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China can also build anything they want where they want and sell power for state guided prices which is not possible in e.g. europe where people oppose. Also so

China can also build anything they want where they want and sell power for state guided prices which is not possible in e.g. europe where people oppose. Also solar is much cheaper already which makes such investments uninteresting for power companies.

throwaway894345 5y ago
What is the cost of 1GW of reliable solar (i.e., with storage and/or over-provisioning such that we have similar reliability to nuclear)?
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  You'd need both overprovisioning and storage.
  - cnlevy 5y ago
    Storage for 3 months https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/29/sse-says-low-wind-dry-conditions-hit-renewable-energy-generation.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/29/sse-says-low-wind-dry-condit...
    - cesarb 5y ago
      > Storage for 3 months The parent comment said overprovisioning and storage. With enough overprovisioning, you'd need storage for half a day at most (keep in mind that the parent thread was talking about pure solar with storage, not wind). The question on this sub-thread is: what would be the optimal (minimum cost) balance between overprovisioned solar and storage, and what would be the cost of that solution (the question was about 1GW, but it probably scales almost linearly), with similar reliability to pure nuclear (I'm assuming this pure nuclear scenario is overprovisioned too, since it has to deal with refueling pauses and the occasional electrical faults)? (Of course, except for very small isolated networks, a real-life solution would not use only pure solar and storage; adding other things like wind to the mix would probably decrease the cost while keeping the same reliability.)
      - sudosysgen 5y ago
        The issue with wind is that lulls in wind and solar are often correlated. In reality you'd need somewhere are 3x provisioning and a day of storage.
      - q1w2 5y ago
        This is not correct. In winter months, solar produces one tenth the power it does in summer - and even that is on average. One cloudy January, and people would live in the dark for a month.
        sudosysgen 5y ago
        It's even worse. If we want a zero emissions future, we would want electric heating...

throwaway894345 5y ago

What is the cost of 1GW of reliable solar (i.e., with storage and/or over-provisioning such that we have similar reliability to nuclear)?

sudosysgen 5y ago
You'd need both overprovisioning and storage.
- cnlevy 5y ago
  Storage for 3 months https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/29/sse-says-low-wind-dry-conditions-hit-renewable-energy-generation.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/29/sse-says-low-wind-dry-condit...
  - cesarb 5y ago
    > Storage for 3 months The parent comment said overprovisioning and storage. With enough overprovisioning, you'd need storage for half a day at most (keep in mind that the parent thread was talking about pure solar with storage, not wind). The question on this sub-thread is: what would be the optimal (minimum cost) balance between overprovisioned solar and storage, and what would be the cost of that solution (the question was about 1GW, but it probably scales almost linearly), with similar reliability to pure nuclear (I'm assuming this pure nuclear scenario is overprovisioned too, since it has to deal with refueling pauses and the occasional electrical faults)? (Of course, except for very small isolated networks, a real-life solution would not use only pure solar and storage; adding other things like wind to the mix would probably decrease the cost while keeping the same reliability.)
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      The issue with wind is that lulls in wind and solar are often correlated. In reality you'd need somewhere are 3x provisioning and a day of storage.
    - q1w2 5y ago
      This is not correct. In winter months, solar produces one tenth the power it does in summer - and even that is on average. One cloudy January, and people would live in the dark for a month.
      - sudosysgen 5y ago
        It's even worse. If we want a zero emissions future, we would want electric heating...