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To: Brumar89 who wrote (894736)

10/18/2015 1:40:59 PM

From: Brumar89

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Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1586653

The Real Cost Of Wind Power
October 18, 2015

By Paul Homewood

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/10/09/is-wind-power-really-cheaper/

We saw the headlines last week of claims that wind power is now the cheapest source of electricity. As I pointed out at the time, such claims ignore the fact that wind needs back up capacity, and therefore cannot be directly compared with conventional, dispatchable capacity.

I have now had a chance to do some detailed costing, based on the EIA calculations that they published in June.

http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/electricity_generation.cfm

My costings are derived from this table:

First, let’s convert these unit costs back to annual costs per MW capacity.

So using Advanced CCGT for instance, the capital cost of $15.9/MWh equals an annual cost of $121177. (EIA assume 30 yrs life span for all technologies, so we can project this to a total capital cost of $3.292 million per MW).

The calculation is :-

$15.9 x 8760 (hours/yr) x 87% (capacity factor)

We can do a similar calculation with fixed costs. Before variable costs, therefore, we get the following annual cost per MW in $.

	Adv CCGT	Offshore Wind	Onshore Wind
Capital	121177	561236	181962
Fixed	15242	74898	40366
Total	136419	636134	222328

Capacity Factors

Although the EIA have set assumptions for capacity utilisation, they don’t necessarily apply to the UK. For instance, according to DECC, onshore wind only produces 26% of its theoretical capacity.

Also, because of large variations in overall demand, conventional power does not always run at anywhere near its technical capability.

DECC data suggest that CCGT was operating at around 58% of capacity back in 2010, before subsidised renewables began to seriously distort the grid.

Using this figure, we can build up a cost for gas only, based on 1MW of capacity:

Advanced CCGT	$
1 MW @58%= 5080 MWh/yr
Capital+Fixed Costs/yr	136419
Capital+Fixed Costs/MWh	26.85
Variable Costs/MWh	53.60
Total Cost /MWh	80.45

Similarly for wind:

Onshore Wind	$
1 MW @26% = 2277 MWh/yr
Capital+Fixed Costs/yr	222328
Capital+Fixed Costs/MWh	97.64
Variable Costs/MWh	–
Total Cost/MWh	97.64

Offshore Wind	S
1MW @37% = 3241 MWh/yr
Capital+Fixed Costs/yr	636134
Capital+Fixed Costs/MWh	196.27
Variable Costs/MWh	–
Total Cost/MWh	196.27

Standby Capacity

As we can see, even onshore wind is still more expensive than CCGT, but that is only half the story.

As wind power is inherently unreliable, every megawatt of wind capacity effectively needs to be backed up with something that is reliable. For the sake of this exercise, let us assume this will be in the shape of new advanced CCGT.

So the real capital and fixed cost to provide that 1MW of onshore wind capacity is:

	S
Onshore Wind	222328
CCGT	136419
Total Capital+Fixed/yr	358747
@26% capacity = 2277 MWh/yr
Cost/MWh	157.55

And offshore:

	S
Offshore Wind	636134
CCGT	136419
Total Capital+Fixed/yr	772553
@37% capacity = 3241 MWh/yr
Cost/MWh	238.37

Compared with the CCGT cost per MWh of $80.45, claims that wind power is now the cheapest source of electricity are utterly ludicrous.

NOTES

1) The EIA notes that transmission costs are higher for wind power. While this is certainly also true in the UK, I have not included these in the analysis because the costs may be different.

2) We are obviously comparing on a new for new basis. Given that the UK already has a certain amount of existing capacity to back up wind, the comparative costs of CCGT would be even lower.

3) Running gas turbines on an intermittent basis is an inherently costly thing to do, and would add more costs to the wind options outlined above.

4) EIA assume a life of 30 years for all technologies. This may well be an overestimate for wind, and is almost certainly an underestimate for CCGT.

5) Capacity assumptions are from DECC:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/energy-trends-section-6-renewables

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/electricity-section-5-energy-trends

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/10/18/the-real-cost-of-wind-power/#more-17695

To: Brumar89 who wrote (894736)	10/18/2015 1:44:37 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1586653

Nearly every single climate model prediction, projection or whatever else they want to call them has been wrong. Weather forecasts beyond 72 hours typically deteriorate into their error bands. The UK Met Office summer forecast was wrong again. broken computer I have lost track of the number of times they were wrong. Apparently, the British Broadcasting Corporation had enough as they stopped using their services. They are not just marginally wrong. Invariably, the weather is the inverse of their forecast.Short, medium, and long-term climate forecasts are wrong more than 50 percent of the time so that a correct one is a no better than a random event. Global and or regional forecasts are often equally incorrect. If there were a climate model that made even 60 percent accurate forecasts, everybody would use it. Since there is no single accurate climate model forecast, the IPCC resorts to averaging out their model forecasts as if, somehow, the errors would cancel each other out and the average of forecasts would be representative. Short term climate forecasts no better than the Old Farmers Almanac Climate models and their forecasts have been unmitigated failures that would cause an automatic cessation in any other enterprise. Unless, of course, it was another government funded, fiasco. Daily weather forecasts are improved from when modern forecasting began in World War I. However, even short term climate forecasts appear no better than the Old Farmers Almanac, which appeared in 1792, using moon, sun, and other astronomical and terrestrial indicators. I have written and often spoken about the key role of the models in creating and perpetuating the catastrophic AGW mythology. People were shocked by the leaked emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), but most don’t know that the actual instructions to “hide the decline” in the tree ring portion of the hockey stick graph were in the computer code. It is one reason that people translate the Garbage In, Garbage Out (GIGO) acronym as Gospel in, Gospel Out when speaking of climate models. I am tired of the continued pretense that climate models can produce accurate forecasts in a chaotic system. Sadly, the pretense occurs on both sides of the scientific debate. The reality is the models don’t work and can’t work for many reasons, including the most fundamental; lack of data, lack of knowledge of major mechanisms, lack of knowledge of basic physical processes, lack of ability to represent physical mechanisms like turbulence in mathematical form, and lack of computer capacity. Bob Tisdale summarized the problems in his 2013 book Climate Models Fail. It is time to stop wasting time and money and put people and computers to more important uses.The only thing that keeps people working on the models is government funding, either at weather offices or in academia. Without this funding computer modelers would not dominate the study of climate. Without the funding, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change could not exist. Many of the people involved in climate modeling were not familiar with or had no training in climatology or climate science. They were graduates of computer modeling programs looking for a challenging opportunity with large amounts of funding available and access to large computers. The atmosphere and later the oceans fit the bill. Now they put the two together to continue the fiasco. Unfortunately, it is all at massive expense to society. Those expenses include the computers and the modeling time but worse the cost of applying the failed results to global energy and environmental issues. Let’s stop pretending and wasting money and time. Remove that funding and nobody would spend private money to work on climate forecast models. I used to argue that there was some small value in playing with climate models in a laboratory, with only a scientific responsibility for the accuracy, feasibility, and applicability. It is clear they do not fulfill those responsibilities. Now I realize that position was wrong. When model results are used as the sole basis for government policy, there is no value. It is a massive cost and detriment to society, which is what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was specifically designed to do.The IPCC has one small value. It illustrates all the problems identified in the previous comments. Laboratory-generated climate models are manipulated outside of even basic scientific rigor in government weather offices or academia, and then become the basis of public policy through the Summary for Policymakers (SPM). Another value of the IPCC Physical Science Basis Reports is they provide a detailed listing of why models can’t and don’t work. Too bad few read or understand them. If they did, they would realize the limitations are such that they preclude any chance of success.