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At $50/kwh of batteries + $50/kwh of battery install labor... And at $150/kw of panels, $100/kw of inverters & copper, $100/kw of mounting, $100/kw of install

by mapt 1y ago

At $50/kwh of batteries + $50/kwh of battery install labor... And at $150/kw of panels, $100/kw of inverters & copper, $100/kw of mounting, $100/kw of install labor, and $100/kw of real estate... And at a 1W : 1kwh/yr (11%) duty cycle (my area should be 50% over that, but let's use conservative assumptions for low-maintenance vertical mounts) And a level of conservativeness around power supply that reserves 60 hours of battery bank... ... I can run a steady 1kw load (a GPU, let's say) for ~9kw of panels ($4950) + 60kwh of batteries ($6000), or $10,000. Capital cost of $10/watt. Vogtle 3 and Vogtle 4 are going to end up averaging about 2.1GW for an estimated construction cost of perhaps $34 billion by the time everything is complete, or a capital cost of about $16/watt. There is reason to expect the nuclear construction industry to drop in costs as it ramps up in size, but solar is already cost competitive here and it does not require the government to take over various costs like insurance, nor require the same political capital, approval process, or long financing period before initial payoff.

gregbot 1y ago
>60 hours of battery bank With that little battery you’re going to need to keep some natural gas plants running to be able to survive a few cloudy days in a row without a blackout.
- mapt 1y ago
  Yes, that's an option. Or just buy electricity from one state to the north or south where they didn't catch the same storm as you. Or start running a nearby hydroelectric dam at 300% of average flow rate. Or stop smelting aluminum in your attached aluminum smelter. Or equivalently, your bitcoin mine. Batteries and panels continue to rapidly drop in price. As your PV+battery system gets bigger in relation to your load, chance of a failure mode drops much faster than linearly; Not only are you looking at the far end of a bell curve from battery capacity alone, you're also generating more PV on the cloudy days.
  - gregbot 1y ago
    I dont follow this: >you're also generating more PV on the cloudy days Or this: >chance of a failure mode drops much faster than linearly
rickydroll 1y ago
When you take into account that nuclear takes 10 to 20 years to deploy, you could incrementally deploy much more solar and battery energy in that 20 years than the nuke plant could generate by the time it's assembled, its construction is completed, and put online.

by mapt 1y ago

gregbot 1y ago

>60 hours of battery bank With that little battery you’re going to need to keep some natural gas plants running to be able to survive a few cloudy days in a row without a blackout.

mapt 1y ago
Yes, that's an option. Or just buy electricity from one state to the north or south where they didn't catch the same storm as you. Or start running a nearby hydroelectric dam at 300% of average flow rate. Or stop smelting aluminum in your attached aluminum smelter. Or equivalently, your bitcoin mine. Batteries and panels continue to rapidly drop in price. As your PV+battery system gets bigger in relation to your load, chance of a failure mode drops much faster than linearly; Not only are you looking at the far end of a bell curve from battery capacity alone, you're also generating more PV on the cloudy days.
- gregbot 1y ago
  I dont follow this: >you're also generating more PV on the cloudy days Or this: >chance of a failure mode drops much faster than linearly

rickydroll 1y ago

When you take into account that nuclear takes 10 to 20 years to deploy, you could incrementally deploy much more solar and battery energy in that 20 years than the nuke plant could generate by the time it's assembled, its construction is completed, and put online.