Claims that wind and solar are cheap, simply don’t add up. Glaring examples such as Germany, Denmark and South Australia tell the tale.
Like night follows day, add heavily subsidised and chaotically intermittent wind and solar to your grid, and power prices are bound to spiral out of control.
For RE zealots it’s one of those little ‘inconvenient truths’, and its application is universal. Here’s Donn Dears tallying up the cost in the US of A.
Beware the Message
Power for USA
Donn Dears
30 April 2019
The debate over energy, the green new deal and climate change has resulted in the art of obfuscation being advanced to new heights.
Energy and science are inherently complicated, but the laws governing these activities are rigid. Laws, such as, energy can neither be created or destroyed, are absolute.
While the laws can’t be changed, it’s possible to modify perceptions by adding value judgments.
Value judgments are at the heart of obfuscation.
Coal is perhaps the least costly method for generating electricity. But, when a price for CO2 is added, the cost of electricity increases. Without the cost of CO2, the LCOE for coal is under 6 cents per kWh, but adding a $15 charge for CO2 increases the LCOE to nearly 10 cents per kWh.
The levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) has been a standard cost measurement for decades.
Based on LCOEs, the two least costly methods for generating electricity are coal-fired and natural gas combine cycle (NGCC) power plants.
The advent of the climate change debate and the introduction of renewables has resulted in a plethora of measurements to make it appear as though wind and solar are competitive with coal and natural gas.
Computers have assisted in the development of new hard to understand measurements. These new measurements have two advantages. The programs used to manipulate the new measurements are indecipherable to the average person. Even experienced engineers will have difficulty performing the tedious task of reviewing the logic and mathematics, always calculus, when trying to determine the validity of the new measurement.
The second advantage is that they can be used to obfuscate an issue and mislead people.
The latest of these new measurements has been introduced by the International Energy Agency in its WEO2018 Outlook and its WEM2018 (World Energy Model 2018).
The IEA has created the VALCOE (Value Added Levelized Cost of Electricity).
It’s ideally suited for obfuscation.
Quoting from the WEM2018:
“The value-adjusted LCOE (VALCOE) is a new metric for competitiveness for power generation technologies and was developed for the WEO-2018, building on the capabilities of the WEM hourly power supply model. It is intended to complement the LCOE, which only captures relevant information on costs and does not reflect the differing value propositions of technologies.”
Who determines the value propositions of technologies? Who determines what is bad and what is good?
Now, we have a measurement that few people can understand and that is based on opinion, because that is what value judgments are.
This would all be amusing and relegated to the province of academia if it wasn’t used to propagandize people about the cost of electricity that affects every person’s household budget.
We have reached the point where it’s not possible to believe anything published by the media.
Perhaps the only way to determine whether what’s reported by the media is true, is to look at the outcomes of actions taken in different areas of the country.
For example, the cost of electricity in California is 50 percent higher than in states that haven’t adopted renewables. The cost of electricity in Germany, with its Energiewende program to cut CO2 emissions, is 4 times the average cost of electricity in the United States.
As they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, not the pretty picture on the cover of the box containing the pudding mix.
Power for USA
STOP THESE THINGS 
Reblogged this on ajmarciniak.
Nuclear power’s blinkered top communicators take the high cost of nuclear as read and seem incapable of responding with a simple, clear-cut argument carrying appeal to environmentalists and food for thought for investors and legislators.
Talk cost of technologies up to the point the first MWh of dividend-paying electricity is generated. Nuclear wins every time – even the most expensive npp ever: Hinkley Point C – comes in at $16.93/MWh.
The Solar Star project, with a capacity factor of 33.2% – assuming a 30 year lifespan – carries a cost of $49.50/MWh. That’s nearly 3X the cost of Hinkley.
But by then pointing the way to advanced nuclear, and saying that a leading US nuclear power company is stating unequivocally that in 10 to 12 years time their 300 MW SMR will be under 1/4 of the cost per MW of Hinkley and the best of solar pv technology will then carry a cost burden 12X greater than nuclear.
What can then be said, to carry the environmentalist message, is that the reason is very simple: even the best of solar pv uses at least 12X more precious material resources and fossil-fuelled energy every step of the way, from mining to installation.
On top of that, California’s solar technology causes at least 1000X [13 sq km site Vs 0.1 sq km site] more scenic desecration, ecosystem destruction, species wipe-out and waste mountains.
Now can anyone tell me what’s wrong by responding in this fashion, instead of sitting there and taking the ‘nuclear cost’ custard pie in the face every single time?
Very sound approach. In Australia, the idiots that pretend to govern us banned nuclear power generation, so we are not in the same ball park.
Money is no object in California. Just ask the retirees.
Reblogged this on Climate- Science and commented:
Green ideologues like dumb energy because they don`t accept science. Waiting for blackouts.
The AGW threat being as yet unproven, remove the Carbon taxes!.