Investing in wind and solar to avoid gas shocks often fails to add up for some due to high intermittency, the necessity of maintaining expensive backup gas infrastructure, and high upfront investment costs. While fuel costs are low, erratic production requires costly energy storage and grid upgrades, making total system costs higher than just generating with fossil fuels in some areas.

Investing in wind and solar to avoid gas shocks often fails to add up for some due to high intermittency, the necessity of maintaining expensive backup gas infrastructure, and high upfront investment costs. While fuel costs are low, erratic production requires costly energy storage and grid upgrades, making total system costs higher than just generating with fossil fuels in some areas. 
Why Wind and Solar Investment Has Faced Challenges:
Intermittency & Storage Costs: -
Wind and solar are not available 24/7, requiring large-scale, expensive battery storage or redundant, fast-ramping fossil fuel plants to maintain grid stability during lulls.
Total System Costs: -
While the cost to produce electricity from wind/solar has dropped below that of gas in many cases, the total system cost rises when accounting for the necessary investments in infrastructure, such as new, durable transmission lines.
Infrastructure Inefficiency: -
Renewables can lead to "intermittent infrastructure costs," where gas plants must operate less efficiently ("stop-and-go") to support variable solar and wind energy.
High Upfront Capital:-
 Financing large-scale renewable projects requires significant upfront capital, while fuel savings are realized slowly over time, leading to higher financing costs.
Infrastructure Limitations: -
Existing grids are primarily designed for centralized fossil fuel generation, not decentralized renewables.
Land Use and Supply Chain: -
Solar and wind require significantly larger land areas for energy generation compared to fossil fuels. Additionally, the manufacture of solar panels and turbines relies on a concentrated supply chain. 
While these challenges exist, 85% of global utility-scale wind and solar capacity added in 2022 was still cheaper than fossil fuel alternatives. However, for some, the cost of ensuring reliability during non-sunny or non-windy periods negates these generation savings, leading to high-cost or unstable systems. 
Why wind and solar are key solutions to combat climate change .
When considered over an asset's lifetime, the cost of producing a unit of electricity from onshore wind and solar PV, is now generally well below that of gas .
MJF Lion ER YK Sharma 

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