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When discussing market forces and renewables keep in mind, Levelized cost of electricity is a largely useless metric because it doesn't take into account the pr
by holbrad 3y ago
When discussing market forces and renewables keep in mind, Levelized cost of electricity is a largely useless metric because it doesn't take into account the prohibitively high costs of storage and redundant infrastructure needed for intermittent sources.
- esarbe 3y agoI'm not sure that this is completely true. Yes, it's true that levelized cost is not giving the full picture. But that's not quite the point here. The point is to show that the "free market" is not the solution we're looking for and that waiting for the market to solve this will closely resemble Waiting for Godot. So sure, that infrastructure needs to be built. But that was also the case for fossil fuels. Think of the massive infrastructure required to get gas to a power plant. Much of that infrastructure is subsidized, it's already there and thus any energy source trying to get into the market cannot just be slightly cheaper; the cost advantages of the established system is just to great. So in a way, your statement supports my argument that the market will not able to fix this for us.