oh come on. This just reeks of misleading numbers. Here’s a great example (and the most highlighted item):

> Note that $29.10 per MWh is 2.91 cents per kilowatt-hour. For context, the average U.S. residential price for electricity is 12 cents per kWh.

Yeah, for further context, Coal, Natural gas, Nuclear and Hydro generation all come in below $29.10 per MWh. 12c/KWh, or $120/MWh, is a RETAIL rate. This is multiples of the commercial rate due to the costs incurred with actually delivering electricity to a retail consumer. The comparison above is simply there to make it sound like renewable generation is cheaper than the marginal generation source.

Which it is absolutely not. Have costs come down substantially? Absolutely! Are renewables a helpful component of the electric grid? Yes! Should renewables be a significantly larger part of the grid? No. And this is the part that no one cares to think about. We do not have anywhere near the electrical storage capacity to support a substantially larger portfolio of renewable gen in the U.S. This would be batteries, Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES), or pumped hydro. but we would need hundreds of GW of this capacity, and we have what, maybe 20 GW? And no, its not easy to build out (and yes, this would be considered a “expense” of renewable gen).

It is easy to be fully supportive of renewable generation if one only looks at the “clean” numbers. Once the research is actually done though, it is clear we need to continue to support a transition away from coal fired generation (used to be >55% of U.S. Generation, now ~40%) and towards natural gas fired generation WITH a renewable gen mix.