Comment by strawhatguy
2 days ago
Yes? Any sort of system that generates power... can generate lots of power if there's more of that system.
What I find odd is that it has to be an all-or-nothing approach. Maybe sunny areas can do more with solar, great! But that won't work everywhere, and probably isn't a complete replacement anywhere. Other places that are cloudy, it might be better to go nuclear. Or even gas.
The regulations and the subsidies ought to be removed though, let the market decide. Solar or Nuclear will win if it's better, and that might be a per-area contest.
Renewables and storage have gotten so cheap that the areas where nuclear might still be competitive have greatly shrunk. Right now, the best remaining places for nuclear are in eastern Europe away from coasts. Even there, nuclear is at best competitive with optimistic assumptions.
This also means that, globally, renewables are much cheaper than nuclear in most places. In a global economy, energy intensive industries will migrate to these renewable-rich regions as fossil fuels are phased out. The relative energy ghetto regions will not save their heavy industries by going nuclear.
Luckily EV mandates have been rolled back nationally (although not in my state yet). That’s a sure way to drive up the cost of storage anyway, when maybe battery storage is better served for this power station purpose instead.
Obviously using used car batteries might be a way to recycle these more effectively than what is currently available.
It's going to have no effect on the global cost trajectory of battery storage. The US is not in the storage driver's seat, China is.