[bobthepanda]

This project has battery included as well though.

Given that solar's cost trend has been going ever cheaper and nuclear's has done pretty much the opposite, solar will probably win out long term.

[msandford]

Oh that's my mistake then! I read the article looking for that but I didn't see it. I guess I didn't read it thoroughly enough.

I do agree that over the course of the next 10-50 years renewables + storage is likely to be cheaper.

What I'm not sure about is if "the grid" will be cheaper or if we'll end up seeing the renewables self-ownership spiral that causes folks to disconnect from the grid, driving prices up for everyone else on the grid, thus causing more people to disconnect, etc. When renewables are cheap and your house's usage is fairly well known (see years of smart meter historical data) then at some point it becomes economically feasible to be your own grid.

[bobthepanda]

This isn't the worst outcome for consumers, but it is pretty bad for established utilities.

One interesting case study is Puerto Rico, which now has a lot of microgrids post-Maria because PREPA is not trusted and suffering from mismanagement.

[Symmetry]

With today's low interest rates is nuclear actually getting more expensive? Traditionally all the interest on the loans that builds up between when the approval process starts and when construction finishes was the big driver of nuclear costs but since 2009 commercial loan rates are a lot lower than they were beforehand.

[bobthepanda]

In general extending project lead times is going to cost more money because you still need to pay some people to be working for that longer duration.