Notices by happyinmotion (happyinmotion@mastodon.nz)

@kravietz @cstross yes, nuclear is capital-heavy and gets cheaper if the state provides low-interest loans. But that's also true for solar and wind.

If you compare on the basis of constant weighted average capital cost then renewables still beat nuclear.

Or the West could realise what China has realised - the cost of electricity in the 21st century depends upon the cost of loans, so state funding of generation makes electricity cheaper and makes your nation more economically competitive.

@kravietz @cstross The nuance is that cost of storage/LFSOE depends upon firmness of rest of the grid at a all timescales. That depends on dispatchable generation, how uncorrelated renewables are, and what imports are possible. There's no single number - grids are all unique and so are their storage costs

NZ has run-of-river hydro so we already have more hour-to-month storage for free than we need. Our problem is dry winters. Our cheapest solution is over-building wind & PV & geothermal. 1/3

@kravietz @cstross Aus? Wind and solar are anti-correlated. Their problem is finding new uses for midday excess solar. Buy electrons midday at negative price, sell evening at high price means net cost of storage is negative, ie profitable.

North America has enough metrological diversity that they can build a fat grid and transmit power across the continent for reliable cheap supply. But that would be unAmerican so it's lots of regional batteries. 2/3

@kravietz @cstross The UK cheapest solution for reliable power is imports and heat pumps and wind and demand-side management. But it is just a mess coz monopolies and historical commitment to nukes.

At the end of the day, battery prices came down another 20% this year, just as they do every year. Plus solar and wind getting cheaper, year-on-year. Building a nuke will take a decade, minimum. By then renewables & storage will demolish that nuke on price. 3/3

@cstross Except it's not the first EPR reactor. The first is Olkiluoto in Finland which is... overbudget and late. Expected cost €3 billion, acutal cost €11 billion. Completion date was supposed to be 2009, actual completion 2023.

In that time, LCOS for solar dropped by 83%, for wind by 65%. Even if storage doubles those costs (it doesn't), both are cheaper than nuclear.