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Reading that link, levelized solar plus battery storage is twice the cost of nuclear. It is cheap to generate the electricity, but only when backed by natural g
by zdragnar 5y ago
Reading that link, levelized solar plus battery storage is twice the cost of nuclear. It is cheap to generate the electricity, but only when backed by natural gas or hydro.
- driest 5y agoyes, solar and wind energy generation is intermittent, that's no surprise to anyone. but it is much much cheaper than nuclear energy.
- zdragnar 5y agoThis misses the point. You cannot compare solar and nuclear directly, because they serve different needs. Without battery or natural gas, solar and wind are not useful. You have to have some sort of backup, sufficient to avoid brownouts or blackouts, and so you end up with the full capitalization and maintenance cost of not-solar anyway. To properly compare solar with nuclear, you must add on the cost of battery and / or natural gas (or equivalent fast backup), at which point nuclear is cheaper.
- bryanlarsen 5y agoHere's solar+battery for $40/MWh. https://www.energy-storage.news/developer-8minute-says-more-than-24gwh-of-batteries-included-in-its-us-solar-plus-storage-pipeline/ https://www.energy-storage.news/developer-8minute-says-more-... That's at least half the cost of nuclear, maybe as much as a fifth.