Why wind and solar are expensive | Lars Schernikau & Stu Turley

The answer is actually quite simple...

First “input energy and input raw materials”; you can clearly see that the dramatic overbuild required for wind and solar installation has a direct impact on the input energy and input raw materials required to build the equipment used to “collect” the free wind and solar power from nature. This energy and raw material input far exceeds that of building conventional thermal power plants or producing “free” coal, gas, oil, or uranium available for “combustion”.

These raw mineral resources need to be mined, upgraded, transported, processed, and manufactured into usable materials such as silicon, glass, aluminum, or copper. The energy input is tremendous. Practically every silicon smelter in China producing 99.999999999% pure silicon has its dedicated coal fired power station to provide the heat and electricity for the process. There is also not yet any silicon available without carbon from coal, oil, and very large old trees. For more details see my published article Coal’s importance for solar panel manufacturing.

There is a reason why the IEA said, “a clean energy system requires more mineral resources than an energy system based on fossil fuels”.

Second “Ancillary Systems”; it becomes obvious that a large array of ancillary systems is required to integrate wind and solar into our existing systems and to at least partially overcome the natural disadvantages of wind and solar namely: low energy density, short lifetime and intermittency.

These ancillary systems required include:

-A vast overbuild to overcome the low natural capacity factor, resulting in low utilization, as well as the intermittency and unpredictability challenges and to charge any storage

-Short duration energy storage, in the form of batteries, to overcome short duration fluctuations and to balance the grid

-Long duration energy storage, envisioned in the form of hydrogen, to overcome days and weeks of insufficient combined wind and solar generation

-Backup thermal power stations on standby when needed, in Germany 12-20GW of gas is required by 2030, in the future this backup is supposed to run on hydrogen

-A vastly more complex and larger transmission network and integration infrastructure

These 5 systems, with low utilization contributing to the cost increase, are all required to replace one existing coal or gas or nuclear power station. These 5 systems – except for the thermal power plants – have a short operational lifetime, so they have to be replaced every few years, far more often than the conventional thermal power system alone.

Even more concerning is that the energy and raw material input required to build these ancillary systems – to be replaced every few years – could be larger and more significant than what is required for the overbuilding of wind and solar alone, which is already large. The IEA did NOT include those raw materials for ancillary systems in their statement “a clean energy system requires more mineral resources than an energy system based on fossil fuels”