My instinct is that you're not including the cost of the fuel, or maybe the two types of plants have different financing models that are hard to compare directly, but I wouldn't be qualified to check your results even if you presented all the data.
> It's not like they love nat-gas, they love money and profits.
Doesn't this logic cut both ways? If wind energy was so expensive, then no one would be building wind farms.
The docs seemed pretty clear that they were the operating costs of the installation. I had to find the install cost and the operating costs separately.
> Doesn't this logic cut both ways? If wind energy was so expensive, then no one would be building wind farms.
That's a good point, but there is also an enormous amount of pressure to go carbon free and these power companies answer to several regulatory bodies all with enormous power of their operations. It's not unreasonable to believe there are requirements to move to wind for continued licensing.
And the easy way to know this is true is that utilities are still building nat-gas plants. It's not like they love nat-gas, they love money and profits. If wind was actually cheaper than fuel, they'd just be over building wind farms so that no new nat-gas plants were needed.