True cost of using wind and solar to meet demand was $272 and $472 per MWh [pdf] | Hacker News Reader

True cost of using wind and solar to meet demand was $272 and $472 per MWh [pdf]

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7 pointsETH_start9 comments

The Center of the American Experiment is a Minnesota -based think tank that advocates for conservative and free-market principles. The Center of the American Experiment was founded in 1990 by Mitch Pearlstein, a former Reagan appointee.

The data speaks for itself.

OK, they're using IMPLAN. Stop right there. There's a heap of static world fallacy, failure to acknowledge price trends, built in there.

On the callout: "Maintaining grid reliability would be much less costly if natural gas were used instead of battery storage, but these plants would need to shut down by 2040 under the Walz proposal".

I haven't run the numbers on this. But methane does not have to come from the ground.

By 2040, on current trends, synthesizing methane using air-captured carbon and electrolyzed hydrogen using wind power will be competitive with today's fossil methane cost.

>>By 2040, on current trends, synthesizing methane using air-captured carbon and electrolyzed hydrogen using wind power will be competitive with today's fossil methane cost.

If this happened, it would revolutionize the energy market.

What is the average cost from using other methods?

A graph showing the study's claims of the cost for each source can be found here:

https://twitter.com/TheFrackingGuy/status/158096795665304372...

The study advocates against Minnesota's plan to go zero carbon by 2040 without massively building out nuclear power plants and hydroelectric power. It says that without nuclear and/or hydroelectric, the plan would cost Minnesota $313 billion.

This was posted yesterday in a tweet by "TheFrackingGuy"

Oh no, what happens when the wind stops blowing!

Furnaces would stop working because the blower fans that circulate the warm air are powered by electricity. Water pipes would freeze, and hundreds, if not thousands, of people would die from carbon monoxide poisoning when they attempt to keep warm by bringing charcoal grills inside or sitting in running cars in their garages, as occurred in Texas during the blackouts of 2021

Big difference between Texas and Minnesota. Up North they plan for bitterly cold winters, including what to do if there isn't enough wind. Texas, on the other hand, sees a cold snap as a natural disaster.

I'm surprised they don't repeat Trump's claim that windmills give you cancer

>This was posted yesterday in a tweet by "TheFrackingGuy"

That was flagged, maybe because it was to a tweet that linked to a geo-fenced pdf. This is a direct link to a globally accessible version of the pdf.

>Up North they plan for bitterly cold winters, including what to do if there isn't enough wind.

Yes, and one of the ways they plan for it is by conducting studies like this and not becoming overly reliant on intermittent energy sources.

> Minnesota electricity customers will see their electricity expenses increase by an average of nearly $3,888 per year, every year, through 2050.

So you're saying customers will be paying $108,864 a year for renewable electricity by 2050 under the governer's plan. Sounds to me like your modeling software IMPLAN has a bug.

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