artie morty
A typical wind farm can be found at Canunda.
This article gives both its installed capacity and how much it cost.
There is some information about capacity factors in this item
Plants like Canunda are only viable because some people are willing to pay a premium for "Green" power.
As a quick summary of the economic issues, consider that you start with $1000. You can either put it on deposit in the bank, or you can use it to build a power plant. Over the life of the plant, it generates and sells power. There are operating costs, but any surplus can be put on deposit in the bank.
Eventually, the plant wears out, and is of no further use. At that point, you need to have your original $1000 back, plus at least as much as you would have earned in interest over the life of the plant. If you have less than that, then the whole exercise has cost you money. It's easy enough to plug the figures into a spread sheet, and get a conclusion.
You can turn that on its head, and ask how much the generated power would have to be sold for for the whole enterprise to break even. That is the cost of generating power by that plant.
I don't have links off hand for nuclear power costings, but you can no doubt find some. Of course, there's endless debate about decommissioning costs.
I'm sure you can find figures for $ per kW for photovoltic cells. They're so high that they're a complete non starter for normal power generation.
The costs for coal (base load) and gas fired (peaking) plant can't be higher than the applicable average spot market price, or no one would want to build new plant.
As an aside, but because it ilustrates these points somewhat, note that the reason coal is not used for peaking plant is that coal fired power stations are more capital intensive, even though their operating costs are lower than for gas fired. A plant incurs its capital cost (the interest you could have got on the capital) continuously, but incurs its operating cost only while its running. Consequently, if the plant is only going to run for part of the time, the economics dictate that it should have a higher operating cost, but a lower capital cost.
Sylvia.
