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
a) if you’re talking about your own personal power bill, make sure that you’re comparing the actual cost of a single kilowatt hour. many people lately with the extreme weather are complaining about their power bills jumping but it’s because they’re using more power, not because the power itself is necessarily more expensive
b) not all utilities are shifting to renewables at the same rates. Some areas are not near renewables and can’t easily buy that electricity so they’re still heavily reliant on fossil fuels or building out new nuclear. Nuclear, by the way, is ultra expensive to build so while it’s cheap to operate it’s expensive up front
c) it costs money to build renewable energy sources. wind turbines and solar panels aren’t free, and neither is the land they are built on. so, while the energy itself may be cheap or free, you have to pay all the other costs involved–building and paying people to operate it, as well as paying for transmission lines to get the power to the grid
d) a LOT of coal plans shifted to natural gas over the past several years. that along with energy market disruptions due to covid and ukraine drove the price of natural gas through the roof. so, even if a utility is increasing its renewable mix, their fossil fuel prices are probably going up faster than the shift to renewables
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