The Real Cost Of Electricity -- November 25, 2014

Updates

Monday, December 8, 2014: from a reader:

Below are the statistics on the cost of power generation in 2011 from the Australian Government’s own Productivity Commission:

• coal fired power station $79 per Mw/h (megawatt/hour) 
• natural gas fired power station $97 per Mw/h – or 1.2 times the cost of coal power 
• wind power $150-214 per Mw/h – or nearly 3 times the cost of coal power 
• solar power $400-473 per Mw/h – or nearly 6 times the cost of coal power 

Original Post

 

This is really getting into the weeds but it certainly raises the question about some recent articles in the mainstream media suggesting solar electricity is approaching 4 cents/kwh.

The data is taken from a presentation by the province of Ontario which gets most its electricity via hydro (Niagara Falls, I believe, but I could be wrong).

A reader suggested this source in response to a recent post (the one about MDU buying a wind farm near Hettinger, North Dakota).

The data is sourced:

• go to this link: Presentation Library for Ontario Society of Professional Engineers
• then, scroll down to ENERGY, and click on pdf for: The Real Cost of Electrical Energy

Going through the presentation, the reader summarizes, assumes all power is provided by  only one of each option to levelize cost, and the various CF (capacity factor):

• Solar: $0.89 kwh, 15% CF
• Wind: $0.35 kwh 29.5% CF
• Nuclear: $0.17 kwh 85% CF
• Gas: $.012 kwh 54% CF  ($4/MCF - CF not 85% or more because much of the Gas power is under-utilized used for peak loading)
• Coal: n/a -- politically incorrect to even think about 

Compare also the cost of electricity in the US as provided by the EIA.