Posted on 12/15/2025 5:06:56 AM PST by MtnClimber
I have been writing here for about a decade that wind and solar would inevitably prove to be far more expensive for producing useful electricity than other methods like fossil fuels, nuclear, or hydro. The reasons are not difficult to understand. Wind and solar, due to intermittency, are not capable of powering a full-time electrical grid on their own. To make the grid capable of fulfilling customer demand 24/7/365, wind and solar require large amounts of additional capital infrastructure — dispatchable back-up generation, energy storage, additional transmission capacity, and more. If wind and solar prove insufficient to eliminate dispatchable back-up generation, then you find yourself running (and paying for) two duplicative systems, when you could have had only one. Energy storage as a potential solution to intermittency turns out to be impossibly expensive. If the only back-up generation you can find that works is powered by fossil fuels, then you haven’t even succeeded in achieving zero carbon emissions in the electricity sector.
And yet we have been, and continue to be, subjected to a constant drumbeat of advocacy claiming that wind and solar are now the cheapest ways to produce electricity. I’ll give you a few examples of that in a moment.
So who is right? We’ve had a long wait here in the U.S. as groups of states have incrementally differentiated their energy systems, and then as data have accumulated as to relative costs between states that have emphasized the “renewables” and those that have stuck with fossil fuels. At this point I think that we can make a definitive call. The answer is that increasing penetration of wind and solar generation on the grid drives electricity costs higher. And not by a little.
Earlier this week a think tank called the Institute for Energy Research came out with a Report titled “BLUE STATES, HIGH RATES ELECTRICITY PRICES: ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES.” The Report takes a deep look at five states in particular — California, Florida, Louisiana, Kentucky and New York. Two of those — California and New York — have sought to make themselves the “climate leaders” and have raced to increase use of the renewables and reduce the use of fossil fuels. The other three — Florida, Louisiana and Kentucky — have stuck with fossil fuels. Over time, the prices for electricity as between these two groups of states have diverged dramatically.
But before getting to the details, let’s take a brief look at the party line from those who continue to contend that electricity from wind and sun is cheaper. The unquestioned leader of the advocacy is the International Renewal Energy Agency, or “IRENA,” which is some kind of adjunct of the UN. A good example of their propaganda is their July 22, 2025 Report titled “Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2024.” From the introduction:
Renewables continue to prove themselves as the most cost-competitive source of new electricity generation. On an LCOE basis, 91% of newly commissioned utility-scale renewable capacity delivered power at a lower cost than the cheapest new fossil fuel-based alternative.
“LCOE” is the thoroughly fraudulent “levelized cost of electricity” measure that simply excludes all the ancillary costs of running a grid on renewables (costs like backup, storage, and extra transmission). Unfortunately, when the consumer gets the bill, the ancillary costs get included.
Also in the forefront of the advocacy is the usual gaggle of lavishly-funded environmental groups. From example, consider this from the Environmental Defense Fund on March 21, 2025:
The U.S. is going to need more affordable electric power to supply data centers, manufacturing and homes around the country. . . . Our country’s vast supplies of wind and solar resources are ready to be tapped to support that demand . . . . And these clean energy sources paired with battery storage are cost-effective too. Electricity from wind and solar costs less than electricity from gas and coal.
EDF’s link goes to an IRENA Report. And of course, don’t forget the New York Times. From a piece titled “Want Cheap Power, Fast? Solar and Wind Firms Have a Suggestion,” March 21, 2025:
Wind, solar and battery storage are relatively quick and cheap to construct. That could help avert energy shortages and keep prices low, an argument that renewable energy firms are making to policymakers.
Well, if those claims were true, then California and New York should be beating the pants off Florida, Kentucky and Louisiana on electricity prices. But of course, it is the opposite. Fortunately, we are now far enough into this process to have clear data on the diverging prices among the states. Here is a national map from the IER Report:
For New York, IER bases much of its discussion on the November 25 Report from the Progressive Policy Institute that I also cited extensively in my post of December 3. For the case of California, here are some details from the IER Report:
California is second in the nation in total electricity generation from renewable resources and leads the country in utility-scale solar generating capacity. California’s generation mix is 42% natural gas, 39% non-hydroelectric renewables, 12% hydroelectric, and 7% nuclear.
And how has that turned out for consumer electricity rates?
California’s electricity rates are the second-highest in the nation. Rates are double the national average. Governor Newsom and California’s state legislature have embraced numerous policies that intentionally increase electricity rates, including a carbon dioxide reduction mandate, renewable mandates, solar cost-shifting (net metering), nuclear reactor closures, and EV charging subsidies, to name a few.
The cases of the three example states that have avoided pursuit of the renewables are equally simple. Louisiana:
In 2025, Louisiana had the third-lowest electricity rates in the United States. The reasons are simple—73% of Louisiana’s electricity is generated by natural gas and unlike California or New York, Louisiana has not attempted to implement carbon dioxide or renewable energy goals through its electricity generation system.
Florida:
Florida delivers electricity at prices 2% below the U.S. average at 13.27 cents per kWh for all sectors. It achieves this mainly by generating 75% of its power from natural gas, even though the state has no significant natural gas production of its own and must import virtually all of it.
And Kentucky:
In 2025, Kentucky had the 13th-lowest electricity rates in the United States and the lowest rates of any state east of the Mississippi River. Kentucky’s rates are 21% lower than the national average. The reasons are straightforward—67% of Kentucky’s electricity is generated by coal and 26% by natural gas. Unlike states such as California or New York, Kentucky has not burdened ratepayers with the carbon dioxide reduction mandates or renewable energy requirements that inflate electricity costs.
To be fair, the IER Report does not cover some states with relatively high penetration of renewables on the grid that nevertheless have below average electricity costs. Prominent examples are Texas and Iowa. Both of those also have full fossil fuel backup capacity, meaning that their electricity costs could be lowered further by eliminating the wind turbines and just paying for one generation system. And, in my view, both Texas and Iowa have reached a practical maximum of wind generation on a grid. My prediction is that attempts in either state to meaningfully increase wind generation from current levels and eliminate fossil fuels will drive electricity costs dramatically higher. But let them go ahead and try. Prove me wrong!
Meanwhile, despite the evidence now available, Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey just won the governorship with a campaign substantially focused on providing more “affordable” electricity through mostly wind and solar generation. Her chances of success are about zero.
The cheapest would be any production method that doesn’t involve....the Uniparty graft & corruption.
Boy, did you ever nail that.
There are several so-called “solar farms” in our area here in rural NW Jersey. Yes, there are still some rural areas in N.J. The “farms” are not farms. It is a gross misnomer. They do not produce any veggies, fruit, poultry, or livestock. Quite the contrary, they take up hundreds of acres of farmland that could be put to much better use. They have done nothing to reduce our electric bills. Nothing.
I laid $20 to take an online iq t3st once, and a week later i got a r3sponse. I open3d it up and inside was $40 and a sympathy card
Gotta wear a wool suit while scrubbin across the carpet :)
And Captain Obvious smiles, as he always does when one analyzes liberal “science”.
Why is Washington state so low? I would have expected it to be higher.
You can get a 710w with peak 850 with bifacial gain for $250 retail today in 2025 money. I can get the same panel for $90 wholesale by the pallet load of them.
These are thin film poly silicon double sided panels.that can be installed vertical, horizontal, at the latitude equivalent pitch angle or on two axis or single axis trackers. A two axis tracker boosts single sided panels by 40% and bifacials 60%
These panels carry a 25 year warranty to 80% original capacity and modern thin film poly silicon double are going to be 40 year panels as the decline curves are showing asymptotic vs linear curves. I have 5 year olds panels that have barely lost 2% and that loss was really all in the first year then it leveled off and has not dropped much as in under half a percent in the last 3 years.
Texas has a PVOUT of 4.6 where I live that means over a 30 year average from 2024-1994 the average yearly solar output of thinfilm solar panels works out to 4.6kWh per kilowatt of installed capacity when you divided the sum of the yearly total by 365. It’s a convenient number to compare location to location for solar site selection the real number is the yearly output over that 30 year climate average.
So a 710w with bifacial gain to 850 is an 850 watt panel if it’s freestanding such as my panels up on poles over part of the property.
At a PVOUT of 4.6 that panel will make 1427 kWh in its first year and now in its 5th year 5 % less so 1355kWh currently dropping 0.05% per year.
Over it’s rated 25 year life which is not to dead it’s what the manufacturer warranties it should still be producing 80% at 25 years old.
Given real world asymptotic decline vs modeled behavior at 25 years those panels will be down to 94% SOH not 80%
So 1341 kWh per year.
Sum it all up. That single panel in 25 years is going to make in sunny Texas 22,897 kWh one panel the size of a sheet of plywood roughly.
Even at full retail cost of $250 per panel is 1.09 cents per kwh in panel costs. At wholesale what someone with a LLC and a TIN number can get them in bulk it’s 0.39 cents per kWh.
$250/22897kWh
$90/22897kwh
Inverters wholesale are 18 cents per watt of capacity in the 5000 to 15000 watt size range. You won’t get inverters of 15kw retail. A typical 4500 sqft home will have 15000 watts worth of panels.
So $2700 for the inverter that drives a 15kw system. You can work out the cost per watt over the 25 years once you know how much kWh your system will make. In this case it’s a 18 panel system for 15300 watts.
18 panels are going to make 22897x18= 412,146 kWh in 25 years in a solar insolation PVOUT of 4.6
$2799/412,146= 0.0065510766
This is 0.655 cents per kWh over that 25 years it’s insignificant once you get to large systems.
Mounting costs....three guys can use no hole mounts to put up 18 panels in an afternoon four to 6 hours is what is booked. $15 hr for two general labor $25hr for the “skilled” team lead. So $330 for labor semi-skilled.
Mounts no hole $9 retail each you need 4 per panel wholesale $2= $648 retail $142 wholesale , wires it’s by the foot 250ft is $149 retail. You need two breakers and a panel tie in.
Legally you need a licenced electrician to do the panel tie and install the breakers or they can sign off on a subs work with post install inspection. Either way $175 for the one hour inspection. Have a electrician on retainer is the name of the code game.
So all in wholesale since if you going to hire subs you should use their LLC to get wholesale prices.
18 panels = $90x18= $1620
Inverter $2700
Labor $330
Mounts $142
Wire $149 @250ft worth
Dual pole 80amp breaker $57
Mandatory electrician inspection $175
Depending on code you may or may not need a sub panel and a grid auto disconnect. We don’t have to have one behind the main 400 amp panel breaker as long as the inverter does grid sense to zero output on loss of grid sync and/or zero net output on command.
$5025 this is what a 15,000 watt system would cost if you didn’t pay some installer a 500% profit margin to do it. Which is why you see dozens of installers coming door to door all the time trying to install systems for home owners it a HUGE money maker.
5,025÷412,146 kWh= $0.0121922814
1.22 cents per kWh LOCE
This is why decentralized solar makes so much sense.
I paid slightly less than these numbers for my last two 15,000 watt systems and will be getting 1.2 cents power for the rest of my life as these panels will last not 25 but 40+ years. In realty I sell excess power at a profit so I am not paying for 1.2 cents power I am turning a monthly profit at this point my systems are paying me.
So get big mad at solar but people who can do math and live in the sun belt are laughing all the way to the banks. I took zero subsidy I make WAY too much per year to qualify for any such things. Oh and these panels were Canadian or Taiwan so allies not commies.
I really don’t get why chest thumpers get all mad at individual solar it’s the only means of independence from the grid and yes the natural gas grid is well a grid. Virtually no one has a functional oil well in their back yard or back 40 and if you did the EPA compliance to burn your own fuel means you have to have H2S strippers, and Lord help you if you have benzene, toluene or zylene even at ppm levels in your gas. Independent people’s should be all over homestead solar that giant fusion reactor in the sky is showering your roofline with energy and you are paying out the nose for some cooperation to string wires to your house and feed you electron that you could harvest from your own roof and land for 1/12 what the corporations want to charge you for.
Ha chest thumps drill baby’s drill for more natural gas so you can make corporate execs rich and their board too. Frankly I would rather take personal responsibility for my energy and let God shine his abundance upon my home and lands.
Here are 40+ year old panels using two generation old tech the new stuff blows this away.
https://x.com/JessePeltan/status/1921463441971155095
I get the point you make, but...there ARE options for storage of wind and solar energy for usage when there is no wind or no sun, or to draw on when the grid usage goes up. The problem is, those “storage” options are prohibitively expensive.
With solar or wind and/or battery storage for the grid, govt/bureaucrats get involved. That always makes unbiased analysis go out the window. That's my #1 problem with solar and wind for the grid and the potential of some battery storage.
Decentralized solar owner here, and hater of solar for the grid. For me the Aha! moment was when I realized that it's sometimes not a mutual exclusive decision. In other words, you don't have to always think "either..or". Look for a possible "both...and" option. I have 90kWh of battery storage that I let drain at most 70% (my inverters start pulling from the grid if battery storage gets down to 30% SOC - strength of charge left). So count it as 63kWh of usable storage.
Why that amount? Because it requires TONS OF HOMEWORK for your use case scenario to find the line between the economies of scale (invest more to get more return) but not so much that you're fighting the law of diminishing returns (quit investing more and getting little to show for it). For example, in the past 365 days I spent a total of only $37 pulling power from the grid on days that the batteries were charged to 100% the prior day. It'd be cost prohibitive for me to spend more for battery storage just to remove that $37/year cost to my power bills. If I'm not happy with the $775 total per year in power bills, it'd be best to look at other ways to lower them. Or I could be happy with where it's at and the fact that so far the overall energy project has saved me over $7K. My monthly costs for energy are now a tiny power bill + loan payment I took out to buy and in some cases hire professionals to install solar and efficient HVAC and water heater and insulation and charging for EV, etc.). That saves me from high power bill + high natural gas bill + high cost of gasoline (from before I converted my two nat gas appliances to electric and bought an EV that my wife and I do most of the driving in: 18K miles per year of home charged miles).
I challenge anyone to find an honest bureaucrat/regulator who'll do that level of research and analysis for the community. Until that happens, forget solar/wind/battery for the grid.
Also, for something like what I have to work for the grid, it'd require having hydrocarbon plants sitting idle during the good times. Which basically means double investment in power generation (i.e. solar plants plus hydrocarbon plants) with the hydrocarbon plants sitting idle for a while. IMHO that's a huge waste. However, if the cost of hydrocarbon fuel goes up a lot (because of Dim restricting on mining/drilling for hydrocarbons), I can see a state in the south wanting to use some solar farms to lower hydrocarbon fuel costs. But even then that requires the hydrocarbon power plant to be able to scale up and down efficiently as needed. Can a nat gas fueled power plant run at, say 20% output and use up only 20% of nat gas as when it runs full throttle? To my knowledge that's only recently been created.
Exactly. They are an eyesore, unreliable, and IMO, I see them as vehicles for Democrat (and RINO) money laundering.
I drove through Iowa on a road Trip some years back, and on Route 80 that runs East/West, and there was a gigantic wind farm (Adair Wind Farm) that went on for miles and miles. I only saw a few of them turning, and it wasn’t for lack of wind.
I don’t know what it was for lack of, but it didn’t look like it was returning anything on any kind of investment.
I am 100% in favor of a “decentralized” approach such as the one you have taken. If that is something an individual homeowner can do within their experience level, budget and without subsidies, I think that is an enviable thing to do.
Politicians don’t care the taxpayer has lots of money to pay for whatever they want
I have no problem with stand alone solar power systems, even the ones that can feed into the grid. I think that the free market will find the best approach. It is government telling people and businesses what the answer is and what the approach will be that I object to. The majority of these leftist politicians have never built anything in their lives.
Thanks. And for what it’s worth, I hate the subsidies too. As a fellow FReeper, I hate the govt inserting itself into people’s decisions. Also, as a solar product consumer, all the subsidy did was artificially inflate the prices I paid up front. So they don’t help the consumer anyway. Much like we complain about govt “help” increasing the costs in other industries (i.e. healthcare, education).
Have not checked in a while. In the 70’s it took more energy to build a solar cell than it would produce in its lifetime. And they do age. I think they’re good for about 20 years.
Generation from wind and solar is 3 to 4x natural gas, and that isn’t even full lifecycle cost that includes demolition of some very nasty materials. This was stated by California PG&E during their bankruptcy when they were asked to explain why they didn’t maintenance their power lines in fire prone areas.
The state made them install wind and solar and would not let them recoup the cost via billing as that would let people in on the scam. Something had to give and it was the maintenance budget.
“without Chinese neodymium magnets”
Neodymium magnets date from the 1980s.
When I was a kid, they used AlNiCo magnets.
Well, no return on our tax dollars, that’s for sure, but for those that are in the business, and the leftist politicians who push a bent agenda, it seems very lucrative, just like any other scam.
I looked at solar panels for electricity, maybe 20 years ago. At the time it would take about 25 years to recover the cost at, I think it was, $.12 kW/hr. The price for solar panels has come down by a tremendous amount. For stand-alone I think it is fine. For a national grid there are storage and backup issues as well as grid stability issues that have not currently been resolved.
Today, the more expensive ones are supposedly made to last up to 40 years. There is still no recycling. Broken panels leach toxins into landfills and eventually polluting creeks, streams, lakes & rivers. Plus the toxins leeching from the mines where the materials come from. Green? Not!
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