ELI5/ Why is the cost of electricity constantly increasing despite the increasing amount of renewable and green energy?

Question

I understand there is installation, maintenance and servicing costs, but shouldn’t the free power from the sun, wind and tidal eventually pay this off and start providing free power?

In: Engineering

Answer 1

ELI5
what you don’t count is that solar panels and wind mills don’t have unlimited lifespan. Eventually, they needs to be replaced. So all of the installation, maintenance and servicing costs needs to be redone maybe every 30 years and in that time there is limited amount of energy it can make.