SUMMARY:
Thirty states have renewable portfolio standards. These laws require a certain percentage of their electricity to come from renewable sources. Renewable sources end up being wind or solar. Hydro and nuclear are generally not allowed to satisfy the standards. Nuclear is arbitrarily banned by almost every state. Hydro is prevented by banning hydro that involves dams. The Sierra Club hates dams.
In Nevada, 50% of the electricity must be renewable by 2030. In California, it is 60% by 2030. When wind or solar exceed about 20% of the electricity in an electric grid, it becomes necessary to add electricity storage, usually batteries, causing a huge cost increase.
State legislatures enacted renewable portfolio standards because they have accepted the lie that wind and solar are competitive. And the lie that wind and solar are a good way of reducing CO2 emissions. They also have largely accepted the science-free conclusion that we face a global warming crisis.
Wind and solar are erratic power sources that are extremely expensive, even with government subsidies. The alternative to purchasing wind or solar electricity is to use the EXISTING natural gas plants that back up the erratic wind and solar. You don’t have to build NEW natural gas backup plants, because there already is enough backup capacity to 100% replace the wind or solar. When natural gas plants already exist, the only additional expense is almost entirely the cost of the fuel. That cost is about $15 per megawatt-hour.
Electricity from either wind or solar costs around $80 per megawatt-hour; nearly all the cost is the cost of capital. Government subsidies exist that may lower the cost of wind or solar to around $30, still double the $15 cost of using the exiting natural gas backup plants.
The wind and solar industries falsely claim they are competitive with conventional gas generation. The total cost of natural gas electricity is around $45 per megawatt hour -- the $15 cost of the fuel, plus the $30 cost of amortizing the capital investment. The cost of wind or solar with current subsidies is around $30. So they claim that wind or solar is cheaper than conventional natural gas -- $30 versus $45.
But adding wind or solar does NOT cut the capital cost of natural gas plants. The capital cost remains because the gas plants have to stay in place to 100% back up the wind or solar. And government subsidies are not a real cost reduction. The pubic just pays for the electricity through taxes, rather than in their electric bill. If you add wind or solar to a grid, someone has to pay $80 to save $15.
DETAILS:
Electricity must be consumed at the moment it is produced. Storage options are a reversible hydroelectric scheme, called pumped storage, or rechargeable batteries. Both options are very expensive.
Electricity is produced by generating plants that are expensive. At a modern natural gas generating plant, two thirds of the cost is capital, and one third is fuel. If you idle the plant because there is no market for the electricity, two thirds of your costs keep on running. Nuclear plant fuel is extremely cheap. Nearly all the costs, capital and staffing, continue if a nuclear plant is idle. Idling a nuclear plant saves almost nothing. That's why nuclear plants are turned on more than 90% of the time.
Wind or solar generating cost is capital. The wind and sun are free. Wind or solar plants usually can be turned off on command, but they can’t be turned on unless the wind is blowing, or the sun is shining. They are erratic electricity generators. They will turn off by themselves when the wind dies or a cloud moves in front of the sun.
When a substantial percentage of the electricity in a particular area is being generated by wind or solar, there have to be enough quick-response backup plants ready to compensate for a drop off of wind or solar. Backup plants are usually natural gas plants due to their agility. Wind and solar require electric grid operators to agree to do everything possible to accept whatever amount of wind or solar is coming their way.
That is required by various regulations and contracts. All the other sources of power are ordered to decrease or increase output as needed to balance the amount of wind or solar power flowing at any moment. As the percentage of power from wind and solar increases, the burden of balancing the electric grid (power wanted versus power produced) starts to be a serious problem. The problem is becoming serious in California.
Qualified people who firmly believe in global warming from CO2 are now admitting using wind and solar to cut CO2 emissions is a big lie. They say only CO2-free nuclear energy can save us from global warming. But most environmental organizations still advocate for wind and solar. In the 1970s and 1980s they worked hard to halt growth of the US nuclear industry. They succeeded.