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Comment by snewman | Hacker News Reader

For renewables, most of the cost is up front, then they're cheap to run because they don't need fuel. (High capex, low opex.) Fossil fuel plants have more of a mix of upfront and operating costs. High interest rates make it expensive to borrow the upfront cost of renewables.

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I did some googling about this issue. Roughly I searched: natural gas/solar/wind construction cost per MW in United States

I found: Natural gas: ~1200 USD/kW, Solar: ~1500 USD/kW, Wind: ~1500 USD/kW

Let us say that solar and wind is about 25% more expensive to build. All types have high up front costs, so interest rates will affect nearly equally. However, operations for solar and wind must be way cheaper over 10/20/30 year time frame. To be fair, I never read anything about maintenance costs for solar and wind. It certainly isn't zero, as the wind turbine will need periodic servicing, and the solar panels need to be cleaned.

Lazard has a nice chart on this in their annual LCOE report.

This link is to one from a couple of years ago that I found on the web, but you can look up the latest one in their PDF:

https://reneweconomy.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/lazar...

Some things are affected more than others, especially nuclear, but it doesn't really swap relative positions to any great degree.

> To be fair, I never read anything about maintenance costs for solar and wind.

Indeed. Those costs are never counted (e.g. how do you service and repair offshore wind farms in the middle of the North Sea). As the costs of decommissioning and replacements are never counted either. Neither are the costs of overprovisioning required for renewables.

Of course these costs are counted. You do realise these are companies running these North Sea windfarms and selling the electricity to the grid? Do you think they suddenly go, "Oh, we forgot about maintenance costs! We're losing money now!"

They sell to the grid at a price that makes them a profit. How did you think this all worked?

On the other hand fossil fuel costs are risky, and if we plan to steer away from the worst climate disaster using policy tools, the cheap fuel will be gone within a plan't lifetime.

there is another important metric that most of these cost calculations ignore - the cost of reliability. Renewable generators create this problem due the variable and uncertain nature of their fuel. The cost of dealing with this is not paid by them.

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