Renewable Energy's Hidden Costs?

[wtmusic]

"A recent Bloomberg press release got wide coverage with its claim that wind power is now cheaper than coal. But a new report from the OECD shows that when you cover the full cost to the grid, variable renewables like wind don’t add up as favourably.

It is often claimed that introducing variable renewable energy resources such as solar and wind into the electricity network comes with some extra cost penalties, due to “system effects”. These system effects include intermittent electricity access, network congestion, instability, environmental impacts, and security of supply.

Now a new report from the OECD titled System Effects of Low-Carbon Electricity Systems gives some hard dollar values for these additional imposts. The OECD work focuses on nuclear power, coal, gas, and renewables such as wind and solar. Their conclusion is that grid-level system costs can have significant impacts on the total cost of delivered electricity for some power-generation technologies."

http://theenergycollective.com/barrybrook/201991/counting-hidden-costs-energy?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=The+Energy+Collective+%28all+posts%29

[NYC_SKP]

1. I wonder if they are including the *true* and complete cost of fuel across each technology.

The true cost including all aspects of extraction production delivery and post-use impacts of uranium and fossil fuels are, I suspect, not included in these calculations.

[wtmusic]

2. "True" can be whatever you want it to be.

Do we include costs associated with the approx. 15,000 annual U.S. deaths associated with coal (funerals, medical etc)? What about global effects associated with climate change, or those of the natural gas required to "back up" wind and solar power? How do you put a price on historic wetlands?



Wind turbines, a new airport and an atomic plant threaten historic wetlands

"In the picturesque town of Lydd, the museum records the fate of two smugglers arrested at the turn of the 17th century. The men were locked in a room at a inn on the edge of Romney Marsh, a few miles from the English Channel, where they were guarded by six armed customs officers.

But the officers were unprepared for the militancy of local residents. Hours after the arrests, more than 100 from the surrounding marshes confronted the guards, freeing the men. More than a century later, residents confirmed their antipathy to authority when they cheered a smugglers' convoy of contrabrand through the streets of the town.

Today, politicians have replaced the detested customs officers as the bête noire of residents. They fear Westminster politicians and local councillors are set to approve plans that would lead to the skies above swarming with commercial aircraft, while unsightly wind turbines proliferate on their fields."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/mar/24/wind-turbine-lydd-runway

[NYC_SKP]

3. No energy source without it's costs, however the specific costs of fuel is often neglected.

Where solar and wind have absolutely no fuel to deal with, other power plants need to be constantly fed.

These costs are often conveniently ignored in comparisons.

Fossil fuel proponents, for example, compare 40% efficiencies of thermal plants to the "paltry" 15% efficiency of solar PV.

And I just want to roll my eyes.

[wtmusic]

4. What are "specific" costs?

It's almost impossible to come up with a definition that makes everyone happy.

Rather than just throwing in the towel though, people attempt to make comparisons by drawing lines (i.e., we're not going to include the value of pain and suffering experienced by relatives of those who die from fossil-fuel-induced cancers, etc. Thought it's very real, we would have a job that's unfinishable).

To do that you have to be very careful with terminology. For example, the 40% figure fossil fuel proponents refer to is capacity factor, not efficiency, and they're correct. This analysis is done on a per-unit of energy basis, though, so the capacity factor is irrelevant.

Re: "solar and wind have absolutely no fuel to deal with" - if every solar plant and every wind turbine requires natural gas to back it up - at night or when the wind isn't blowing - shouldn't we include the costs associated with that gas, both to purchase as well as its carbon contribution? If not, why not?

[NYC_SKP]

5. I don't presume to attach the cost of FF backups to the costs, over time, of renewables.

As we increasingly employ storage technologies, be it pumped hydro or battery banks or hydrogen or whatever, these cost will become insignificant and then moot.

The graphs in your OP, I suspect, are heavily market dependent as opposed to being scientifically and sustainably sound, there is, IMHO, a difference.

I'm not trying to even for a moment accuse you of bias, but as we are and will continue to be in a fluid and dynamic state, we are obliged to look at long term trends and strategies and not short term economic historic grid-based strategies.

gotta run to my mom's birthday party, likely her last.

[wtmusic]

6. And a Happy Birthday to her.

[kristopher]

7. I suspect they are counting lost revenues by coal and nuclear generators.

IF you count the cost to utilities in reduced revenue from fossil and nuclear generation then the chart is probably accurate. The projected cash flow from those thermal assets are required to pay off the investments made to build the thermal plants. Cut off or reduce the revenue stream and those termal investments become stranded assets or "quantifiable costs" resulting from wind on the grid.
Since the original study is behind a $58 paywall, I also have doubts about the direct costs they claim for grid integration. The real world data behind the article "Grid Integration of Wind and Solar Is Cheap" (below) shows such a radically different picture that the extraordinary claims of the Nuclear Energy Agency require far more than just an unsupported assertion.

The study is a product of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA).

The NEA mission
"To assist its member countries in maintaining and further developing, through international co-operation, the scientific, technological and legal bases required for a safe, environmentally friendly and economical use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. To provide authoritative assessments and to forge common understandings on key issues as input to government decisions on nuclear energy policy and to broader OECD policy analyses in areas such as energy and sustainable development."
The Strategic Plan of the Nuclear Energy Agency: 2011-2016

Here are the "key findings" listed by the Nuclear Energy Agency:

Some of the study’s key findings based on an analysis of six technologies – nuclear, coal, gas, onshore wind, offshore wind and solar – are the following:

While all technologies generate system costs, those of dispatchable generators are at least an order of magnitude lower than those of variable renewables. The study finds that including the system costs of variable renewables at the level of the electricity grid increases the total costs of electricity supply by up to one-third, depending on country, technology and penetration levels. While grid-level system costs for dispatchable technologies are lower than USD 3 per MWh, they can reach up to USD 40 per MWh for onshore wind, up to USD 45 per MWh for offshore wind and up to USD 80 per MWh for solar. In addition, the greater the penetration of renewables, the higher the system costs.

Currently, such grid-level costs are absorbed – unacknowledged – by electricity consumers through higher network charges and by the producers of dispatchable electricity in the form of reduced margins and lower load factors. Not accounting for system costs means adding implicit subsidies to already sizeable explicit subsidies for variable renewables. As long as this situation continues, dispatchable technologies will increasingly not be replaced as they reach the end of their operating lifetimes, thereby weakening security of supply.

Maintaining high levels of security of electricity supply in decarbonising electricity systems with significant shares of variable renewables will require incentives to internalise system costs, as well as market designs that adequately remunerate all dispatchable power production, including low-carbon nuclear energy.

Nuclear power will fare relatively better than coal or gas in the short run due to its low variable costs. In the long run, however, when new investment decisions need to be made, reduced load factors will disproportionately penalise technologies with high fixed costs such as nuclear. In systems that currently use nuclear energy, the introduction of variable renewables is therefore likely to lead to an increase in overall carbon emissions due to the use of higher carbon-emitting technologies as back-up.

For a completely different take that looks at the actual cost in several service areas in the US see:
Grid Integration of Wind and Solar Is Cheap
For 50 cents per megawatt-hour, you get strong wind penetration—and the grid holds up just fine.
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Grid-Integration-of-Wind-and-Solar-is-Cheap?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=headline&utm_campaign=GTMDaily

That article doesn't include the revenues lost to coal, natural gas and nuclear plants owned by the utilities, however the article below does look at the economic impact renewables are having on thermal generators.

Additional reading:

The economics of a US civilian nuclear phase-out
Amory B. Lovins

Abstract
...the generating costs of aging reactors have been rising, while competitors, including modern renewables, show rapidly falling total costs - and those opposed cost curves have begun to intersect. An expanding fraction of well-running nuclear plants is now challenged to compete with moderating wholesale power prices, while plants needing major repairs or located in regions rich in wind power increasingly face difficult choices of whether to run or close. Thus, even without events that might accelerate nuclear phase-out, as the Fukushima disaster did in Germany, shifting competitive conditions have begun to drive a gradual US nuclear phase-out. Its economics are illuminated by a detailed energy scenario that needs no nuclear energy, coal, or oil and one-third less natural gas to run a 158 percent bigger US economy in 2050 - but cuts carbon emissions by 82 to 86 percent and costs $5 trillion less. That scenario's 80-percent-renewable, 50-percent-distributed, equally reliable, and more resilient electricity system would cost essentially the same as a business-as-usual version that sustains nuclear and coal power, but it would better manage all the system's risks....

The full online version of this article can be found at:
http://bos.sagepub.com/content/69/2/44


Duke CEO confirms threat renewables pose to their business model
http://www.democraticunderground.com/112737600

[FBaggins]

8. Some for gas, but that's only a small piece of it.

The key question is why you don't think that's a real cost of high renewables penetration?