The Real Price of Wind and Solar

First pay for renewables. Then pay again to pick up all the slack. By The WSJ Editorial Board.............

The Real Price of Wind and Solar

First pay for renewables. Then pay again to pick up all the slack.

By The Editorial Board.............

March 12, 2023 06:33 p.m. EDT

A bil­lion here, a bil­lion there, and soon you’re talk­ing about real costs from politi­cians’ head­long rush to­ward net zero car­bon emis­sions. United King­dom house­holds re­ceived a re­minder of this truth re­cently with the lat­est data on how re­new­ables drive up their en­ergy bills.

The British elec­tric-grid op­er­a­tor spent £4.2 bil­lion in 2022 bal­anc­ing sup­ply and de­mand on the net­work, a record amount. This works out to £150 per house­hold, ac­cord­ing to the Nu­clear In­dus­try As­so­ci­a­tion, the lob­by­ing group that crunched the num­bers based on data re­leased by Na­tional Grid.

These charges arise be­cause with cur­rent tech­nol­ogy it’s im­pos­si­ble to store large amounts of elec­tric­ity for long. The grid must bal­ance sup­ply and de­mand on a minute-by-minute ba­sis, and the task be­comes ur­gent and costly as re­new­ables take up a greater share of in­stalled gen­er­a-tion. When­ever the wind isn’t blow­ing or the sun isn’t shin­ing—which is of­ten in north­ern Eu­rope—the grid op­er­a­tor must rack up high fees buy­ing emer­gency power from con­ven­tional gen­er­a­tors.

These bal­anc­ing costs con­sti­tute a grow­ing bur­den on British house-holds and busi­nesses that al­ready have seen their bills sky­rocket by up to 230% over the past year, prompt-ing the gov­ern­ment to step in with as-yet in­cal­cu­la­ble sub­si­dies to re­duce the amount peo­ple must ac­tu­ally pay. The an­nual bal­anc­ing cost was about £1.2 bil­lion as re­cently as 2019.

Politicians claim renewables enhance energy security, but escalating balancing costs tell a different story. This is a monetary measure of how unreliable renewable supply is, and how much consumers have to spend to keep the lights on. It’s an additional punch in the pocketbook to inflation-beleaguered households after so much of their tax money has gone to subsidize the installation of new windmills and solar panels. And that assumes the lights even stay on as net-zero mandates escalate.