Sunday, March 29, 2009

Renewables are expensive!

According to the New York Times today, wind and solar are still a long way from being cost competitive. Since wind power goes offline when there's no wind, a plan centered around wind requires backup, and adding backup really makes things expensive. Still, even figuring in the backup, solar checks in at twice the cost of wind. The low price of natural gas (see the next post) is making this all the more difficult. Ouch!