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Cost is a very complex subject by itself. People think it's as simple as taking the average price paid per kWh (gigawatt hour in utility terms) and multiplying it by the projected production of the turbine (or solar panel) and spitting out the break-even on investment.
Non-dispatchable (so-called renewable) electricity is not as valuable as dispatchable (supply varies to match demand), yet it's purchased at the same price as dispatchable production. Not only that, but it raises the price of dispatchable production because it steals away production that dispatchable plants would otherwise have provided, pushing out the payback time for constructing the plant in the first place. It doesn't allow for any of the dispatchable infrastructure to be eliminated because it's necessary for when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing.
It's at this point in the conversation that most believers refer to unicorn storage. "We can store excess non-dispatchable (renewable) electricity and turn it into dispatchable electricity". Perhaps that's all technically achievable sometime in the future, but we don't live in the future. It's like saying there shouldn't be deaths due to cancer now because someday in the future we'll probably cure it. Fine, I'm hopeful for that too, but in the meantime we have to treat cancer with the tools we have available.
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