# True cost of various electricity sources **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 24, 2017, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-cost-of-various-electricity-sources/780677 "2017-02-24T22:54:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Quercus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7ab992/32.png) [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2017, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-cost-of-various-electricity-sources/780677/21 "2017-02-26T17:36:18Z")
> [@Alley\_Dweller](#): > > A major drawback of solar is that it functions, at best, about half of each day. It doesn’t work nights or on cloudy days and people expect electricity to be available 24/7/365. So you have to install redundant non-solar systems to provide electricity on demand or you have to have massive electrical storage systems. That adds significant costs and complexity. That’s true in theory, and something to be dealt with in the long run, but is not an issue right now. At the moment, the highest electricity demand is always during peak air conditioning weather – hot sunny summer days. Which happens to be when solar is at peak production. So, for quite a while yet, adding more solar will allow less non-solar generation. There are also ways to store solar power so it can be used later, and they’re getting more efficient. ---
**Author:** ![boffking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/858c86/32.png) [@boffking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/boffking)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2017, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-cost-of-various-electricity-sources/780677/22 "2017-02-26T18:30:30Z")
I have read several articles that say biomass is the most expensive, and most reliant on subsidies, at least in Maine. We have several biomass plants that were designed to burn waste from the paper and timber industries. With those industries fading fast in Maine, we are now spending millions of tax dollars on chopping down trees, for the express purpose of burning them for electricity. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2017, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-cost-of-various-electricity-sources/780677/23 "2017-02-26T22:58:14Z")
There are some dams across the globe that are torn down, but the vast majority of them are not. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2017, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-cost-of-various-electricity-sources/780677/24 "2017-02-26T23:35:20Z")
> [@Evan\_Drake](#): > > Aren’t they pulling down the dams ? All over the **[world](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_removal)**? Not really. Most dam removal is in the US with some in Europe and Canada. In much of the world they’re still putting dams up. They’re even putting up one or two in some of the more remote parts of Europe. The US and most of Europe, though, are saturated with dams and there are many that are no longer being used for their original purpose or any purpose at all. They’re just clogging up the river and interfering with things like fish migration and navigation. Also, reservoirs behind dams produce methane, a greenhouse gas, so they’re not as climate-neutral as usually assumed. I’m not sure how up-to-date that wikipage is. Numbers I’ve seen is that there’s around 85-90 thousand dams in the US and maybe 1500 or so have been removed in the past 30 years. The majority of those 1500 were not generating hydro power. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2017, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-cost-of-various-electricity-sources/780677/25 "2017-02-27T02:16:39Z")
This doesn’t totally answer the question, but there are various charts that have cost per MWH. > **[Cost of electricity by source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source)** > > Different methods of electricity generation can incur a variety of different costs, which can be divided into three general categories: 1) wholesale costs, or all costs paid by utilities associated with acquiring and distributing electricity to consumers, 2) retail costs paid by consumers, and 3) external costs, or externalities, imposed on society. > Wholesale costs include initial capital, operations & maintenance (O&M), transmission, and costs of decommissioning. Depending on the local regula... [![](https://instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/2.15.13-IER-Web-LevelizedCost-MKM.png) ](https://instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/2.15.13-IER-Web-LevelizedCost-MKM.png) However technologies that are advancing rapidly like solar and wind will see price declines from even a few years ago. I think solar is half the cost of what it was 5-6 years ago, so if you find a chart from 2011 it is totally out of date for some technologies. Also I’m not sure how they take into account higher infrastructure costs due to unreliability of renewables. ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2017, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-cost-of-various-electricity-sources/780677/26 "2017-02-28T00:30:51Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > Anyway, a factual GQ answer for OP is that land-based wind power is the cheapest electricity … at least for places where there is harvestable wind. This seems unlikely to be true. I’m quite familiar with the economics of large-scale onshore wind projects in areas with very good wind resource (\>30% load factor), and the lifetime cost over 15 years at a reasonable discount rate comes out around €70 to €80/MWh. This figure excludes system externalities (also borne by the end user) which are variously estimated in the region of €20/MWh, although these are highly dependent on the configuration of the existing system. ---
**Author:** ![JMLVT68](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a9a28c/32.png) [@JMLVT68](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JMLVT68)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2017, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-cost-of-various-electricity-sources/780677/27 "2017-02-28T15:17:13Z")
tl;dr version: levelized cost of energy data are here: [https://www.lazard.com/media/438038/levelized-cost-of-energy-v100.pdf](https://www.lazard.com/media/438038/levelized-cost-of-energy-v100.pdf) > [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > Expanding on what **Alley Dweller** said, wind and solar both suck because they aren’t consistent, and there isn’t much energy storage in most power systems. Many power systems are forced to run other types of power plants either at idle or at reduced capacity so that they can quickly increase their power and make up for inconsistencies in solar and wind generator. This wastes a lot of energy and resources in those idling and under-utilized plants. I have not seen any estimate that indicates that there is “a lot” of energy wasted in spinning reserves. In fact, those reserves have always been necessary on the system, and at the level of penetration of solar and wind projected for the next several years in nearly every US market with the exception of California, I don’t think there is a need to dramatically increase the amount of spinning reserve. So, I think the extra cost here is not relevant. > [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > As energy storage gets cheaper, solar might become much more attractive, but right now, it’s god-awful expensive if you want to have it capable of generating its own power without needing some fossil or nuke plant backing it up. But that is neither the question the OP asked nor the relevant question when it comes to either commercial or societal decisions about what resources to invest in RIGHT NOW. If solar and wind are the cheapest form of new generation (more on that in a minute), that is the best investment now. If and when we get to the point where we can’t add more solar or wind without the “back up” capacity you reference, then that will need to be part of the equation. Right now, it’s simply not, because most of the capacity on our system is used far less than 100% of the time. > [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > Wind and solar are also sometimes used to do things like pump a bunch of water uphill into a reservoir. At night or at other times when additional energy is needed, that water can be channeled down through conventional hydroelectric generators to recover that energy and make up for the wind/solar inconsistencies. Obviously, all of this adds a significant amount of extra complexity and cost. Again, neither the question asked nor completely accurate. Energy from pumped storage hydro is more expensive than from some other sources, but its value comes from the arbitrage between low price of power during (typically) overnight periods and the high price during weekday peaks. Pumped storage has therefore existed since well before there was any measurable amount of solar and wind on the grid. The Lewiston plant at Niagara was constructed in 1961. Finally, for a widely-cited reference that brings a lot of information together into one source, I suggest the Lazard Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis, now in its 10th version. It has a great deal of information that addresses many of the comments made so far, including those related to externalities, fuel price forecasts, intermittency and reliability, and the value of carbon mitigation. You can find it here: [https://www.lazard.com/media/438038/levelized-cost-of-energy-v100.pdf](https://www.lazard.com/media/438038/levelized-cost-of-energy-v100.pdf) You can probably find data in this to support a variety of arguments, but the bottom line is that, yes, utility scale PV and on-shore wind are directly competitive with new gas-fired generation on an unsubsidized basis, with no value assigned to externalities. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2017, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-cost-of-various-electricity-sources/780677/28 "2017-02-28T20:50:37Z")
Of course, what’s even better than pumped storage is to just not run your conventional hydro generators when the transient sources are online and power is cheap. Instead of having water flowing down at one point to put energy into the grid and water flowing up somewhere else to store energy out of the grid, just eliminate the middleman with its associated inefficiencies. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2017, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-cost-of-various-electricity-sources/780677/29 "2017-02-28T23:29:44Z")
Net of course of the requirement to release water to prevent the reservoir behind that dam overfilling and also to release water to supply the downstream river with its agreed minimum supply. For many dams in many circumstances making electricity is optional; releasing water is not. At which point once water release is mandatory if you have any way to store that electricity you’re better off to run the dam’s generators. Even if that storage is inefficient. Electricity generated from mandatory release water can also be used to take incremental fossil-fueled capacity offline. ---
**Author:** ![upend](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b3f665/32.png) [@upend](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/upend)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-cost-of-various-electricity-sources/780677/30 "2017-03-02T13:53:13Z")
the answer, ignoring all subsidies is cheap foreign coal. Then domsetic coal, then gas. if any renewable was cheaper then there would be no need for subsidies. Note - coal is horrible for the environment and no-one would see it as a long term solution to anything but it IS cheap ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-cost-of-various-electricity-sources/780677/31 "2017-03-02T21:22:01Z")
Hydro, where it exists, is cheaper than coal, and it doesn’t need subsidies (though I’m sure the operator of any dam would be happy to accept them). But like I said, it’s already saturated. ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-cost-of-various-electricity-sources/780677/32 "2017-03-02T21:38:22Z")
> [@upend](#): > > if any renewable was cheaper then there would be no need for subsidies. That’s not necessarily true. If renewables are competing with existing rather than new alternatives in an oversupplied generation market, they could still require a subsidy to get built even if their LCOE is cheaper than that of alternative technologies. ---
**Author:** ![Kevbo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e47774/32.png) [@Kevbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kevbo)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-cost-of-various-electricity-sources/780677/33 "2017-03-02T21:50:41Z")
With Nukes, one of the complicating factors is what fuel do you burn? US Nukes burn lightly enriched uranium, which is fairly expensive compared to the plutonium that the rest of the world burns…but plutonium is far easier to make bombs from, so do you externalize the cost of the IAEA inspectors making sure it doesn’t get diverted? And such monitoring is optional in most nuclear states, but mandated in NPT (non-proliferation treaty) signitory states. Even so, the one plant operating engineer I have spoken with (at Ringhals Sweden, many years ago, now) told me that the price of fuel is so low that fuel efficiency is ignored when they figure cost of operation…even including the labor cost of the fueling crews, dormitories to house them, etc, it is less than 5% of the operational budget. The net cost is almost entirely capital and time-value-of-money. They therefore operate to maximize plant longevity, rather than efficiency, which happily means minimizing stress and potential for catastrophic failure. Basically they run the plant a quite a bit cooler than optimal efficiency…though they get a bit of a boost in the winter due to cooler sea water on the other side of the cycle. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/true-cost-of-various-electricity-sources/780677.md?page=1)