Is The Party Over?

BB. said:

Actually, wind turbines are quite costly to build... In Germany, around $2.6-4,400,000 USD per 2MWatt turbine:

http://www.windustry.org/how_much_do_wind_turbines_cost

The costs for a utility scale wind turbine range from about $1.3 million to $2.2 million per MW of nameplate capacity installed. Most of the commercial-scale turbines installed today are 2 MW in size and cost roughly $3-$4 million installed.

And given that a typical turbine has only about a 10-15% duty cycle:

• $2M per MW / 0.15 duty cycle = $13.3MUSD per MW "useful"

Vs for coal and natural gas plants:

https://www.ifeu.de/energie/pdf/IFEU Arrhenius _2007_ Moorburg Alternatives Summary.pdf (November 2007 report)

A popular method for answering the question, if an investment is advantageous, is the comparison of the average electricity production costs and gained revenues. One part of the electricity production costs is made up by the initial investment. Typically, specific investments for a hard coal-fired power plant have been between 1,000 and 1,200 € per kilowatt hour (€/kWh) so far. Only recently these figures rose by up to 40 per cent for new contracts according to accounts received – due to great demand and also due to steel prices rising sharply. A combined cycle gas turbine plant (CCGT) fuelled with natural gas has cost 500 to 600 €/kWh up to now. There, too, are reports on price increases of 25 per cent. These increases may well be temporary and as the Moorburg power plant is already contracted, the latest increases are of no relevance and will not be considered in the profitability assessment.

Or, very roughly, 10x the cost for wind power and 1/3 to 1/4 the service life vs carbon fired power plants (capital costs) designed (and operating) for 30-40 year service life.

http://www.ref.org.uk/attachments/article/280/ref.hughes.19.12.12.pdf

For onshore turbines, an expected life of 10 years is consistent with re-powering decisions over the last decade, while an expected life of 15 years seems to be the maximum consistent with the age-performance profile. For offshore turbines, the analysis uses expected lives of 15 and 20 years.

So--Now you are looking at ~30-40x the capital costs of wind power vs carbon based generation systems... And the carbon based system are "dispatchable" power (can be turned on/off/up/down based on customer power needs) vs wind power which is at the will of the weather (and not a lot of cost effective storage systems)...

Let alone the issues of killing birds, Making it difficult to live within several miles down wind of turbines do to noise, large amount of land dedicated to wind farms, etc... Yes coal mines are not very pretty/environmentally friendly either...

-Bill

BB. said:

Here are some accident statistics through May of 2017... Appears that wind turbine failures are not tracked at the industry level very well:

http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk/accidents.pdf

Dutch Off Shore Wind farm economics:
https://phys.org/news/2017-05-dutch-world-largest-offshore-farm.html

At full winds the windpark has a generating capacity of some 600 megawatts, and will help supply some 785,000 Dutch households with renewable energy, the company said.

"We are now officially in the operational stage," the company's managing director Matthias Haag told AFP, celebrating the completion of a project first conceived in 2010.

The 2.8-billion-euro ($3 billion) project is a collaboration between the Canadian independent renewable energy company Northland Power, wind turbine manufacturer Siemens Wind Power, Dutch maritime contractor Van Oord and waste processing company HVC.

"Wind power" doesn't kill anyone. It's not like wind turbine blades are reaching out and clocking people in the head.

Take a look at this and look through the references. Deaths per unit electricity produced is the relevant metric. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents#Fatalities

And the fact of the matter is, if you're working doing anything at sea, you've got a dangerous job. The fatality rate per man-hour for Oil rig workers is similar.

Now back to the economics, Lets start with the Gemini wind farm.

600, 4 MW Siemens turbines with a 49.5% capacity factor, 2.6 TWh/year. $78.2/MWh install cost averaged over 15 years, not including financing cost. I would guess the turbines will last at least another 10 years longer, which would bring down install cost to $47/MWh without financing included, Thats down from $140/MWh from 2009. Rising wind and solar power capacity has pushed down wholesale electricity prices across much of Europe. Very economical for that region of the world.

Lol the Daily Caller. Lets break this down and take a closer look beyond the Daily caller reduction, They leave out a lot of information, especially when pushing a narrative. 

Lets start with Block Island -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_Island

It has a population of 1000 roughly, Up until the completion of the wind farm, Block Island was isolated from the mainland grid. The Island ran off Diesel generators since 1925, it has been this was for decades. The Block Island power company had to transport about a million gallons of diesel yearly to keep the lights on for the Island, It gets very expensive to do this when your on an Island. There were huge customer’s concerns peaking in 2008 when the high cost of fuel for the generators drove electrical costs to over 60 cents per kilowatt/hour. 

This is a statement from the Block Island Power company.

"Block Island electric ratepayers will see immediate relief in their electric bills. “The simplest way to explain the immediate impact to the bills is that the Fuel Cost Adjustment is going to be replaced by a Standard Offer and Transmission Charge that will be a combined 12.44 cents/kWh,” said Wright. To calculate the impact on your individual bill, replace the Fuel Cost Adjustment, which was 16.82 cents/kWh in April, with this new rate. Ratepayers have been enjoying recent relief in the form of lower Fuel Cost Adjustment charges due to lower fuel costs but that has not always been the case. The average Fuel Cost Adjustment since 2012 is 25.6 cents/kWh." 

The wind farm cost about $300 million to build, It only had 5 turbines. while the cables connecting the energy distribution cost another $125 million. 

Block Island residents are expected to save about $30 a month on their new power bill. They are only going to be using 1/6th of the wind farm capacity. The rest will be sold to the mainland via an interconnect.

This is why its difficult to just give a blanket cost for an energy source, It is specific to region, There are many variables.

Now onto your next Daily Caller source, The Long Island Wind farm,

this wind farm is being built by Deep Water, same company who built the Block Island wind farm, So until construction starts and everything is finalized we can only go off of whats currently on paper and not speculation.

-The project’s cost was projected at $1 billion but is now expected to be $740 million. Deepwater plans to finance the project with loans and equity investments, according to Jeffrey Grybowski, the company’s chief executive. 

-The power authority, which plans to buy all of the Long Island farm’s output over 20 years, says the cost is about the same as  its other renewable energy projects, about 16 cents a kilowatt-hour. Its average electricity price is 7.5 cents a kilowatt-hour, so the project is expected to add $1.19 a month to the average customer bill.

-No opposition was in evidence as the authority voted at a public meeting at its headquarters.

And that is all that is currently known, Deep water is still surveying the are, and that could change the cost of the project. Constructions probably wont start until 2020. Can rally go of much for something that has not already been built and still in the planning phase.

Now onto Nuclear, Good OL Watts Bar.

Lets get some background about Reactor 2 "Watts 2"

- It has the second longest gestation of any reactor in history, it has been listed under construction since 1973 and constructed was halted in 1985 when the reactor was 60% complete.

- It had an estimated cost of 400Milliion in 1972, Thats about 2.3 Billion adjusted for inflation since 1972. By 1985 it had used 1.7 Billion, That is $3.8 Billion in today's money adjusted for inflation since 1985.

-Construction resumed in 2007. with the total cost  estimated at around $4.7 Billion, 

-This brings the total cost to $8.5 billion for this reactor.

-Because of the long gestation Because of that time frame, Watts Bar 2 incorporated old technology, some of which is no longer considered acceptable in nuclear power plants today.

-Earlier this year Watts 2 had to be shut down due to failure of components of the unit’s condenser, which cools steam used to drive the generating turbines back into water.The condenser itself was part of the original construction, though TVA says it was “completely refurbished”

-TVA Senior Nuclear Manager Mark Castronova said repairing the ruptured equipment took 160,000 man-hours and cost TVA $29 million in labor and equipment costs, not even counting the tens of millions of dollars of power generation lost during the 19-week outage.

-Estimated lifespan for this reactor design is 40 to 60 years, That is the lifespan of the building not the fuel, fuel has a lifespan around 6 years depending on reactor design.

Georgia's Plant Summer project only completed on reactor in 1982. Reactor 2 and 3 were canceled in May of this year after Westinghouse Electric Company filed for bankruptcy after 9 billion of losses from its two U.S. nuclear construction projects including the South Carolina Vogtle project.

Duke Enrgy has pulled out of Voglte Nuclear project and filed for rates increase by 13.6% to cover losses from the failed project. Duke Energy instead is deciding to Invest $6 Billion for Solar (700MW), and Batteries.

https://news.duke-energy.com/releases/duke-energy-florida-files-settlement-agreement-for-building-a-smarter-energy-future

Southern Co. subsidiary Georgia Power filed its recommendation to complete work on two new nuclear reactors on the Vogtle facility, Total costs of the Vogtle nuclear plant is likely to top $25 billion dollars and could reach over $27 billion.