Value chain · CLM-0470
In plain terms
The same financial-industry report separately estimates what it costs to make solar and wind power as reliable as an always-on power plant, using the rules each U.S. grid operator actually applies to plan for enough capacity at peak demand. Across six major U.S. grid regions, firmed solar (without its own storage) costs about 92-135 dollars per megawatt-hour; solar with four hours of battery storage, also firmed, costs about 115-167 dollars per megawatt-hour. Firmed onshore wind costs about 87-118 dollars, and wind with storage about 103-146 dollars. The report itself is careful to say this "firming cost" is not the same as the cost of building a resource that can run for a full 24 hours a day on one site; it reflects each region's own accepted method of crediting how much a plant contributes to keeping the lights on at peak times.
The claim as recorded
Lazard's 2026 Cost of Firming Intermittency analysis puts the total unsubsidised cost of firming U.S. utility solar (LCOE plus region-specific levelized firming cost, using each grid operator's own ELCC and Net CONE) at 92-135 USD/MWh across six ISOs (MISO, CAISO, SPP, PJM, ERCOT, NYISO), and solar-plus-4-hour-storage firmed the same way at 115-167 USD/MWh. Onshore wind firmed comes to 87-118 USD/MWh, and wind-plus-storage to 103-146 USD/MWh.
Scope and limits
US-only, and specifically only the 6 named ISOs/RTOs - do not extrapolate to a national US average or to non-US grids without adjustment; does not include an equivalent firming adjustment for gas, coal or nuclear, so is not a fully symmetric like-for-like comparison across all technologies in CLM-0263; Lazard states this is illustrative, using each region's own planning construct, not a bottom-up engineering cost of actual battery/backup capacity.
What it assumes
capacity factor (regional) 18-19% (solar, most ISOs) up to 27% (CAISO); 27-37% (wind, most ISOs); ELCC 12-51% (solar-only) and 17-38% (wind-only), with storage attached 30-55% (PV + storage) and 47-66% (wind + storage); storage configuration 50% of PV/wind nameplate capacity, 4-hour duration; unsubsidised (a parallel subsidised column, excluding bonus adders, is also given; its totals run about 8-20% below the unsubsidised totals, our arithmetic from the 24 chart cells).
Where it comes from
Example: MISO Solar - unsubsidised LCOE $86/MWh + levelized firming cost $30/MWh = total $115/MWh. ERCOT Solar+Storage total $150/MWh; the highest solar+storage figure in the table is PJM at $167/MWh. Direct quote: "Total, including firming cost, does not represent the cost of building a 24/7 firm resource on a single project site but, instead, the LCOE of a renewable resource and the additional capacity costs required to achieve the resource adequacy requirement in the relevant reliability region based on the Net CONE as set by each market operator." (SRC-146 printed pp.17-18, note.)
Basis: USD2026, NOMINAL, FIRMED (this is Lazard's explicit firming-cost-adjusted figure)
Related records
- Answers question
- QST-021 not published in this release
- Supersedes
- CLM-0413 not published in this release
Cite this
energyaperture.com/c/clm-0470
CLM-0470, Energy Aperture, as of 2026.
Connected records
Other published records linked to this one. A list, not a judgement.
- Also from SRC-146
- CLM-0263A widely used financial-industry cost report estimates 2026 U.S. power costs, without subsidy, as follows: utility solar 40-98 dollars per...CLM-0265The same report assumes, by default, that a power project is financed 60 percent by debt (at 8 percent interest) and 40 percent by equity...CLM-0266The report itself warns that its main headline cost figures leave out the wider costs of running a reliable power grid, things like power...CLM-0300The main international definition of LCOE is the flat price per unit of electricity a power plant would need to be paid, every year of its...CLM-0303A major financial advisory firm's own widely-used LCOE report says plainly that its numbers do not cover intermittency or total system cost.CLM-0312A major financial advisory firm has estimated, using US grid operators' own published figures, what it adds to the cost of wind or solar to...CLM-0524Every UK-specific or typical-country cost-of-capital figure found sits well below the 20% rate Frazer-Nash used, even at the top of DESNZ's...
- Cited in articles