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That’s not automatically true. As the price continues to drop even over building renewables can be cheaper than other options. Nuclear is very expensive so ther

That’s not automatically true. As the price continues to drop even over building renewables can be cheaper than other options. Nuclear is very expensive so there’s a lot of wiggle room.

Wytwwww 3y ago
I find it hard to imagine solar could ever be cheaper than nuclear during winter in Northern Europe.
- hef19898 3y ago
  No need to imagine, because it is. At least if you believe electricity market prices reflect reality.
  - Wytwwww 3y ago
    What is? > At least if you believe electricity market prices reflect reality I don't see how is this relevant if we're talking specifically about solar. Above ~53° solar production during December is ~20 (to way more than that farther you go north) lower than in December.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      And still, PV generated electricity during these periods is priced cheaper on the spot market than nuclear. Funny, right? It is almost as if the parties investing billions and making billions selling and buying electricity figured out the financials behind all that.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        Yeah, PV and gas are the cheapest new power to build today.
        Wytwwww 3y ago
        That's tangential and doesn't change the fact that solar barely produces anything during winter if you go far enough north (and you don't have any way to store the produced power for at least 4-5months).
        hef19898 3y ago
        The answer to that is simple: powerlines, wind, hydro... No idea why people think solar has to be local, wind requires powerlines and nuclear for some reason isn't neither...
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > answer to that is simple: powerlines, wind, hydro Wind is still intermittent. Transmission and hydro expensive. The point still stands that marginal new power will become much more expensive before solar reaches anywhere close to sole source.
        hef19898 3y ago
        Who said anything about solar being single source??? And everything is expensive, the question is wether or not it is profitable. And politics aside, the financials have decided a long time ago on wind, solar and, sadly enough due to criminally underprized CO2 certificates, coal. New NPPs just barely replace capacity going offline, is always late and always above budget. And even if we ignore the net added capacity of new nuclear plants, the gross capacity being built pales in comparison to wind and solar. Pushing nuclear power, for other than military or political reasons, is riding a dead horse.
        hef19898 3y ago
        Gas not so much, at least not in Europe. There the ranking (cheap to expensive) is: Solar and wind, coal, oil, nuclear and gas (roughly). Coal is that cheap because CO2 certificates are way underpriced.
      - Wytwwww 3y ago
        > And still, PV generated electricity during these periods is priced cheaper on the spot market than nuclear. I still don't understand what you're trying to say. It's priced at what the market is willing to pay regardless of the source. How is this relevant? The variable costs for solar are insignificant so of course you're going to keep the panels turned on and sell the power. In Northern Europe you can only make money from solar during summer/spring. If you had to overprovision by 10-30 times there is no way it would be financially viable (energy prices would be close to 0 during peaks and you would still barely produce any power during most of winter) without some sort of long term "storage" (maybe hydrogen or something)
        hef19898 3y ago
        Electricity is priced, at least last time I checked the European ones, at generating cost (variable cost excluding fix costs). Guess what forms of electricity generation have basically zero variable costs? Wind and solar. And guess what, those utility scale projects are calculated based on these conditions, and still profitable, even in winter.
        Wytwwww 3y ago
        Yes and? Nuclear power would also be very cheap if you could build power plants for free. You can't just ignore fixed costs. > And guess what That investment decisions don't work like that? That people/companies expect to make a profit? > Electricity is priced, at least last time I checked the European ones, at generating cost Electricity is priced at what the market is willing to bear.
        hef19898 3y ago
        The European electricity market, the Germany is connected to, prices electricity (or priced last time I checked, there might have been changes), like this (over symplified, so please read up the details yourself): - generators provide capacity and nominate that capacity for future and as reserve capacity, the former is being priced using futures traded at an exchange, the latter is paid for by grid opertors to maintain grid stabilizyt - consumers, the ones large enough to trade on the exchange, nominate consumption the same way, if they are able to take up load or shed load on short notice, they are paid for that the same way peaker plants mentioned above are paid for - the balance between demand and supply for each period, day ahead for example, defines the exchange price (which results, sometimes, in negative prices and allows for speculation) - producers get to produce as long as their variable production cost is below the exchange price in that period (CAPEX used to be excluded from that), that usually means that wind, solar and hydro get to deliver first, followed by coal, oil and nuclear with gas usually being to expensive for anything else other than peaker plants So, this market is pricing electricity based on variable cost. Operators are including these market prices in their calculations, and that means that the majority of the build capacity is wind, solar and coal (and yes, brand new gas plants have never gone online because shutting them down before hand was cheaper). TL/DR: Exchanges, aka the market, ignores fix costs while opertors don't. Honestly, if you fail to understand that crucial market mechanism (for Europe with its integrated grid, the US is different) try to get aroind that first, it explains an aweful lot of how electricty production capacity is built. By the way, this market prevented outages very reliably.
  - mpweiher 3y ago
    Electricity markets do not reflect the cost of production. They reflect the value of the electricity to consumers. When prices drop to zero, that is because the electricity is useless. When prices drop below zero, that is because the electricity is worse than useless.
- Kon5ole 3y ago
  It's easy if you add electrolysers to your imagination. :) There are solar plants that deliver electricity for around 2 cents per kwh and the price is dropping. Hydrogen can be generated from electricity at 80% efficiency, and gas can be converted back to electricity at 40% efficiency. This gives about 6-7 cents per kwh for solar even after conversion to a 24/365 stable baseload energy source. This is cheaper than nuclear and works fine everywhere, even in northern europe. (If you actually place the solar panels in northern europe as well - which you don't need to - most of the gas will be produced during summertime when the sun is up 18+ hours per day).
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> not automatically true It very obviously is. Solar power (and wind) are constrained by the planet’s insolation. Even assuming perfect efficiency, we start approaching diminishing returns based on power input within a century. Now assume imperfect efficiency and resource constraints, and you see that cliff approach within decades. This is fine. It’s the law of diminishing marginal returns. It’s why a diversity of sources almost always beats monosourcing.
- kragen 3y ago
  your projection that human world marketed energy consumption will increase by a factor of 1000× within a century may be correct, but it is far outside the range of mainstream predictions, and far faster than current growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consumption#Total_energy_supply https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consum... shows total energy supply (excluding agriculture) growing from 8700 million toe in 01990 to 14500 million toe in 02021, a 67% increase, or 1.66% per year. extrapolating that until 02123 we get only a factor of 5.4× growth, not the 1000× you're predicting
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > projection that human world marketed energy consumption will increase by a factor of 1000× within a century may be correct We currently produce about 2% [1] of the Earth’s insolation, or 6% of that which hits land. So you’re talking factors of 16 to 50, which at 2% growth means 140 years to the former. Again, assuming perfect efficiency and no clouds, et cetera. If we assume 50% efficiency (still with no clouds) and covering half of all the Earth’s land in solar panels, we have about 70 years. It’s ludicrous to assume we won’t see diminishing marginal returns in a quarter of that time. [1] 26 936 TWh [a] / (340 W/sqm [b] x 510mm sqkm x 1000 x 365 days x 24 hours) [a] https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-2026113/v1/1dff0ac3-4472-45de-8b68-4d4abec6efc9.pdf?c=1685628898 https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-2026113/v1/1dff0a... [b] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_energy_budget https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_energy_budget
    - 3y ago
Symmetry 3y ago
The price of solar panels is likely to fall to ever lower levels but the labor involved in installing them and the land they use up are much more likely to be the binding constraints in the future. Though we do have the twin strategies of building out the power grid to put solar generation in high availability areas and shifting electrical consumption to times of sunlight as mitigation.

That’s not automatically true. As the price continues to drop even over building renewables can be cheaper than other options. Nuclear is very expensive so there’s a lot of wiggle room.

Wytwwww 3y ago

I find it hard to imagine solar could ever be cheaper than nuclear during winter in Northern Europe.

hef19898 3y ago
No need to imagine, because it is. At least if you believe electricity market prices reflect reality.
- Wytwwww 3y ago
  What is? > At least if you believe electricity market prices reflect reality I don't see how is this relevant if we're talking specifically about solar. Above ~53° solar production during December is ~20 (to way more than that farther you go north) lower than in December.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    And still, PV generated electricity during these periods is priced cheaper on the spot market than nuclear. Funny, right? It is almost as if the parties investing billions and making billions selling and buying electricity figured out the financials behind all that.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      Yeah, PV and gas are the cheapest new power to build today.
      - Wytwwww 3y ago
        That's tangential and doesn't change the fact that solar barely produces anything during winter if you go far enough north (and you don't have any way to store the produced power for at least 4-5months).
        hef19898 3y ago
        The answer to that is simple: powerlines, wind, hydro... No idea why people think solar has to be local, wind requires powerlines and nuclear for some reason isn't neither...
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > answer to that is simple: powerlines, wind, hydro Wind is still intermittent. Transmission and hydro expensive. The point still stands that marginal new power will become much more expensive before solar reaches anywhere close to sole source.
        hef19898 3y ago
        Who said anything about solar being single source??? And everything is expensive, the question is wether or not it is profitable. And politics aside, the financials have decided a long time ago on wind, solar and, sadly enough due to criminally underprized CO2 certificates, coal. New NPPs just barely replace capacity going offline, is always late and always above budget. And even if we ignore the net added capacity of new nuclear plants, the gross capacity being built pales in comparison to wind and solar. Pushing nuclear power, for other than military or political reasons, is riding a dead horse.
      - hef19898 3y ago
        Gas not so much, at least not in Europe. There the ranking (cheap to expensive) is: Solar and wind, coal, oil, nuclear and gas (roughly). Coal is that cheap because CO2 certificates are way underpriced.
    - Wytwwww 3y ago
      > And still, PV generated electricity during these periods is priced cheaper on the spot market than nuclear. I still don't understand what you're trying to say. It's priced at what the market is willing to pay regardless of the source. How is this relevant? The variable costs for solar are insignificant so of course you're going to keep the panels turned on and sell the power. In Northern Europe you can only make money from solar during summer/spring. If you had to overprovision by 10-30 times there is no way it would be financially viable (energy prices would be close to 0 during peaks and you would still barely produce any power during most of winter) without some sort of long term "storage" (maybe hydrogen or something)
      - hef19898 3y ago
        Electricity is priced, at least last time I checked the European ones, at generating cost (variable cost excluding fix costs). Guess what forms of electricity generation have basically zero variable costs? Wind and solar. And guess what, those utility scale projects are calculated based on these conditions, and still profitable, even in winter.
        Wytwwww 3y ago
        Yes and? Nuclear power would also be very cheap if you could build power plants for free. You can't just ignore fixed costs. > And guess what That investment decisions don't work like that? That people/companies expect to make a profit? > Electricity is priced, at least last time I checked the European ones, at generating cost Electricity is priced at what the market is willing to bear.
        hef19898 3y ago
        The European electricity market, the Germany is connected to, prices electricity (or priced last time I checked, there might have been changes), like this (over symplified, so please read up the details yourself): - generators provide capacity and nominate that capacity for future and as reserve capacity, the former is being priced using futures traded at an exchange, the latter is paid for by grid opertors to maintain grid stabilizyt - consumers, the ones large enough to trade on the exchange, nominate consumption the same way, if they are able to take up load or shed load on short notice, they are paid for that the same way peaker plants mentioned above are paid for - the balance between demand and supply for each period, day ahead for example, defines the exchange price (which results, sometimes, in negative prices and allows for speculation) - producers get to produce as long as their variable production cost is below the exchange price in that period (CAPEX used to be excluded from that), that usually means that wind, solar and hydro get to deliver first, followed by coal, oil and nuclear with gas usually being to expensive for anything else other than peaker plants So, this market is pricing electricity based on variable cost. Operators are including these market prices in their calculations, and that means that the majority of the build capacity is wind, solar and coal (and yes, brand new gas plants have never gone online because shutting them down before hand was cheaper). TL/DR: Exchanges, aka the market, ignores fix costs while opertors don't. Honestly, if you fail to understand that crucial market mechanism (for Europe with its integrated grid, the US is different) try to get aroind that first, it explains an aweful lot of how electricty production capacity is built. By the way, this market prevented outages very reliably.
- mpweiher 3y ago
  Electricity markets do not reflect the cost of production. They reflect the value of the electricity to consumers. When prices drop to zero, that is because the electricity is useless. When prices drop below zero, that is because the electricity is worse than useless.
Kon5ole 3y ago
It's easy if you add electrolysers to your imagination. :) There are solar plants that deliver electricity for around 2 cents per kwh and the price is dropping. Hydrogen can be generated from electricity at 80% efficiency, and gas can be converted back to electricity at 40% efficiency. This gives about 6-7 cents per kwh for solar even after conversion to a 24/365 stable baseload energy source. This is cheaper than nuclear and works fine everywhere, even in northern europe. (If you actually place the solar panels in northern europe as well - which you don't need to - most of the gas will be produced during summertime when the sun is up 18+ hours per day).

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> not automatically true It very obviously is. Solar power (and wind) are constrained by the planet’s insolation. Even assuming perfect efficiency, we start approaching diminishing returns based on power input within a century. Now assume imperfect efficiency and resource constraints, and you see that cliff approach within decades. This is fine. It’s the law of diminishing marginal returns. It’s why a diversity of sources almost always beats monosourcing.

kragen 3y ago
your projection that human world marketed energy consumption will increase by a factor of 1000× within a century may be correct, but it is far outside the range of mainstream predictions, and far faster than current growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consumption#Total_energy_supply https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consum... shows total energy supply (excluding agriculture) growing from 8700 million toe in 01990 to 14500 million toe in 02021, a 67% increase, or 1.66% per year. extrapolating that until 02123 we get only a factor of 5.4× growth, not the 1000× you're predicting
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > projection that human world marketed energy consumption will increase by a factor of 1000× within a century may be correct We currently produce about 2% [1] of the Earth’s insolation, or 6% of that which hits land. So you’re talking factors of 16 to 50, which at 2% growth means 140 years to the former. Again, assuming perfect efficiency and no clouds, et cetera. If we assume 50% efficiency (still with no clouds) and covering half of all the Earth’s land in solar panels, we have about 70 years. It’s ludicrous to assume we won’t see diminishing marginal returns in a quarter of that time. [1] 26 936 TWh [a] / (340 W/sqm [b] x 510mm sqkm x 1000 x 365 days x 24 hours) [a] https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-2026113/v1/1dff0ac3-4472-45de-8b68-4d4abec6efc9.pdf?c=1685628898 https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-2026113/v1/1dff0a... [b] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_energy_budget https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_energy_budget
  - 3y ago

Symmetry 3y ago

The price of solar panels is likely to fall to ever lower levels but the labor involved in installing them and the land they use up are much more likely to be the binding constraints in the future. Though we do have the twin strategies of building out the power grid to put solar generation in high availability areas and shifting electrical consumption to times of sunlight as mitigation.