Good question from Michael Shellenberger writing in Forbes, here’s part of the answer:
What gives? If solar panels and wind turbines became so much cheaper, why did the price of electricity rise instead of decline?Electricity prices increased by:
- 51 percent in Germany during its expansion of solar and wind energy from 2006 to 2016;
- 24 percent in California during its solar energy build-out from 2011 to 2017;
- over 100 percent in Denmark since 1995 when it began deploying renewables (mostly wind) in earnest.
The reason? Their fundamentally unreliable nature. Both solar and wind produce too much energy when societies don’t need it, and not enough when they do. Solar and wind thus require that natural gas plants, hydro-electric dams, batteries or some other form of reliable power be ready at a moment’s notice to start churning out electricity when the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining.
Via AEI