Citizen Runner wrote:
Fat hurts wrote:
It is "free" in the sense that the infrastructure pays for itself. Once that happens, there is a tiny price for maintenance, but power becomes essentially "free". You don't have to pay for the sun to shine or the wind to blow.
This seems confused.
The fuel is free, the infrastructure is not. It requires a large capital investment at the outset. The maintenance costs for wind and solar infrastructure are higher than fossil fuel infrastructure maintenance.
The maintenance cost is lower. That is because solar and wind do not have the 10% annual downtime for major maintenance that coal and natural gas power plants have. You need fewer power plants, and there are many more options for location.
The cost of digging up coal, extraction oil and extracting natural gas are very high. Those cost need to be factored into the maintenance considerations.