Chaos Costs: Why Intermittent Delivery of Wind & Solar Causes Crippling Power Prices

Add intermittent wind and solar to a power grid and crippling power prices follow, as night follows day.

When power generation and delivery was in the hands of engineers, coal and gas-fired plants ran efficiently and costs were low. Now that ideology reigns instead, and lunatics are firmly in charge of the asylum, the efficient running and operation of power plants is a thing of the past.

What was once a carefully designed system, has become a victim of chaos.

And, as Donn Dears details below, chaos costs.

More Unreported Hidden Costs
Power For USA
Donn Dears
19 October 2021

The fact that wind and solar are more costly than coal-fired, natural gas, and nuclear power plants is easy to explain: They need backup or storage which automatically increases the cost of wind and solar.

What’s not usually recognized is that wind and solar also increases the cost of electricity in other ways.

For example, the latest natural gas combined cycle (NGCC) power plants can have efficiencies as high as 63%, but with wind and solar on the grid these plants would have to operate in a following mode which decreases their efficiency.

The same is true with all NGCC power plants already in operation. These plants must respond to wind and solar’s ups and downs in output, i.e. operate in a following mode, which lowers their efficiencies.

This is evident when viewing ongoing capacity factors (CF) for existing NGCC power plants.

The latest CF for NGCC power plants in the US is 56.6%.

If they could operate as intended, which is as baseload power running 24/7, their CF would be around 80%.

The fact that their current CFs are at around 57% means they have been running in following mode which has resulted in their being less efficient. With lower efficiencies, the cost of electricity increases.

This is just another cost of using wind and solar that’s not reported on by the media.

Even hydro is affected by the intermittency of wind and solar. When hydro has to follow load, the ups and downs increases maintenance costs. Coal-fired power plants are even more adversely affected by having to follow load, with the rapid changes in temperature and differing expansion and contraction rates of materials creating serious maintenance problems.

These hidden costs are not included in the LCOEs touted by Lazard and others.

There is no getting around the fact that adding wind and solar to the grid increases the cost of electricity for everyone.
Power For USA