{"id":2276,"date":"2011-03-25T19:23:40","date_gmt":"2011-03-25T23:23:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/current-costs-of-major-power-sources.html"},"modified":"2011-03-25T19:23:40","modified_gmt":"2011-03-25T23:23:40","slug":"current-costs-of-major-power-sources","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/03\/current-costs-of-major-power-sources.html","title":{"rendered":"Current costs of major power sources"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to the U.S. Department of Energy, here are the<br \/>\ncurrent costs of coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind (onshore and offshore),<br \/>\nsolar (electrical and hot water), geothermal, biomass, and hydroelectric:<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/File:Levelized_energy_cost_chart_1,_2011_DOE_report.gif\"><br \/>\n<img style=\"float:right;border:none;\"\nwidth=\"478\" height=\"458\"\nsrc=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/a\/ad\/Levelized_energy_cost_chart_1%2C_2011_DOE_report.gif\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\nHere&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/File:Levelized_energy_cost_chart_1,_2011_DOE_report.gif\">a four page explanation of that table.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\nCoal is not the cheapest: natural gas is.<br \/>\nOnshore wind actually costs about the same as coal, and less than nuclear.<br \/>\nOffshore wind is currently about 2.5 times more expensive.<\/p>\n<p>\nSolar photovoltaic (PV) currently costs a bit more than twice as much as coal,<br \/>\nand already less than offshore wind.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe table does <em>not<\/em> take into account the environmental costs<br \/>\nof the various power sources, or obviously coal would fare far worse,<br \/>\nand biomass would not be rated anywhere near as good as wind.<\/p>\n<p>\nRemember, the cost of solar is<br \/>\n<a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/03\/the-plummeting-cost-of-solar-electricity.html\"><br \/>\nfalling rapidly,<\/a><br \/>\nso solar will rapidly become more cost-effective compared to other<br \/>\nenergy sources.<\/p>\n<p>\n-jsq<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to the U.S. Department of Energy, here are the current costs of coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind (onshore and offshore), solar (electrical and hot water), geothermal, biomass, and hydroelectric: Here&#8217;s a four page explanation of that table. Coal is not the cheapest: natural gas is. Onshore wind actually costs about the same as coal, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120,216,16,23,24,55,36],"tags":[8738,8753,3767,4256,8706,562,8737,1026,8714,8716],"class_list":["post-2276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biomass","category-coal","category-environment","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","category-water","category-wind","tag-biomass","tag-coal","tag-costs","tag-department-of-energy","tag-environment","tag-natural-gas","tag-nuclear","tag-photovoltaic","tag-solar","tag-wind"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2276\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}