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
1. Good ol’ inflation.
2. Renewables still account for a minority of energy generation in first world countries, a significant minority in some areas
3. Solar panels and windmills are not free energy – it takes money to mine the raw materials, transport them for refinement, refine them, transport the raw materials to various factories to be turned into individual components, transported to another factory to be assembled into solar panels, transported to someone that installs solar panels, and then have that person install solar panels. Not to mention the batteries, maintenance, and eventual replacement. It doesn’t matter how much energy these panels provide, someone still needs to pay the thousands and thousands of people that are involved with the supply chain, and for the materials made to use them.
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