Why compare it to nuclear rather than what's currently being used in that area? Coal and gas.

Nuclear is good for providing a stable base load, but having the entire grid be nuclear would be very expensive. And if everyone were to do the same, the market cost of fissile fuel materials would skyrocket.

Lots of solar and wind in the energy mix is a no-brainer.

Works 97% of the time, every time!

But the other misleading part is they looked at 20 years which is close to the life cycle for solar/batteries and not even half the life of nuclear

I think Lazard's LCOE methodology looks at the entire life cycle of the power plant, specific to that power plant. So they amortize solar startup/decommissioning costs across the 20 year life cycle of solar, but when calculating LCOE for nuclear, they spread the costs across the 80 year life cycle of a nuclear plant.

Nuclear is just really, really expensive. Even if plants required no operating costs, the up front costs are so high that it represents a significant portion of the overall operating costs for any given year.

The Vogtle debacle in Georgia cost $35 billion to add 2 MW 2GW (edit to fix error) of capacity. They're now projecting that over the entire 75 year lifespan the cost of the electricity will come out to be about $0.17 to $0.18 per kilowatt hour.

Vogtle added 2 AP1000 reactors for $35 billion. Future deployments might be cheaper, but there's a long way to go before it can compete with pretty much any other type of power generation.

Yeah I think I like it because it doesn't sound practical haha. It's like what childhood me would want.

I read not so long ago that someone tried to leverage human walking / steps. Now raindrops. I love it

This is US centric, and panels are 1/3 cost in China, batteries 1/2, and labour/land 1/2 ish too.

just 17 kWh of battery storage is enough to turn 5 kW of solar panels into a steady 1 kW of 24-hour
clean power

This is a bad model, though they are saying 3.4 hours of storage, and LasVegas as their best site. AC use is typically day only, but heat waves do make it a 24 hour demand issue on the longest solar production days. For LV, 5kw of solar will produce 32kwh/day, ranging in seasons from 29-35.5kwh. Already a problem for their 1kw "transmission setup" in that production is higher. The 2nd problem is that there is/can be higher demand during the day than night, due to AC.

The biggest problem of all is a battery in LV, even with 2kw transmission per 5kw solar, would charge in winter up to 19kwh of batteries. Summer 21.5kwh. The 2 big variables are batteries vs transmission size, and demand shifting opportunities, where necessarily fully charging batteries every day is a cost optimization, though fully delivering power on highest demand days is a revenue/price optimization.

cost assumptions are $563/kw solar-electrical hardware, and $181/kwh batteries. They may not include land and deployment costs. They use outdated pessimistic 20 year lifetimes. They have terrible comparisons to coal and NG as well.

Both coal and NG plants cost the same for basic peaker plant. A double efficient NG plant costs double, but loses flexibility. They have variable fuel costs and relatively fixed operation costs. Before covid, all 3 options cost $1/watt to build, giving a huge advantage to solar for not having fuel/operations costs.

A much easier way to model cost of solar+battery system is independently. Solar at $563/kw in LV to make 10% "yield" per year (covering full financing and a healthy profit). needs $56.30 revenue/year = 2.4c/kwh = $24/mwh. Even $1/w US system requires 4.27c/kwh The same base profit over operational costs as FF plants. Batteries last 30 years too, and 10% yield means a discharge/charge profit requirement of 5c/kwh at night, with possible double cycling from clouds/frequency balancing, or lunch cooking demand spike, where any profit is bonus profit.

So as long as duck curve/early evening/morning breakfast electricity markets are 7.4c/kwh TOU "wholesale"rates or higher, and daytime rates above 2.4c/kwh, solar + batteries (that fully charge every day) then that far beats any new dead ender energy plants. Also, for a 1gw transmission line, compared to OP model, you only need 1.7gw solar instead of 5gw.

In short term there are existing FF plants that can serve as backup, and where it is extremely undesirable to have any human activity in their surrounding areas, host solar to piggy back on their transmission capacity. That these plants were paid 20-40c/kwh to provide 10%-20% of power needs, with a combination of per kwh pricing, and fixed "stay ready for backup" payments, would permit these plants to stay open/operational. In short/medium term, EVs are a great resource to replace both utility batteries, and backup FF plants with more solar. Being paid 3-10c/kwh profit (depending on demand primarily from nightime AC/heating)

In long term, the path to solar+battery/EV power every day is much more solar with H2 electrolysis. $2/kg costs are already achievable today with 2c/kwh "surplus solar" input. It is an even more rapidly advancing tech/cost efficiency field. $2/kg is equivalent for a FCEV to $1/gallon gasoline vehicle range. It is 6c/kwh CHP (free domestic hot water energy), and 10c/kwh electric only energy, in addition to many chemical applications such as local fertilizer production. Electrolysis of NG is a more efficient (than water electrolysis) green H2 process that produces carbon black as byproduct. A solid precursor to graphene and battery electrodes.

H2 works today for places outside LV, where solar is much more variable. In Canada where long summer days may not need AC, high saturation solar can drop below 2c/kwh for 9 months, but be worth 15c/kwh for 80-90 days. A balance between existing energy systems and new solar works everywhere in the world. H2 export/import infrastructure also cost efficiently displaces much FF energy.

As long as daytime wholesale electricity rates in LV are above 2.4c/kwh, they need more solar. A similar number can be calculated elsewhere. Nuclear and more expensive combined NG energy cannot compete because daytime solar will cut into the hours they can sell energy.

solar today is warranteed for 30 years. No reason to replace before 60 years compared to adding more beside it.

2gw, but yes, before any operational/maintenance costs that is $17.5/watt. Solar is under $1/watt, and sunny AF.

using old/existing FFs 3% of the time instead of 100% is a 97% emission reduction.

Vogtle’s numbers are incredibly biased considering they made an entire design and then had to redo it halfway through that’s not a realistic cost that can be expected for future projects. We also have vogtles design be approved now so that new plants can be built for a fraction of the cost. Also where did you see they did amortization of solar?

"bad" solar areas are actually amazing for 9 months, and if you heating needs are met by other means, then winter can keep the lights on and still do cooking. The path to meeting winter heating needs is hot water and "heated dirt/sand" storage with hydronic floor heating (where more water is delivered at 30C is easier to manage than radiators at 80C) that can be stored during ample fall solar with no heat or cooling load.

They had to switch halfway through which is what added the cost that’s not a realistic cost per reactor

Batteries and panels degrade over time. So if you are trying to maintain a specific amount of power you would need to keep investing in order to maintain the same amount of power generation

Panels are also cheaper than most fencing, and easy to DIY install.

absurd. Uranium mines need huge exclusion zones. In fact the biggest ones have large enough exclusion zones that more solar energy could be harvested than the energy content of the uranium underneath.

I mean there are ongoing costs with any form of power generation. Obviously there's fuel costs for most, but even other renewables have maintenance costs.
You'll also need to keep investing anyway as power demands increase over time. So newer solar installations eventually replace the old.

What's the exclusion zone of rare earth mines ? Of the terrible chemicals required to extract those products ? Same question with the batteries. What's the impact of the shade on agriculture ? How about all the steel, concrete and composites on the environment, how do they degrade ? Is it in micro plastics ?

I didn't say nuclear energy was good, just that solar panels are worse. The perfect energy source doesn't exist but currently all the data I've come across points to the direction that nuclear is significantly better than all other renewables and don't require significant battery storage.

Also if anti-science ecologists hadn't blocked so many fast neutron reactors, we'd be further along to a tech that can burn existing thorium stockpiles for 8000 years without further mining and while producing significantly less dangerous waste than current reactors. I guess we'll just buy the design from China and Russia who didn't stop the research and have currently operating reactors right now.

Yes, what I am saying is that cost is being shown for nuclear and not shown for solar due to using an intentionally small window of time. It’s like comparing an ICE to an EV and talking about the refueling costs of gas and treating electricity like it’s free.

solar panels don't use rare earths. They use sand. Rare earths and lithium are not radioactive. Thorium is more expensive than Uranium processing and molten salt reactors have never lasted long.