Hillhater
100 TW
Insignificant compared to the cost of having no power supply.billvon said:Correct. It does not, for example, add the costs in terms of deaths, sickness, infrastructure damage and waterway destruction from coal. If it did, coal would be far and away the most expensive form of power we have. Nor does it add in the costs of nuclear waste processing/storage. So overall, wind and solar are a lot cheaper over their lifecycle than that chart would indicate.Hillhater said:Sure , raw generation costs . .
(And there are similar consequential costs associated with solar and wind.)
Eg..
I could quote similar alarming details regarding Solar PV panel production and disposal....Estimates of the exact amount of rare earth minerals in wind turbines vary, but in any case the numbers are staggering. According to the Bulletin of Atomic Sciences, a 2 megawatt (MW) wind turbine contains about 800 pounds of neodymium and 130 pounds of dysprosium. The MIT study cited above estimates that a 2 MW wind turbine contains about 752 pounds of rare earth minerals.
To quantify this in terms of environmental damages, consider that mining one ton of rare earth minerals produces about one ton of radioactive waste, according to the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security. In 2012, the U.S. added a record 13,131 MW of wind generating capacity. That means that between 4.9 million pounds (using MIT’s estimate) and 6.1 million pounds (using the Bulletin of Atomic Science’s estimate) of rare earths were used in wind turbines installed in 2012. It also means that between 4.9 million and 6.1 million pounds of radioactive waste were created to make these wind turbines.
For perspective, America’s nuclear industry produces between 4.4 million and 5 million pounds of spent nuclear fuel each year. That means the U.S. wind industry may well have created more radioactive waste last year than our entire nuclear industry produced in spent fuel. In this sense, the nuclear industry seems to be doing more with less: nuclear energy comprised about one-fifth of America’s electrical generation in 2012, while wind accounted for just 3.5 percent of all electricity generated in the United States.
No but you pay the consequential costs for loss of power ,..potentially disastrous, but ultimately economical suicide for a nation. (see below)billvon said:Zero. You do not pay for power you do not use.But what cost do you put on power when it is not available ?
The US is not an example of wind and solar effects, It has only approx 10% wind & solar with much more gas to balance & support it.billvon said:Given that here in the US, grid reliability has climbed as wind and solar have been added - not really an issue.Or what cost when the unreliability of power forces your major industries to relocate offshore, and ultimately destroy your national economic viability ?
Logicly, improvement in grid reliability is more attributed to the higher % of flexible gas generation (now approx 30%)
The best US example of Wind & solar effects, is CA where the grid is heavily dependent on import support from adjoining states.