Intermittency and the Value of Renewable Energy

Gautam Gowrisankaran, Stanley Reynolds and Mario Samano

No 17086, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: A key problem with solar energy is intermittency: solar generators only produce when the sun is shining. This adds to social costs and also requires electricity system operators to reoptimize key decisions with large-scale renewables. We develop a method to quantify the economic value of large-scale renewable energy. We estimate the model for southeastern Arizona. Not accounting for offset CO2, we find social costs of $138.4/MWh for 20% solar generation, of which unforecastable intermittency accounts for $6.1 and intermittency overall for $46. With solar installation costs of $1.52/W and CO2 social costs of $39/ton, 20% solar would be welfare neutral.

JEL-codes: Q2 Q4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-env
Note: EEE IO PR
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

Published as Gautam Gowrisankaran & Stanley S. Reynolds & Mario Samano, 2016. "Intermittency and the Value of Renewable Energy," Journal of Political Economy, vol 124(4), pages 1187-1234.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w17086.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Intermittency and the Value of Renewable Energy (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17086

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w17086

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().