In the US, it's cheaper to build and operate wind farms than buy fossil fuels

&gt; In the US, it&#x27;s cheaper to build and operate wind farms than buy fossil fuels.<p>This is currently HN&#x27;s title, and the article&#x27;s subtitle. But the article makes no statement to prove this assertion.<p>It does not even make sense to me. I guess the author meant that for firms that have high energy needs. But it is stupid to imply that the electricity provided by fossil fuel can always be replaced by wind turbines. If the need is for regular bursts, high volumes on short periods, wind won&#x27;t be of much use.<p>Moreover, the article is a digest of a report that is less emphatic. The US Department of Energy expects a slow-down of wind capacity after 2020, once the tax credit will end. For a project that would start now, there would be no tax credit, so it would be hard to reach a competitive price.

It’s going to be interesting as wind and solar gets consistently cheaper than even the marginal fuel cost of gas. i.e. even if you already own a gas plant, it would be cheaper to build a wind farm just to be able to reduce fuel use. We’re approaching a world where the primary energy drivers will be renewable, and fossil fuels will be competing with energy storage.

The sad part is that it would have been cheaper for decades ... had someone been willing to make that move. Big windmills had been built by the 1880s (e.g. Charles Brush), and a century later the technology was well within reach. But &#x27;alternative energy&#x27; (as it was known) couldn&#x27;t get heard about (Carter tried).

&gt; Better grid management also helped the economics of wind. At times, strong winds can cause wind farms to produce an excess of power relative to demand, causing a farm&#x27;s output to be reduced.<p>I think this part is particularly relevant to the HN community. As we reach higher and higher penetration of renewables on the grid, we will need to dead with the intermittency more and more. A common phrase I hear at utility conferences nowadays is, &quot;We used to forecast load and deploy generation, but in the future, we will be forecasting generation and deploying load.&quot;<p>I think this area will be the next wave of innovation that needs to happen in the energy transition, and it&#x27;s going to be primarily software driven. Smart load management will be key to avoiding huge storage and infrastructure capital expenses. For example, in Hawaii, they are starting to explore new utility business models that don&#x27;t just rely on a fixed rate of return for capital spent.<p>Anyway, as we cross 50%+ penetration of renewables, I think software is going to take a leading roll in connecting and managing everything so we can have the flexibility we need on the grid.

Does anyone know at what point fossil fuels will start to feel the shrinking economies of scale, ie when fossil will get more expensive because there is less scale? Does this point exist at all, or doesn&#x27;t it matter any more because we have the tech developed already anyway?

I favour just declaring a national holiday whenever it&#x27;s both dark and still. Throttle everything back, everyone take a rest. It might really improve societies standard of living.

I like to read news like this. Shows positive progress in the world.<p>There should be a minimum percentage of positive news every day :)

If this trend continues, perhaps we don&#x27;t need the storage breakthrough that we&#x27;ve been assuming we&#x27;d need.<p>There are a quite a few industrial processes which have energy as their primary cost. Aluminum is one example.<p>If a region needs 10GW average, one could build a wind installation with 10GW average output and a lot of storage to match supply and load.<p>Or one could build a 100GW installation, a little bit of storage and an aluminum smelter. During normal operation the smelter gets 90GW and the region gets 10GW. During peak operation the smelter gets a lot more than 90GW. During a trough the region gets 10GW and the smelter gets nothing. You&#x27;d still need storage or a peaker to handle periods when there is absolutely no wind or low wind and high demand, but those needs would be much less.<p>I don&#x27;t know if aluminum can operate with such fluctuating power, but there are processes that can. At worst, bitcoin.

Something I miss from reading those articles: what are you doing when the wind doesn&#x27;t blow for a few days or even weeks? And in case of solar farms, the sun doesn&#x27;t shine (like at night)? How do you store the energy efficiently?<p>If you think batteries, how long does the battery of your smartphone or laptop works? 5 years max? Maybe 10? Is this the timespan you plan your reliable infrastructure for? And how &quot;green&quot; is it to build these batteries?<p>If you think pumped-storage hydroelectricity, how much places do you have where you can have two pools (one uphill, one downhill) to store the water? How much energy can store in there?<p>The thing is, you&#x27;ll build all these solar and wind farms and then still build and run the fossil plants, because you aren&#x27;t able to store the energy to make it reliable enough.

&gt; &quot;In the US, it&#x27;s cheaper to build and operate wind farms than buy fossil fuels.&quot;<p>That&#x27;s not the headline. The headline is <i>cheaper than natural gas</i>, which is a relatively expensive fossil fuel, but also historically cheap at the moment.<p>However, natural gas is great at providing power <i>on-demand</i> and at small scale, which is exactly what you need to even out the highly volatile output of wind energy. Natural gas and wind energy are complements, not competitors.

Just to add to the confusion: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ucsusa.org&#x2F;clean-energy&#x2F;coal-and-other-fossil-fuels&#x2F;environmental-impacts-of-natural-gas" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ucsusa.org&#x2F;clean-energy&#x2F;coal-and-other-fossil-fu...</a> While I know it isn&#x27;t something averybidy is concerned about. But maybe should?

HN discussion yesterday comparing wind and nuclear: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20724676" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20724676</a>

Assuming trump loses, these expiring credits need to be extended or at least eetooled. By the next Congress and administration

and same goes for solar farm as well.

Its not cheaper once you factor in the need for backup energy and thats the only fair way of calculating the cost of wind and solar for that matter.

Caveat, it works well if you don&#x27;t mind not having power for several days in a row.

Wind power requires subsidies to work. Meaning shafting the end consumer. Period <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.forbes.com&#x2F;sites&#x2F;chuckdevore&#x2F;2019&#x2F;02&#x2F;21&#x2F;texas-taxpayers-pay-the-french-government-for-wind-power-and-then-pay-the-grid-to-take-it&#x2F;#3cb2f63046e9" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.forbes.com&#x2F;sites&#x2F;chuckdevore&#x2F;2019&#x2F;02&#x2F;21&#x2F;texas-ta...</a>

So much wrong with this line of thinking. Natural gas prices in west Texas are actually negative right now because there is no infrastructure to move it to refining and distribution hubs.<p>Wind power experienced a renaissance due to subsidized infrastructure construction.<p>Natural gas is clean burning and a byproduct in most cases of crude drilling. If we were really wanting clean cheap energy we&#x27;d build bigger and better pipelines to move the gas to the major distribution networks. Instead lawmakers want to install more of these structures that ruin the view, obscure the horizon, and take massive amounts of harmful chemicals to produce.