As my research into wind energy has progressed, inevitably I've had to consider the merits of the other major electricity generating technologies. One thing I have not done is to do any significant research into other renewables, like biomass, solar and hydro. This page used to be part of "research", but it got big enough that I thought it merited its own page.

There are basically five major power generation technologies: coal, nuclear, gas, wind and hydro. Within each of them are various subsets, all with slightly different characteristics. My intent is to keep this discussion general enough that the varieties aren't that important. I omitted hydro, as Ontario has pretty much harnessed all that is reasonably available. To give a sense of how they compare, I've created the following table with some numbers I gleaned from a variety of sources. The cost to build numbers came from a 2009 DOE study, thus the dollars are U.S. Obviously these numbers are just guidelines. Any significant corrections would be gladly entertained, and if you'd like other characteristics mentioned, let me know.

Electric Source	Gas (CCGT)	Nuclear	Wind	Coal
Example	Halton Hills	Darlington	Wolfe Island	Nanticoke
Rated Output, MW	683	3524	198	4096
Dispatchable Output, mw	683	3524	0	4096
Capacity Credit, %	90	90	3	90
Est. Facility Output/yr, tw-h	5.4	27.8	0.53	32.3
Cost to Build, $1000 per mw, cap	938	3319	1923	2058
Cost to Build per TW-hr produced, in M$	119	421	718	261
Cost to Oper, $ per mw-h	72	53	20	48
CO2 Emissions, mt per mw-h	.368	0	0	.900
Physical Size, ha	50	100	4000	60

In the interest of full disclosure, the rows need some explanation.

• The Dispatchable Output is what the IESO is able to count on, normally the rated output of the plant. Wind has essentially no dispatchable output at all.
• The Capacity Credit is a measure of how much other generation can be removed as a result of the installation of this unit. For nuclear, gas and coal the values ranged from 75 to 100%, so I settled in the middle. Wind values ranged even more (0 - 25%), so I used the latest IESO report, 1.3mb. Capacity Credit gets to be a surprisingly contentious topic, especially with regard to wind turbines. More on it on my plant replacement page.
• The Facility Output per year is in terawatt-hours, assuming a potential output. This represents how many tw-h this plant could reasonably be expected to produce - for fossil fuels and nuclear it is based on the capacity credit. As a practical matter, utilzations are less than this. Gas is both more expensive and more responsive, so it is mostly used for peaking and thus by choice runs at much lower utilizations. For wind projects the grid will take whatever they produce, and I'm assuming a fairly generous average of 30%. Just for perspective, Ontario uses about 150tw-h every year.
• The Cost to Build - Cap is the cost of the facility itself, including connecting costs to the grid, but not any additional grid costs, per MW of capacity. These costs are for a new facility, with the latest technology, i.e. a scrubbed coal plant vs. a convenional one.
• The Cost to Build - Produced is the cost of the facility divided by how much it produces in a year.
• Operating costs are ongoing, including fuel. Wind may use no fuel, but apparently the upkeep is significant, although generally decreasing. Some of these costs are fixed and others variable, but I didn't want to get bogged down in that, so my number is a blend.
• The physical sizes were based on Google Earth and include parking lots and so on, but not any potential security setbacks outside of the facility itself. For wind, the size is for the entire spread of the Wolfe Island project, reasoning that the environmental effects of the turbines spread over quite a large area regardless of how much dirt is turned into concrete.

---

I have on several occasions been told that they would rather live next to a "wind mill" than next to a nuclear power plant. But that's not the choice. The choice is living next to a nuclear plant, or living in the middle of roughly 7,000 large turbines that spread out 25km in all directions from you plus 5 Halton Hills-sized gas plants.