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Comment by diafygi | Hacker News Reader

The investment firm Lazard has a nice report[1] on comparing U.S. energy costs by source. Here's the costs in the U.S. (without counting subsidies):

    * Wind:          $  32/MWh
    * Solar:         $  43/MWh
    * Natural Gas:   $  52/MWh
    * Coal:          $  65/MWh
    * Geothermal:    $  82/MWh
    * Biomass:       $  82/MWh
    * Nuclear:       $  97/MWh
    * Solar+Storage: $ 119/MWh
    * Diesel:        $ 212/MWh

So wind and solar are currently the cheapest, but you can only get to about 50% penetration with those without storage[2]. The rest has to be "dispatchable".

[1]: https://www.lazard.com/media/2390/lazards-levelized-cost-of-...

[2]: https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~vsmith/docs/renewables_sgc...

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>So wind and solar are currently the cheapest, but you can only get to about 50% penetration with those without storage[2]. The rest has to be "dispatchable".

That % will probably go up as the demand side of the market reacts to variable pricing. We've barely scratched the surface of what's possible in terms of demand shifting.

One issue with these numbers that they are making and apples-to-oranges comparison with non-dispatchable sources (wind and solar) and dispatchable sources. There is value to being able to turn on and off a generation source that isn't accounted for here.

Sure, but it also doesn't account for the value in not releasing large amounts of greenhouse gasses and other pollutants.

I would like to see a price for "Natural Gas + Carbon Capture"

Also there is great value not having pollutant particles in the air and in the water that will kill your father from cancer when he is 48.

There is value not releasing radioactivity in the air from the natural isotopes you find in coal for example too.

There is value not having the fish or the cow you eat contaminated by waste.

There is value in not having your crops destroyed by acidic water.

There is value in having a living coral reef and not being dissolved.

I can certify there is value in all of that because I was raised in a coal extracting place. Probably you only know about the part of switching a lever on and off.

To get those numbers, nuclear is also non-dispatchable, because it must be run continuously except for the small maintenance windows every 18 months.

Additionally, the combined cycle power plants that allow for super efficient and cheap fossil fuel plants do not respond quickly to turning on and off; it takes time.

With solar and wind, you can choose to not generate but you can't choose to generate if the sun isn't shining. For cheap fossil fuel electricity, you need to plan out a day in advance. It's not so easy to spin a nuclear plant up and down.

Peaker plants, that are truly dispatchable, are about the cost of solar+storage on that chart these days.

You can do load following with nuclear, it's done in France.

Load following will increase the cost, however, which was my point.

I didn't realize that solar+storage was already so cheap.

If there's a mix of say, 50% Wind + Solar, and 50% from stored solar (or wind), then at worst that's an average electricity cost of $83/MWh. That's already cheaper than nuclear, which I didn't think would happen this decade.

Natural gas produces .61 tons of CO2 per MWh [1]. If you take Exxon's planned tax amount of $80/ton of CO2, that would put natural gas at $101/MHw. This is Exxon's estimate, so I think we can safely say that $80/ton is a lower bound on the true cost of fossil fuels to the rest of the economy.

So in reality, renewables+storage are already cheaper than fossil fuels. We're just subsidizing fossil fuels by ignoring their negative externality.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=74&t=11

and to add more context, the bid in this article is $24/MWh, which would imply a $100/MWh Solar + Storage cost given the numbers above from Lazard. For comparison, the new Hinkley nuclear plant in England has a PPA guarantee at ~$120/MWh.

Obviously there are geographic differences, but the trendline for solar is impressive.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_...

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