by Nicholas Brown |
CPS Energy CEO Doyle Beneby recently wrote an op-ed blaming wind farms for impeding the commission of new natural gas–fired power stations.
To many, it is difficult to guess why wind farms would make it more difficult to construct gas power plants. Let’s dive in.
Wind Farms Generating Cheap Electricity
Modern wind farms generate electricity at a low-cost of $0.097 per kWh (9.7 cents) without subsidies. (This is an average — as wind speeds at wind farms increase, the cost of wind power decreases because the ratio of power generated to the cost of developing the wind farms decreases. Some wind farms, of course, produce electricity much more cheaply than others.)
Add in subsidies for this young technology, and the price drops further.
Now, additionally, it’s worth noting that, while winds are blowing, wind farms can bid to sell their electricity for about as cheap as they need to – because their fuel is free, so it doesn’t really cost anything extra to produce electricity once the wind farms are built. For this reason, we’ve seen wind farms bring the wholesale cost of electricity down to $0some nights (yep, $0.00).
In the most recent Fall, Spring, and Winter, wind farms generated such a large amount of cheap electricity in Doyle’s region that they undercut natural gas power plants during all three seasons (although only 2.5% of the time). At wind speeds of 21mph, the average cost of wind power drops to as little as 2.6 cents per kWh.
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