A climate change hystericist annoyed me enough that I dug up this OECD study on how the more you use "renewable" energy, the more expensive power gets:
The Costs of Decarbonisation: System Costs with High Shares of Nuclear and Renewables | en | OECD
"The study highlights the impacts the variability of wind and solar PV production have on electricity system costs, which appears as costly adjustments to the residual system...
Renewable energies have enjoyed in recent years both popular and political support. While average costs per MWh of wind and solar PV are still somewhat higher than those of nuclear energy, the cost gap at the level of plant-level generation costs (as calculated with the levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) methodology as set out in the 2015 OECD study on the Projected Costs of Generating Electricity) no longer seems insurmountable. However, as spelled out in the first OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) study on system costs, Nuclear Energy and Renewables: System Costs in Decarbonising Electricity Systems (2012), VRE [variable renewable energy] technologies such as wind and solar PV cause a number of additional costs to the system, which are referred to as system costs.
The most important categories of the system costs of VREs are increased outlays for distribution and transmission due to their small unit size and distance from load centres, balancing costs to prepare for unpredictable changes in wind speed and solar radiation and, perhaps, most importantly, the costs for organising reliable supplies through the residual system during the hours when wind and sun are not fully available or not available at all. Variability also induces significant changes in the composition of the remainder of dispatchable technologies that ensure round-the-clock security of supply in the power system. When deploying VREs, one observes, in particular, a shift from technologies with high fixed cost, such as nuclear power to more flexible technologies with low fixed cost such as gas-fired power generation. While the latter will be able to better absorb the loss of operating hours due to VRE infeed, the overall costs of the residual system will increase, an effect known as “profile costs”. In addition, deploying VREs does not automatically translate into carbon emission reductions. For instance, when nuclear power is substituted by a mix of VREs and gas-fired generation that produces electricity when VREs are not available, overall carbon emissions will increase.
All technologies have system costs. Nuclear, for instance, requires particularly strong network connections and access to reliable cooling sources. However, these costs turn out to be an order of magnitude lower than those imposed by the variability of renewable energies. The key advantage of nuclear power in the economic competition with wind and solar PV is the fact that nuclear power plants are dispatchable, i.e. they can produce large amounts of carbon free baseload power in a reliable and predictable fashion...
Since the load factor and the capacity credit of VRE is significantly lower than that of conventional thermal power plants, a significantly higher capacity is needed to produce the same amount of electricity. While about 98 GW are installed in the base case scenario without VRE, the deployment of VRE up to penetration levels of 10% and 30% increases the total capacity of the system to 118 and 167 GW, respectively. The total installed capacity would more than double to 220 GW if a VRE penetration level of 50% must be reached. More than 325 GW, i.e. more than three times the peak demand, are needed if VRE generate 75% of the total electricity demand. In other words, as the VRE penetration increases vast excess capacity, thus investment, is needed to meet the same demand...
Profile costs result from the de-optimisation of the residual system due to the variability of VRE. Total system costs, expressed in USD per unit of net electricity delivered by VRE to the grid are shown in Figure ES6 for the four scenarios of 10%, 30%, 50% and 75% VRE as well as for the two sensitivity scenarios. These system costs must be understood as the increase of the total costs to provide the same service of electricity supply above the costs of the least-cost scenario without any VRE...
System costs vary between less than USD 10 per MWh of VRE for a share of 10% of wind and solar PV to more than USD 50 per MWh of VRE for a share of 75% of wind and solar PV...
These values need to be compared to the plant-level generation costs of VRE, which range, depending on the scenario, from USD 60 per MWh for onshore wind to up to USD 130 per MWh for solar PV. It should also be noted that the system costs are largely unaffected by any declines in plant-level costs as long as the share of VRE remains exogenously imposed. Indeed, all four components of system costs (balancing, profile, connection and grid costs) increase with the deployment of VRE resources, but at different rates. By adding system costs to the costs of plant-level generation as assessed in LCOE calculations, one can calculate the total system costs of electricity provision for the eight scenarios analysed in this study (see Figure ES7 above).