3 ms·
Lazard does not include the cost of storage to provide baseload power from renewables so it's largely a lie.
by hardolaf 5y ago
Lazard does not include the cost of storage to provide baseload power from renewables so it's largely a lie.
- Gwypaas 5y ago> While historically large power grids used unvarying power plants to meet the base load, there is no specific technical requirement for this to be so. The base load can equally well be met by the appropriate quantity of intermittent power sources and dispatchable generation.[3][4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load#Description https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load#Description It is a straight LCOE shoot out. Storage may help at the limits but is a pure loss from a system perspective.
- rstuart4133 5y agoNor does it include the cost of storage for nuclear. It's no accident Japan has the most pumped storage per unit of generation on the planet - it's because it has the most nuclear. Nuclear can't vary it's generation fast enough to match the daily variation in load. Admittedly you need much less storage (until a tsunami comes along). But pumped storage only costs around $1/watt. (The unit of $/watt rather than $/kWh because the dam is only a minor fraction of the cost of pumped storage, and it drops quadratically with size.) Storage + renewable generation still costs less than 1/2 of nuclear.