Guest Post by David Middleton
My apologies to the memories of the late Richard Llewellyn and late John Ford; but I just had to borrow their title for this post. This paragraph from a 2010 Telegraph article really says it all…
Its 500,000 photovoltaic panels will generate 30 megawatts of electricity, enough, in the popular measurement, to power 9,000 homes. It is costing about $250 million to build, significantly less than a gas, coal or nuclear power station, which can easily exceed $1 billion. And it represents a sea-change in America’s energy business.
America has been notoriously devoted to hydrocarbon fuels. Big Oil, Big Coal and big Texan hats in the White House were seen by the rest of the world to be keeping it so, whatever the global interest. Oil barons funnelled money to scientists ready to pour doubt on the science of climate change, and conservative Republicans led the charge to pour scorn on those such as the former Democrat vice-president Al Gore who were urging Americans to rethink where their energy was coming from.
The power plant described in the preceding passage is the Cimarron Solar Facility, built on Ted Turner’s 590,823 acre ranch in northern New Mexico. It is indeed true that most natural gas- and coal-fired power plants cost a lot more than $250 million to build. However, it’s also true that most natural gas- and coal-fired power plants have nameplate generating capacities a bit larger than 30 MW…
TVA to build natural gas power plant
By DUNCAN MANSFIELD, Associated Press
Posted June 4, 2009
KNOXVILLE — The Tennessee Valley Authority on Thursday decided to build an $820 million natural gas power plant in northeastern Tennessee to comply with a North Carolina lawsuit over air quality.
The 880-megawatt combined-cycle gas plant would be as large as the 1950s-era, coal-fired John Sevier plant in Rogersville that a federal judge has targeted for new pollution controls on North Carolina’s behalf.
[…]
- $820 million divided by 880 MW works out to $931,818 per MW.
- $250 million divided by 30 MW works out to $8,333,333 per MW.
Assuming that the gas-fired plant managed an 85% capacity factor and a 30-yr plant lifetime, the initial capital expenditure would work out to $0.004/kWh… A bit less than half-a-cent per kilowatt-hour. Assuming a 25% capacity factor and a 30-yr plant lifetime for the Cimarron Solar Facility, the initial capital expenditure works out to $0.127/kWh… Almost 13 cents per kilowatt-hour! The average residential electricity rate in the US is currently around 12 cents per kWh… That’s the retail price. As a consumer of electricity, I know which plan I would pick. I’m currently paying about 9 cents per kWh. I sure as heck wouldn’t seek out a provider who would have to raise my current rate by about 50% just to cover their plant construction costs.
Solar photovoltaic electricity is bankruptcy the green way writ large. Here in Texas, Austin Energy has agreed to a long-term purchase agreement to pay $10 million a year for 25 years, for the electricity generated by the Webberville Solar Farm. That works out to more than 15 cents per kWh.
In concert with his efforts to drive up the cost of coal- and natural gas-fired power plants, President Obama has aggressively pursued an agenda of financing expensive power plants with taxpayer dollars. Many of these taxpayer-guaranteed loans have gone to financially strapped companies, lacking the means to repay those loans. In most cases local utilities were coerced or enticed into signing long-term purchase agreements to buy electricity at nearly double the cost of coal- and natural gas-generated electricity. The sole justification for this “green” centralized industrial policy is the Lysenko-like junk science of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.
The economics of this “green” centralized industrial policy are mind numbingly horrible.
The capex for solar power plants averages between $6- and $7-million per MW of installed capacity. Coal-fired plants generally run less than $2-million per MW and natural gas plants currently run less than $1-million per MW. The average retail residential electricity rate in the U.S. is currently less than 12¢ per kWh. The levelized generation cost for the plants being financed by the Obama administration is more than 20¢ per kWh. His “green” centralized industrial policy will drive the wholesale cost of electricity to nearly double the current retail rate.
One need not literally seize the assets of businesses and install gov’t bureaucrats into management position to effectively nationalize those businesses. All it takes is to make them dependent on gov’t and/or direct their activities through regulatory constraints.
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You also have to consider degradation of that solar farm of about 10% capacity per year. So they might get 30 megawatts the first year but that will drop to 27 megawatts the second year. 24.3 year 3, 21.9 year 4, 20.7 in year 5. After 5 years they will have lost 1/3 of the original generating capacity due to various things such as individual cell failures, degradation of individual cells, etc.
How is it not obvious to all concerned that this is madness?
Here in Australia where our dollar is pretty much parity with the US$, we’re paying about 30 cents / kW-hr (summer tariff) and around 25 as the winter tariff. Our summer tariff is higher because of peak demand for air-con cooling in summer.
Does the $250M for the solar plant include the cost of the backup gas plant ?
At least they don’t frequently have the problem of snow covering the panels for weeks at a time…
Solar power will only ever get close to the rated capacity on sunny days in mid-summer. Come winter, it might generate 20% of rated capacity on a sunny day and as little as 5% on a cloudy day.
The seasonality of solar power (at mid to high latitudes) is such an intractable problem that no one is even pretending to try and solve it.
How many megawatt-hours will that solar plant produce between 8pm and 6am?
Ted Turner and friends should be required to pay for these costly fiascos entirely.
If greenie watermelon types want to do un-economical politically correct projects, they may finance their own fantasy companies to try to do them. Don’t make all of us pay for this crap.
Whether or not you believe in CAGW and on this blog most are sceptical as indeed am I, the development of non polluting forms of energy production surely is a plus for the environment. Isn’t it? Everything isn’t always down to the dollars and cents. Is it?
You’v forgotten that very critical factor in green thinking, job creation:
Solar panels require thousands of person years to build the manufacturing plant and install the solar panels.
Natural gas plants are evil, so the jobs to build it don’t count.
Solar plants require thousands pf person years to maintain.
Natural gas plants are evil, so the jobs to maintain it don’t count.
Yes, there is a cost to the economy to support green energy, but look at all the jobs it creates!
■$820 million divided by 880 MW works out to $931,818 per MW.
■$250 million divided by 30 MW works out to $8,333,333 per MW.
How dare you compare apples to apples like that! This is no longer allowed in post modern science. You have to use “adjusted units” for comparisons between green energy and evil energy. For example, you can’t compare the 30 MW green energy “in the popular measurement, to power 9,000 homes” to the evil energy powering 264,000 homes; no, the evil power must use “home” units of the “Al Gore type” such that it can only power ……. naught ….. naught ……. carry the one …….. ………… 42. You see, this way instead of the cost being about $28k for each home the green plant powers compared to $3k for the evil power, once properly adjusted it’s $28k per home powered greenly compared to $19.5 Million per home* powered evilly.
[*: fine print too small to see.]
For your own sake, I hope you get the hang of this soon.
(Surely, this is not necessary, but just in case: /sarc)
In the UK, the green boom seems to be fuelled by the desire of rich people to make more money by hosting heavily- and even fully-subsidised wind-farms, and I’m sure, as flooding continues during the heavy rainfall of our “drought”, solar cell farms will follow. It’s enclosure all over again
And so the tax dollars must continue to swirl, swirl, swirl down the solar powered drain…
But…but…but…
…it’s for the CHILDREN!
/sarc
Crosspatch – is that true, where can we get more information in an easilydigestable form?
“It ain’t easy, being green.” Kermit the Frog
It ain’t cost effective either, Kermie! Mac the Knife
First Solar, operators of the Cimarron Solar Facility are not having a great week:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/05/04/first-solar-drops-to-all-time-low-as-q1-results-miss-badly/
In Ireland, at current exchange rates I am paying $0.21 per kWh,( €0.161) thanks in part to green subsidies and carbon taxes. I can only dream of the authors $0.09 rate, which converts to under €0.07.
The costs described in this article also leave out the costs of building the gas/coal/nuclear power plant that still has to be built as backup for the times when the solar station isn’t generating. Which then also have to be paid to sit idle at times when the solar station is generating.
These are the economics of the madhouse.
…bolting solar energy panels to steel tresses…
Sounds a bit hairy….
One of the main benefits of solar energy is that it can be produced at the place of consumption. If you cut out the need for (extra) transmission lines and compare to the energy retail price its almost comparable to conventional energy. Add a decade of further development and I think we will see a lot of solar panels complementing other energy sources, especially photovoltaic and heat producing version.
Big solar farm with todays technology doesnt seem a good idea though.
davidmhoffer says: “…Yes, there is a cost to the economy to support green energy, but look at all the jobs it creates!”
Real jobs create wealth. A quick look at the economics shows that sunbath power is long on capital investment and short on net wealth creation. The money would be better invested in real power plants. These things are elitist toys.
Most people stop taking in information at the first ‘illion’ and assume that the jumping eco-politico-clowns (sorry Julia and Al) are trustworthy.
Ian of Fremantle says:
May 4, 2012 at 9:54 pm “ . . . non polluting . . .”
Nonsense. These things are expensive, damaging to the environment where they are built, and almost useless. Look intently at the photo at the top of this post and explain the environmental “plus” you see. Yes, I know, you were thinking of CO2 emissions and global warming. The contribution of this facility to a reduced future temperature to the nearest whole number is zero. In scattered remote locations when cost is not an issue, small scale solar power can find an effective home. The type of activity represented by the Cimarron Solar Facility is a parasite within a developed economy.
It’s far worse in the UK where we don’t get much sun. The average capacity factor of solar farms is less than 6%. The subsidies are much larger than in the US and the solar farms are built on farmland, as we don’t have much in the way of desert.