Reposted from Not A Lot Of People Know That
FEBRUARY 7, 2021
By Paul Homewood
Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, we keep being assured that offshore wind costs have tumbled to under £50/MWh.
The US Energy Information Administration however don’t agree. They regularly assess the levelised costs of all power sources, and only a year ago calculated that the cost of offshore wind was $115.04/MWh, roughly £84/MWh, at current prices.
Their figure does include transmission costs of $3.15, so excluding this we are looking at £82/MWh.
You cannot of course simply compare generation costs, which the EIA have done, as there are associated system costs involved, as BEIS explain:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/beis-electricity-generation-costs-2020
As Table 7.1 shows, these hidden costs could range between £15 and £35/MWh for offshore wind. By contrast, CCGT actually results in lower wider system costs (note the levelised cost of £82/MWh for CCGT includes a fake carbon cost of £32/MWh).
Adding these extra system costs on to the US costings will take the true cost of offshore wind power to £100/MWh or more.
“Their figure does include transmission costs of $3.15, so excluding this we are looking at £82/MWh.”
Why exclude, there’s no local consumer for it, it has to be transmitted to be usable….
For a thorough analysis of levelised costs and system integration costs as per the the UK, see here:
http://www.iesisenergy.org/lcost/
For more on the cost of future generation systems as per the UK, see here:
https://www.thegwpf.org/uk-consumers-grossly-overpaying-for-electricity/
https://www.thegwpf.org/cost-of-net-zero-will-be-ruinous-new-reports-warn/
Renewable energy keeps getting cheaper, but my electric bill keeps getting more expensive….
You can very easily look up a large number of recent tenders for UK offshore wind.
with a little more effort you can find German, Dutch, Danish
I suspect the US has no idea of what’s actually happening out there in Europe.
“Despite COVID constraints, Europe confirmed a record amount of €26.3bn of investments in new offshore wind farms in 2020. This will finance 7.1 GW of new offshore wind which will be built in the coming years. Last year Europe built 2.9 GW of new offshore wind. Europe now has 25 GW of offshore wind capacity. The EU aims to have 300 GW by 2050.
According to the latest WindEurope data, Europe raised €26.3bn to finance 7.1 GW of new offshore wind capacity in 2020. The UK, Netherlands, Germany and France all saw final investment decisions for major new offshore wind farms.”
Sheer madness for society. Profitable for some.