When sun is not shining, there is no solar energy to distribute. You can build as much solar as you want, but you won’t get any electricity from it during the night. Peak demand, however, is right after sunset, and only slowly peters out until midnight. Where are you going to get energy during that time? If you build enough wind all across the country, so that it is by itself enough to cover the peak demand even during low wind conditions, then it could work — but it’s cost prohibitive, and you wouldn’t then build any solar anyway (if wind was enough to cover peak demand in the evening, it would also be enough to cover demand during the day, no solar necessary). In practice, until cheap storage is invented, and as long as nuclear energy is eschewed, renewables will be paired up with fossil, and prices will stay up.

pfdietz 5y ago

Pennsylvania (particularly western and northern PA) is right on top of the Marcellus shale, which is loaded with frackable gas. Your renewables are competing with cheap gas, locally sourced with low pipeline cost, that isn't being charged for CO2 emissions.

jdauriemma 5y ago
Makes sense, thanks for that perspective

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

Political corruption. You may think I'm joking, but one of the fuels that meets Pensylvania's Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard is "waste coal": https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08941920903443335 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0894192090344333...

jdauriemma 5y ago
That’s interesting and pretty outrageous
tialaramex 5y ago
For people wondering what "waste coal" is like I was: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_refuse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_refuse

travisb 5y ago

I presume by "renewable" you really mean solar and wind. Hydro is generally pretty cheap, but also mostly tapped out. With that in mind, renewables are often more expensive for consumers due to a combination of a few factors: 1. The sun doesn't shine at night and the wind doesn't always blow strongly 2. People want to use power at all times of the day 3. Fixed costs in fossil fuel electricity generation are non-trivial 4. The utility scale electricity storage story is dire The result is that renewables need to be overbuilt compared to their nameplate capacities to make up for less-than ideal weather and expected daily and annual weather cycles. I've heard those renewables produce something like 30% of their annual nameplate where a coal or gas plant will produce 90+%. This overbuilding then ruins the wholesale price of electricity during high production times. For example, on a bright sunny spring day solar might push wholesale spot electricity prices negative. So the generating companies don't make as much money as you would expect from looking at average wholesale prices. But people still want to use power after the sun has gone down and even if the wind has stopped blowing. So those generating companies need generating capacity to fill in that several hour long gap. Utility scale power storage in batteries isn't anywhere near being able to affordably store several hours worth of electricity. Also a cloud can roll across quickly or the wind might die suddenly. Therefore that backup generation is almost uniformly natural gas turbines because they can spin up and down quickly. But even if no power is being sold by those plants, they need to be kept running to be instantly ready. So they are constantly burning some fuel to keep hot and spinning. The maintenance hours still keep racking up. There still needs to be people working 24/7. The costs of all that "idle" time need to be made up in the twelve hours of active generation. So you end up with essentially double the generating capacity, half solar/wind half natural gas, and are continually paying the costs for both. Obviously that's going to be more expensive than simply burning a bit more fuel to run the natural gas plants near capacity full time. Or even build more efficient base-load plant types like coal or nuclear which have troubles scaling up and down quickly enough to balance out changeable renewable generation.

froh 5y ago
Renewables need buffering capacity, indeed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectric... Or decentralized battery packs.

rr808 5y ago

Also there are a lot of renewables just sold on the grid without consumer marketing. The only reason the have a "renewable consumer plan" would be to charge people more. It wouldn't make sense to have a consumer plan with renewables and charge people less than the market rate.