Cost of Electricity | Claverton Group

Effect of brutal cutoff of wind capacity – Spanish Wind ramping, intermittency back up

http://www.carboncommentary.com/2009/11/15/853 Spain’s variable wind and stable electricity networks Sunday 15 November 2009 in uncategorized by Chris Goodall One of the frequent criticisms of wind energy is that national distribution systems (‘the grid’) cannot cope with large number of turbines because of the variability and unpredictability of their output. Grids need to match supply and demand […]

Papers in Energy Policy from Mark Delucchi and Mark Jacobson, Stanford / California University USA – 100% renewable energy at reasonable prices and timescales

Mark Jacobson and Mark Delucchi recently published two papers in Energy Policy expanding upon our article on 100% wind, water, and solar power for the world, published in Scientific American in November 2009. I am attaching corrected in-press proofs of the articles. Mark and I continue to work on various aspects of this, so we […]

UK Energy bills set to rise £ 3 / year to pay for £2bn investment in distribution / trasnmission

4th Oct 2010 – BBC web site Energy bills set to rise to pay for £32bn investment The rise in renewable energy such as windfarms mean a radical rewiring of the National Grid is needed Gas and electricity bills will both have to rise by £3 a year, as £32bn is needed to improve the […]

Grid-Connected Intermittent Renewables Are The Last To Be Stored

( Note – this article will shortly be published in the Elsevier International Journal of Renewable Energy which owns all rights.) Abstract When hydro-electric power systems became wide-spread, associated developments for energy storage, using pumped water, soon followed. Many other methods of storage have since been considered. Today’s interest in other renewables, notably wind energy […]

Relative / comparative costs of wind energy, nuclear energy, hydro power, coal power, natural gas, geothermal energy, and biomass

In general it can be seen that there is not a lot to choose between the cost of wind energy, and coal, gas or nuclear. PV and CSP are considerablymore expensive however.