In his article "2 remarkable facts that illustrate solar power’s declining cost" Roberts starts off well:
First, there’s no such thing as an
electricity source that is cheapest in all circumstances, nor is there likely to
be such a source any time soon. All sources have advantages and disadvantages;
they all have circumstances in which they excel.
But goes downhill from there, concluding with the following nonsensical remark:
“Solar
is winning.”
What does that even mean?
Industrial solar is going to play an important role in future grids but
unless it’s located in one of the sunniest of places, it won’t be the least
expensive source. And even when it is the least expensive source, it will never
be the only component of a grid. More expensive components, be they nuclear, wind, gas, and possibly some amount of much more expensive storage, will have to be
part of that grid ...especially at night. So, what matters is the total cost of
operating all of the components of a grid. The fact that you may have lowered
the cost in very sunny places of just one component (solar) will not
necessarily lower your electric bill. Evidence to date strongly suggests the opposite.See Figure 1.
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| Figure 1 |
Why? One reason would be integration costs, which are not included in LCOE calculaltions. The price charged by the solar farm owner does not reflect all costs
to the grid operator (which all get passed on to the consumer) of the additional transmission needs of industrial
intermittent sources. The integration costs
for wind can double the final price charged to customers. If the wind farm is
charging $22/mWh and the cost of installing new transmission lines to export
excess power produced when it's not needed locally is $22/mWh (see Figure 2), the real cost is
twice that being charged by the wind farm. Integration costs of intermittent
sources tend to be much higher than for dispatchable sources because of the need for more transmission infrastructure to export excess power produced at times when it is not needed in the local grid.
