Shadow
Getting back to your post at the top of page 7.

The levelsed cost of new coal plant is quoted at around A$80 dollars per megawatt, the environmental problems which add to the cost is not the carbon tax, the issues as I expect you are aware are reducing emissions of sulphur dioxide, particulate matter, and heavy metals etc down to acceptable levels. I agree that modern coal plants are more efficient than old plant in a number of ways, but the cost of adding carbon capture on top of that completely blows that figure out of the water.

The figures I quoted for maintenance down time for coal plant came from a spreadsheet provided by either esaa, nem or aemo, and quoted 20 days for every existing coal plant in Australia, It suggests they simply used an average, but I expect more modern plants do better than that. If I can ever find the link again I will post it as it is quite informative.

The figure I gave for wind maintenance costs of A$ 1.6 cents kW/h is the actual cost for the power generated and not based on the capacity figure, multiplying it by 3 is not correct.

http://www.wind-energy-the-facts.org/operation-and-maintenance-costs-of-wind-generated-power.html

Note maintenance costs for wind is 60% of all overheads. I arrived at the figure above by applying the current euro exchange rate.

Peter
You complain about cherry picking data, and then choose the most favorable figure you can find, a more useful approach is the information provided by essaa who are lobbyists for the electrical power industry. If I wanted to spin my arguments, I would use the IMF figure of $41.2 billion to coal, and then claim that wind subsidies were 2X less than coal. The problem with burning coal is that it is a major emitter of CO2 and thus needs to be replaced, it is not in the end about subsidies and that leaves with a very simple choice subsidize power or charge more for it. At present subsidies have worked well for the consumer, as it has created an excess supply, which in turn has pushed down wholesale prices.

http://www.esaa.com.au/members/How_big_are_Australian_fossil_fuel_subsidies

As I have said before, there are some smart energy experts over at The Breakthrough Institute that take climate change very seriously yet also see the pitfalls in renewable energy. They have analysed German renewables, and found it wanting.

German solar is 3 times more expensive than nuclear: and it doesn't run on a cold German winter night.
"An analysis by the Breakthrough Institute finds that the entire German solar sector produces less than half the power that Fukushima Daiichi – a single nuclear complex – generated before it was hit by the tsunami. To build a Fukushima-sized solar industry in Germany would, it estimates, cost $155bn. To build a Fukushima-sized nuclear plant would cost $53.5bn. And the power would be there on winter evenings."
http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2011/03/doing_the_math_comparing_germa.shtml

Storage in northern nations like Germany could bankrupt any nation that tried it. You can *either* buy Tesla Powerpack batteries to back up *one week* of winter in Germany (at a hypothetical 30% penetration of wind and solar, and these wind and solar farms must still be bought), OR you can just buy safe modern nuclear-waste eating nukes that will do the whole job for 60 years. Again, *backup* a third of a renewable grid for just one week, or nuke the whole grid for 60 years! That’s the economics of renewable storage V nuclear.
Point 2 below
http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/issues/renewables/the-grid-will-not-be-disrupted

warm air is either obstinately innumerate or a died in the wool, closed mind, zealot. H has been told many many times that the subsidies have to be normalised for the amount of energy supplied. Despite being told repeatedly, he makes the same really basic error again (being generous calling it an error). He says:

>" I would use the IMF figure of $41.2 billion to coal, and then claim that wind subsidies were 2X less than coal."

Coal generated 20 times more electricity than wind in 2014. If coal got twice as much subsidy as wind for 20 times more energy supplied, obviously wind is subsidised 10 times more than coal per unit of electricity supplied. Get it yet?

Is there no getting through to the RE cultists?

Now Denmark is the latest country to recognise the Green dream is just that - an irrational, unsustainable dream.

>"Denmark’s widening budget deficit is forcing its policy makers to take some hard decisions in the very area where they are considered global role models: the fight against climate change. Denmark’s Liberal government is to reverse ambitious CO2 emission targets introduced by the previous administration. It will also drop plans to phase out coal-fired power plants and become fossil-fuel free by 2050, according to leaked documents first reported by newspaper Information. The news about Denmark’s cost-cutting measures, which also include a reduction in green funding initiatives worth 340 million kroner ($51.5 million) through 2019, came on the same day on which U.S. President Barack Obama issued a global appeal for urgent action in the buildup to a United Nations summit in Paris in December."
--Peter Levring, Bloomberg, 1 September 2015

Wind power is economic if it has access to cheap finance. As indeed are solar PV and solar thermal. And being a sunny country with a lot of spare land, the economic case for renewables is far stronger here than in Germany and Denmark.