LCOE is a misleading term should not be used to be to compare dispatchable energy. LCOE Doesn't show the reality.
When Lazard calculated how wind power cost change by “firming” it with battery backup, it grossly underestimated wind’s intermittency and its impact on Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE). I reviewed 2022 wind power data for Texas, as measured by ERCOT, to determine what battery it would take to ensure that 34% (TX wind capacity factor) of the nameplate 35 GW wind capacity works 95% of the time. Sorry, that is a complicated way to ask for 12 GW of wind power to work as reliably as a nuclear, coal or natural gas power plant. TX wind misses the required 12 GW 45% of the time with its current ~10 GWh storage backup. In what Lazard calls "firmed" wind power with 4-hr of battery backup, wind power under-delivers 35% of all time. To decrease the power shortcoming to only 5% requires a whopping 7 TWh in battery storage. That’s 700x the size of today’s battery system and increases wind power LCOE 30x from about $40/MWh to 1,200/MWh. There are other ways to ensure reliable power at low cost, but cheap & reliable wind power is an oxymoron. https://lnkd.in/eyHFC6CC #renewables #batterystorage #windenergy #energytransition #LCOE
Technical Strategy & Consulting | Client Manager | Wharton MBA
11moI've also posted about this recently. For wind and solar, regardless of the market, once they reach a specific market penetration the cost of electricity skyrockets. This is where baseload technologies like nuclear will play a key role!