Thursday, April 5, 2012

Math is hard, Green Energy division

So, what's the break-even analysis on wind power?  That's where you add up all the costs of the system (initial capital plus operating expenses plus fuel costs over the life of the project) and add up all the revenue generated by the project over the life of the project, discount our year costs and revenue for the time value of money (interest rate), and then use that to identify the point in time where net revenue exceeds net costs.

Is it one year to break even, ten years, longer?

ASM826 does the math for all the Progressives.  Shockingly, this single number explains the entirety of why wind power produces far less than 1% of the world's electricity.  I won't spoil the surprise by giving you the number, but will say that this is very likely an existence proof that Progressives are not smarter than all of us.

2 comments:

NotDilbert said...

Just went through that exercise here in Mass. For $35k, I can cover almost all of my south facing roof with solar panels and generate ~ 45% of my KWH needs. ( at times, of course, when I don’t actually use a lot of electric power) . Since the State Government (Mass) requires Utilities to generate “Green” power, I would be able to sell my power to them (at a 400% premium over what they are allowed to resell it for ).

As a result of this ENRON accounting, the ROI of my Solar project is only 5 ½ years.

Of course, without the Solar Power buyback market the ROI is……….... well, never.

Old NFO said...

Yep, that is a home run post :-)