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Capacity factor is an energy 101 concept, and evaluating energy based on overnight capital costs plus capacity factor misses out on the an exceptional number of

Capacity factor is an energy 101 concept, and evaluating energy based on overnight capital costs plus capacity factor misses out on the an exceptional number of crucial factors: lifetime of capital, O&M, cost of capital, and these days, dispatchability and time of delivery. The levelized cost of energy takes most of these into account (except dispatch), and shows that nuclear is >4x as expensive, when it gets built and not abandoned halfway through construction. This risk is significant for large projects, and why in 2008, utilities used lobbyists in state legislatures in Georgia and South Carolina to stick customers with the bill for failed construction projects, without which neither Vogtle nor VC Summer would have started. No sane investor would risk billions on new nuclear construction without placing the risk on others. Real life deployments in free market systems like Texas' ERCOT shows that investors who put their own money on the line to generate electricity cheaply contrast heavily with regulated utilities which profit by rate-basing and therefor want electricity as expensive as possible. And when investors are putting their own money on the line to generate cheap electricity, they don't want to build nuclear or coal or hydro, they are massively investing in wind, solar, and battery storage.

XorNot 3y ago
> Capacity factor is an energy 101 concept, and evaluating energy based on overnight capital costs plus capacity factor misses out on the an exceptional number of crucial factors: lifetime of capital, O&M, cost of capital, and these days, dispatchability and time of delivery. Oh, so like maybe throwing a quote about the cost of solar around without considering storage, capacity factor etc. you know - the $/kW numbers being cited above unsourced...might not be an honest way to talk about costs? > dispatchability and time of delivery. Seriously? You're going to argue that these aren't being fairly considered when I express skepticism that solar is "cheaper"?
kalleboo 3y ago
Solar/wind is cheap as long as you still have something else to back it up when it fails. Battery is cheap and profitable as long as you're only building a couple minutes of capacity to play grid stabilizer/arbitrage games. It's similar to the problem in privatized health insurance. It's very cheap and profitable to insure young healthy people. Especially when you can dump the responsibility of all the old and sick people on the government. Of course investors invest in these things - they give quick, high returns on investment. That doesn't mean they're good for long-term stability.

XorNot 3y ago

> Capacity factor is an energy 101 concept, and evaluating energy based on overnight capital costs plus capacity factor misses out on the an exceptional number of crucial factors: lifetime of capital, O&M, cost of capital, and these days, dispatchability and time of delivery. Oh, so like maybe throwing a quote about the cost of solar around without considering storage, capacity factor etc. you know - the $/kW numbers being cited above unsourced...might not be an honest way to talk about costs? > dispatchability and time of delivery. Seriously? You're going to argue that these aren't being fairly considered when I express skepticism that solar is "cheaper"?

kalleboo 3y ago

Solar/wind is cheap as long as you still have something else to back it up when it fails. Battery is cheap and profitable as long as you're only building a couple minutes of capacity to play grid stabilizer/arbitrage games. It's similar to the problem in privatized health insurance. It's very cheap and profitable to insure young healthy people. Especially when you can dump the responsibility of all the old and sick people on the government. Of course investors invest in these things - they give quick, high returns on investment. That doesn't mean they're good for long-term stability.