Sunshine Might Be Free But Solar Power is Not Cheap

Mississippi residents are consistently told that renewable energy sources, like solar panels, are now the lowest-cost ways to generate electricity, but these claims are based on creative accounting gimmicks that only examine a small portion of the expenses incurred to integrate solar onto the grid while excluding many others.

• One of the most common ways of estimating the cost of generating electricity from different types of power plants is a metric called the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE).
• The LCOE is an estimate of the long-term average cost of producing electricity from a power plant. These values are estimated by taking the costs of the plant, such as the money needed to build and operate it, fuel costs, and the cost to borrow money, and dividing them by the amount of electricity generated by the plant over its useful lifetime.

The data are clear: when all these costs are added up, solar is much more expensive than using Mississippi's existing natural gas, coal, or nuclear power plants.

• Therefore, the Mississippi Public Service Commissioners should protect ratepayers from the unnecessary cost increases that will inevitably result from building more solar facilities in the Magnolia state.

 

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2023/01/24/sunshine_might_be_free_but_solar_power_is_not_cheap_877463.html?mc_cid=0102ca3660