The DOI matches its Crossref record; 14 of the 14 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Intermittency and the Value of Renewable Energy
Abstract
A key problem with solar energy is intermittency: solar generators produce only when the sun is shining, adding to social costs and requiring electricity system operators to reoptimize key decisions. We develop a method to quantify the economic value of large-scale renewable energy. We estimate the model for southeastern Arizona. Not accounting for offset carbon dioxide, we find social costs of $138.40 per megawatt hour for 20 percent solar generation, of which unforecastable intermittency accounts for $6.10 and intermittency overall for $46.00. With solar installation costs of $1.52 per watt and carbon dioxide social costs of $39.00 per ton, 20 percent solar would be welfare neutral.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Unit Commitment for Systems With Significant Wind Penetration
Tuohy, A., Meibom, P., Denny, E., & O'Malley, M. (2009) · IEEE Transactions on Power Systems · doi:10.1109/tpwrs.2009.2016470 · Cited by 703
Comparing the Costs of Intermittent and Dispatchable Electricity Generating Technologies
Joskow, P. L. (2011) · American Economic Review · doi:10.1257/aer.101.3.238 · Cited by 671
Reliability and competitive electricity markets
Joskow, P., & Tirole, J. (2007) · The RAND Journal of Economics · doi:10.1111/j.1756-2171.2007.tb00044.x · Cited by 505
Fabbri, A., GomezSanRoman, T., RivierAbbad, J., & MendezQuezada, V. H. (2005) · IEEE Transactions on Power Systems · doi:10.1109/tpwrs.2005.852148 · Cited by 458
Market-Clearing With Stochastic Security— Part I: Formulation
Bouffard, F., Galiana, F. D., & Conejo, A. J. (2005) · IEEE Transactions on Power Systems · doi:10.1109/tpwrs.2005.857016 · Cited by 432
Evaluating the limits of solar photovoltaics (PV) in traditional electric power systems
Denholm, P. L., & Margolis, R. (2006) · Energy Policy · doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2006.10.014 · Cited by 428
Turning on the Lights: A Meta-Analysis of Residential Electricity Demand Elasticities
Espey, J. A., & Espey, M. (2004) · Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics · doi:10.1017/s1074070800021866 · Cited by 362
The SO2Allowance Trading System: The Ironic History of a Grand Policy Experiment
Schmalensee, R., & Stavins, R. N. (2013) · Journal of Economic Perspectives · doi:10.1257/jep.27.1.103 · Cited by 228
The Economics of Solar Electricity
Baker, E. D., Fowlie, M., Lemoine, D. M., & Reynolds, S. S. (2013) · Annual Review of Resource Economics · doi:10.1146/annurev-resource-091912-151843 · Cited by 158
Self-citationComplementary Bidding Mechanisms and Startup Costs in Electricity Markets
Reguant, M. (2014) · The Review of Economic Studies · doi:10.1093/restud/rdu022 · Cited by 151
Cited by
Technology scale and supply chains in a secure, affordable and low carbon energy transition
Hoggett, R. (2014) · Applied Energy · doi:10.1016/j.apenergy.2013.12.006 · Cited by 94
Metadata
- Authors
- Gowrisankaran, G., Reynolds, S. S., & Samano, M.
- Venue
- Journal of Political Economy
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Published
- 2016-08
- Volume
- 124
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 1187-1234
- ISSN
- 0022-3808 (ISSN-L)
- 1537-534X
- OpenAlex
- W2890869084
- Cited by
- 322
- References
- 14
- FWCI
- 9.15
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Intermittency and the Value of Renewable Energy. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1086/686733
- The paper
- Gowrisankaran, G., Reynolds, S. S., & Samano, M. (2016). Intermittency and the Value of Renewable Energy. Journal of Political Economy. https://doi.org/10.1086/686733
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
