With economics of scale the installation and material costs for renewable technologies are set to exceed or match the cost per kWh of conventional fossil and nuclear generation plant over the next ten years.
Price volatility, political considerations, environmental aspects will mean higher risks and costs for the conventional solutions.
Features and benefits
Identify the leading technologies in the renewable energy sector.
Analyze ROIs for the leading technologies in the renewable energy sector.
Analyze the core legislation impacting the sector.
Help to identify the main opportunities and barriers to renewable energy development.
Identify the different yields – economic, social, environmental – for renewable energy.
Highlights
In terms of economic profit the average range of ROI increases with the scale of the renewable energy project. With capacity above 1,000kW or a 1MW, returns are usually above 10% to 15%. At the smaller scale due to the construction costs and the reduction in efficiency of the resource harvesting, ROIs are typically 2% to 8%.
As a result of the uncertainty and technical risk of many renewable technologies, maintenance costs are high, especially for large-scale projects. Nascent stage Wave energy is estimated to have a maintenance cost of GBP207,605 per MW. In comparison off-shore wind has a maintenance cost of GBP70,000 per MW.
Regarding costs, there is still much debate as to who should pay for the reinforcement costs to the grid of renewable energy. A country such as Denmark, for example, makes TSOs and DSOs cover the costs of reinforcement. In many other markets, the main issue is that there individual countries lack a coherent master-plan for grid reinforcement.
[mappress]
Offshore WIND staff, January 20, 2012