Yep. Anyone who has bothered to look at the numbers would likely agree with you. To that end:
- Here are my numbers on German solar & wind capacity factors (nuclear generally achieves 90% by comparison): https://gist.github.com/anonymous/f1a6d064890d67fbfc98d66dbd...
- Sketchier numbers for India: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14085871
- The view of the Brookings Institute in 2014: http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2014/...
Their base-case assumption is a $50 per tonne price on co2 emissions, and they use a 'costs avoided' methodology so that things like cost of system stabilisation (e.g. grid batteries due to intermittent generation) are factored in as well. The paper concludes:
Assuming that reductions in carbon dioxide emissions are valued at $50 per metric ton and the price of natural gas is not much greater than $16 per million Btu, the net benefits of new nuclear, hydro, and natural gas combined cycle plants far outweigh the net benefits of new wind or solar plants. Wind and solar power are very costly from a social perspective because of their very high capacity cost, their very low capacity factors, and their lack of reliability.
For example, adjusting U.S. solar and wind capacity factors to take account of lack of reliability, we estimate that it would take 7.30 MW of solar capacity, costing roughly four times as much per MW to produce the same electrical output with the same degree of reliability as a baseload gas combined cycle plant. It requires an investment of approximately $29 million in utility-scale solar capacity to produce the same output with the same reliability as a $1 million investment in gas combined cycle. Reductions in the price of solar photovoltaic panels have reduced costs for utility-scale solar plants, but photovoltaic panels account for only a fraction of the cost of a solar plant. Thus such price reductions are unlikely to make solar power competitive with other electricity technologies without government subsidies.
Wind plants are far more economical in reducing emissions than solar plants, but much less economical than hydro, nuclear and gas combined cycle plants. Wind plants can operate at a capacity factor of 30 percent or more and cost about twice as much per MW to build as a gas combined cycle plant. Taking account of the lack of wind reliability, it takes an investment of approximately $10 million in wind plants to produce the same amount of electricity with the same reliability as a $1 million investment in gas combined cycle plants.