I agree that lower duty cycles increase the per-MWh generation costs; I just think that there's going to be room for recently built plants to operate even with

I agree that lower duty cycles increase the per-MWh generation costs; I just think that there's going to be room for recently built plants to operate even with those higher costs. The sunk costs of already-built plants don't affect whether they will operate going forward. It's even possible that plants would be mothballed for some years and then revived when the economics support at least part-time operation, as I expect to happen with the currently idled Irsching units in Germany. New combined cycle gas plants are not terribly capital-intensive. Overnight capital cost is about $1/watt: https://atb.nrel.gov/electricity/2017/index.html?t=cg https://atb.nrel.gov/electricity/2017/index.html?t=cg Since they can also be built quickly, overnight capital costs are relatively representative of true capital costs for gas plants. I wish that the LCOE chart in the link above had included a scenario for "Gas combined cycle - low capacity factor" in the LCOE chart, because I think that's going to be how a fair number of plants end up operating: high CF in the peak demand season, but low annualized CF.