Extra costs of wind, solar power

Relying on increased wind and solar is likely to increase electricity costs for residents in Washington and Idaho, and make electricity less reliable.

Advocates of wind and solar frequently point to is the claim that the fuel is “free.” That claim ignores the extremely high up-front cost of those energy sources. To account for that, energy analysts create a “levelized cost of energy” to compare between energy that has low costs up-front but has ongoing costs for the fuel – like natural gas – and sources that have high up-front costs but low fuel costs – like wind and solar.

An April analysis f...