Comment by AnonymousPlanet
1 year ago
Keep in mind that solar and wind alone can't power a single city. You need something to compensate, something like coal/natgas or storage. The amount of storage you need, depends on geography and local weather conditions. If your storage comes short, even a bit, the amount of conventional power stations you need to keep the lights on is exactly the number if power stations you would have to operate if you never had invested into wind or solar in the first place.
This is usually missing in typical cost calculations for solar or wind.
Nuclear needs the same compensation. The high fixed cost low variable cost model lends nuclear power to only run at 100%.
Take the California grid, peak energy usage is 2x minimum. Nuclear plants are insanely costly when ran at 100%. Imagine running at much lower capacity factors. Say the peaking plants run at 50%, that means the cost for consumers would be ¢2.4-4/kWh. [1]
Logically this entails that if we can solve a nuclear grid then we can solve a renewable grid since they impose the very similar constraints on the grid operators.
[1]: https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost...