Quote:
Originally Posted by clive milne
Renewable energy may be more more expensive to buy (from your fossil fuel energy distributor) but it is actually cheaper to produce than the energy they derive from fossil fuels... and has been for over a year. The trend has been diverging progressively in favour of renewables since then.
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/rene...ustralia-62268
Your argument doesn't hold water Doug. |
Funny, every financial newsletter I've read has said that wind is around three times dearer than coal, and solar is around six times dearer.
So, who's right Bloomberg New Energy Finance or other financial analysts?
Well, we can look at real world examples to see how it has worked out.
South Australia has the highest percentage of renewable energy in Australia, and it has the highest power prices in Australia, and close to the highest in the world.
UK has heaps of wind farms and last year was saved from a total breakdown in the grid only because a coal fired power station that was due to have been closed by EU directive, came to the rescue. So now they are managing this problem by putting back-up diesel generators in sensitive places like hospitals and the like all over the country, which cost ten times the amount of coal fired energy. And they're paying industries to shut down when needed.
Spain should be going great guns with all it's enthusiastic investment in renewables, but instead those seem to have been duds, and they aren't spending much on them anymore given they are close to bankruptcy.
And how dumb are the Germans and the Japanese? They've gotten scared about nuclear, and are building these supposedly very expensive coal fired power plants in huge quantities, instead of the cheap renewable ones that Bloomberg are telling us about, and which Germany had previously been a champion of.
Dumber still - by a longshot - must be the Chinese. They build most of the solar and wind generation which is exported to the rest of the world. But instead of using this fabulously cheap form of energy they foolishly, for unfathomable reasons, every three months put up new coal fired power station capacity that equals Australia's total generation capacity. They could be saving a mega-fortune if they only followed Bloomberg's advice and used the equipment that they manufacture locally.
Pardon my scepticism, but if non-hydro renewable electricity generation were cheaper than coal fired generation, one wouldn't need the legislated mass cross subsidies that currently exist through the renewable energy targets that the Coalition brought into law under John Howard, and the prices wouldn't be going through the roof.
But, this is all a scam anyway. All the billions of dollars invested in wind farms in Australia, haven't actually stopped any coal from being burned. The coal fired power stations can't be turned off when the wind farms dump a heap of energy into the system. The coal fired stations have to keep burning and shed their excess energy (though they can presumably be turned down to their night generation rate). Gas fired stations can be turned off and on more easily, but curiously, in Australia they haven't been turned off when the wind farms have a big output - presumably because the operators expect more problems turning them off and on than from just leaving them on.
So, when Bloomberg "
found that new wind farms could supply electricity at a cost of $80/MWh –compared with $143/MWh for new build coal" ,
even if these figures were accurate, they leave out the part where in practice the cost that has to be paid for is more like $80+$143= $223/MWh.
Regards,
Renato