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Comment by AnthonyMouse

14 hours ago

> And you still haven’t been able to explain why consumers should buy ruinously expensive nuclear electricity when cheap renewables or stored renewables are available.

You're kind of answering your own question when you can't call them "cheap stored renewables". Ask yourself why the price is lower in France than in Spain.

"Stored renewables" are fairly expensive even on the days when renewable output is high. When renewable output is low they're not even available because you had no surplus generation to charge the batteries during the day and now the sun is down and they're empty.

> A new nuclear plant only making its money during the night becomes stupidly expensive. And nuclear is hit harder by this than say an open cycle gas turbine running carbon neutral fuels.

A nuclear plant is hit lighter than this than a gas turbine because it still generates during the day. And when your concern is cost, are you aware of what it costs to produce "carbon neutral fuels"? That's original electricity generation cost + fuel production infrastructure cost + conversion losses + fuel storage cost + conversion losses again + capital cost for the rarely used fuel-burning generators. That's the thing that's ruinously expensive.

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AnthonyMouse

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adrianN  3 hours ago

I have solar and batteries. The battery cost me about 200€/kWh and is expected to last a few thousand cycles. That works out to a couple of cents per kWh. That’s not terribly expensive and grid scale storage has economies of scale that my balcony setup can’t match.

For hydrogen is gas turbines you’re right that the electricity thus produced is rather expensive, but keep in mind that it will only be used a few hundred hours a year. Total system cost can hence still be cheaper than the alternatives.

  • AnthonyMouse  26 minutes ago

    > The battery cost me about 200€/kWh and is expected to last a few thousand cycles. That works out to a couple of cents per kWh. That’s not terribly expensive and grid scale storage has economies of scale that my balcony setup can’t match.

    The up-front cost of just the battery itself isn't the total cost. You have to add installation, land, time value of money (interest) since you're paying up front for something and then only getting those charge cycles over several years, etc.

    Ends up being 10-20c/kWh, and that's on top of what you pay for the electricity to put into it.

    Also gets worse the more capacity you want to have, because then you're doing less than a full charge cycle more of the time, which means it takes you longer to do those few thousand cycles, which means you pay more in interest.