I agree with Will that the installed cost per Watt is not the same as the cost of the electricity (although 1/6 seems a little low, perhaps Jim S can tell us about his performance).  But keep in mind that a coal-fired plant has substantial operating costs (fuel, maintenance, pollution control costs, etc.) while the solar panels, once installed, have very low operating costs (few moving parts, no enormously high pressures, no fuel costs, no air pollution control systems, etc.).

 

The proper metric is the "Levelized Cost of Electricity", which integrates all costs, including investment costs, into the price of electricity delivered.  The LCoE is dropping fast for solar, while it tends to keep inching upward for coal.  Some reports suggest that the "crossover" will occur before year 2020, perhaps as soon as 4-5 years.  Whenever that happens, the day that solar is cheaper than coal for electricity is the day when customers start abandoning the coal-fired utilities in droves and opt for their own solar panels.  That means First Energy and AEP will need to depend on fewer and fewer customers to cover higher and higher costs for their plants.  Coal will not go away over night, but we saw earlier this year how quickly the generators switch from coal to gas just as soon as the cost per BTU of fuel shifts.

 

I expect gas prices to come back up, and coal-fired generation is already recovering slightly as those gas prices rise again this fall.  But when the shift to solar happens, the customers are not going to come back.  West Virginia needs to prepare for a permanent shift, and I predict it will happen sooner than most of our political leaders imagine.

 

JBK

>>> kevin fooce <fmoose39@hotmail.com> 11/30/2012 5:56 PM >>>

One may need to re-examine the figures or actually look at apples to apples.


Kevin Fooce
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