Costs of wind and solar in Colorado underestimated, don’t include costs of power lines

Xcel Energy’s new $1.7 billion Power Pathway Project to build 550 miles of new 345-kilovolt power lines and at least four new substations in eastern and southeastern Colorado will add to the cost of renewable energy.

Xcel customers will be paying for the power lines to help meet Gov. Jared Polis’ Greenhouse Gas Reduction Roadmap goals for carbon reduction.

for nearly full electrification of buildings and transportation, Net-Zero America co-principal investigator Jesse Jenkins, an assistant professor and energy systems engineer at Princeton, told The Denver Gazette in an email that the U.S. would have to increase transmission capacity by at least 60% by 2030 and by nearly 300% by 2050.

This could mean building as much as 884,000 miles of new transmission lines nationwide to add to the existing 183,000 miles of lines, at a potential costs of more than $1 trillion, according to figures provided by Jenkins. Jenkins could not provide an estimate for Colorado alone.

Reaching the goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 will require substantial investment in the U.S. transmission grid, to accommodate growing electricity demand from EVs, heat pumps, and hydrogen producers, and

when all the costs of using renewable energy are factored in, the comparative costs between renewables and, for example, natural gas or nuclear power, shift dramatically.

Dr. Robert Idel, who holds a PhD in Economics from Rice University, published a study in the scientific journal Energy in 2022 examining the way in which the cost of energy from a source like windmills or nuclear power is calculated.

The traditional levelized cost of energy (LCOE) represents “the expected lifetime generation of an electricity generating plant and the expected costs to generate the lifetime electricity,” said Idel.

It’s important to note that the classic LCOE is calculated based on the output of the generator itself and doesn’t include the costs of distributing that energy.

Idel said the standard way of calculating how much energy costs “has been criticized for ignoring the effects of intermittency and non-dispatchability.”

These two factors are inherent in both wind and solar sources, which do not provide full-time stable power to the grid.

To address this, Idel discusses a novel cost evaluation metric — the Levelized Full System Costs of Electricity (LFCOE), to address what he sees as a deficiency in the standard method.

He concludes that the LCOE per-megawatt-hour for wind and solar of $40 and $36 respectively, drastically underestimate the true LFSCOE per megawatt-hour as compared to other generating sources including coal, natural gas, and nuclear power.

Idel says in Texas, the LFSCOE of wind and solar of $291 and $413 respectively, are two to four times the cost of nuclear power, which comes in at $122, and five to 10 times more expensive than natural gas, which comes in at $42 per MWh.

Idel’s analysis does not include the additional costs pointed out in the Princeton report for building power lines to reach all of the widely distributed wind turbines and solar farms.

Ooops. You have to pay attention to those details. They should have included an experienced electrical lineman on the committee.

It’s much like an architect who forgets to take into account the width of the 2x4s when calculating the size of the rooms in a building. Details, details.

Consult the people who will actually be doing the work if you want someone that will be paying attention to details!

NICE! Just make sure that if the grid goes down, you still can use the power that your arrays generate, as that is usually NOT the case.

Correct. It depends on your state's regulations. In Alabama you can power your house with your solar and batteries even when the grid is down as long as your inverter(s) have the feature to not put power onto the grid when the grid is down. Not all inverters have that feature. But if your inverter has the feature to optionally not put power onto the grid (because your power utility would charge a large monthly fee, or if your state would force you to let them control your inverter settings, etc.), then chances are it also has the feature to not put power onto the grid if the grid is down.

The idea is to protect linemen working on downed lines, which is very understandable. My idea is to always be the one in control -- if I don't like the power utility's power buyback rules, I can turn it off without replacing my inverters. But if I like the rules and if they work best for my situation, I sign up for it (which I'm in the process of doing now after having solar for 2 years without putting power onto the grid and having power even the little bit the grid has gone down here). If my state changes the power buyback rules or mine an my wife's power consumption habits change so that the power buyback option isn't good for us, I'll disable it.

And it's a whole house system (using backup generator lingo). My inverters can put out up to 18kW continuous AC power (assuming I have solar and/or power in batteries). All circuits are powered from the inverters. So in a grid-down situation I might have to walk around the house to shut off some appliances (i.e. if I'm charging the EV at 5.6kW while it's below freezing outside and my home heater is running at 11kW while I'm in the hot tub using up 4 kW while my wife is cooking and using 7 kW, etc. would total beyond 18kW). But at least I could pick and choose at any point which appliances to power at that time (no dedicated circuits like with a lot of backup generator situations). In fact, from spring through fall I can go weeks in a row without pulling power from the grid even with the grid up the whole time (thus it's normal to power whatever I want without the grid).

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