Bust your own myths

Wind and solar are so cheap, we’d all get richer if we switch to a wind/solar-heavy grid. We’ve all heard it in various forms, we’ve all developed acid reflux from hearing about LCOE this and LCOE that. And many of us have been arguing that none of this is actually true, and wind and solar are not cheap at all.

Well, today I come bearing news. Wind and solar are cheap. They are, in fact, so cheap that sometimes their owners need to pay to the grid operator to take their electricity. And guess what, this has been happening more and more often in Europe. Also, guess what it might threaten if it keeps happening? Yep. Sacred transition investment. Just as G7 transitioners discuss how to pay for that transition since the price tag got fatter.

French Power Slumps as Surging Renewables Push Out Atomic Plants, Bloomberg reported last Friday and it piqued my interest. Apparently, it’s been both sunny and windy in France lately, while demand for electricity has been trending down. Result: wholesale electricity prices dipped below zero and the French grid operator asked EDF, the state utility, which operates the country’s nuclear power plants, to shut down some of that capacity.

It’s funny, isn’t it that the grid operator is asking the nuclear operator to shut down capacity but it’s probably because wind and solar are cheaper than nuclear when it’s sunny and windy. Which is not good news for those operating the wind and solar installations.

It is, indeed, really bad news for those operating the installations, or plantations, as some evil haters call them. Because it means they make less money. Worse still, it threatens the Holy Grail of the transition: Private Investment. It was all perfectly shocking and unexpected, of course. The inevitable increase in such “incidents” will also no doubt be shocking and unexpected — as would the equally inevitable price rise, paradoxical as it may sound.