Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
owners are not charged anything for operation and main-
tenance of the grid. Germany is initiating such a fee, and
Spain is considering one. In the United States, the state of
Arizona already has one, and in California the utilities
have asked for permission to begin one.
It is extremely dif
find the price paid for
renewables at the power plant. The consumer
cult even to
s electricity
bill does not break down the charge by source, and I have
been told by California
'
s Public Utility Commission that
price data are considered proprietary and are not to be
released to the public. The US government and its
National Renewable Energy Laboratory should be
embarrassed for refusing to include in their analyses the
cost of integrating highly variable sources like wind and
solar. The RAE estimate is the only one I could
'
nd.
Though sunshine is free and solar has no fuel cost, the
cost of solar photovoltaic (PV) and solar thermal is driven
by the small fraction of the day that they generate power,
as well as by their capital cost. The solar map in
Chap-
ter
flat-panel PV system the typical
number of effective hours per year was only about
showed that for a
%of
the
hour maximum. The capital cost of a large PV
system is about
per kilowatt of capacity,
of the
same order per kilowatt as a new nuclear plant. The
nuclear plant runs
$
% of the time and its power costs
are so much less than the PV system mainly because the
capital costs are spread over
five times as many
operating hours.
This capital cost estimate is from the EIA and is for plants of a few
megawatts capacity. Home systems of a few kilowatts capacity in
California cost about
$
per kilowatt.
