Charting the costs and effectiveness of Renewable Energy in Europe

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A long and well structured look at European Unreliables energy production by Ed Hoskins.

The diagrams below collate the cost and capacity factors of European Renewable Energy power sources, Onshore and Off-shore Wind Farms and Large scale Photovoltaic Solar generation.  They are compared to the cost and output capacity of conventional Gas Fired Electricity generation.

• capacity factor:  installed nameplate capacity compared to the actual electrical energy output achieved
• capital cost:  comparison with the cost of equivalent electrical output produced by Gas Fired electrical generation.

Overall European renewable Energy has almost 6 times lower capacity than conventional Gas Fired power generation and it costs about 16 times more in capital expenditure alone.

In all the capital costs expended by 2013 in Europe amounted to some €1/2 trillion for ~170 Gigawatts of “nominal” installed Renewable Energy generation.  But because of the reduced capacity factor, those installations provide ~30 Gigawatts of real output electrical…