[viraptor]

It may be still better to run nuclear plants then. We'll need data from modern nuclear designs, (especially the small ones) but renewables are not exactly free to run. Storage degrades, solar degrades, lithium needs to be mined, turbines mean lots of mechanical parts, etc. We may learn that running just the renewables common today is even more uneconomic.

[simfree]

The maintenance burden you suggest for wind turbines is exaggerated. Compared to a gas car there are way fewer moving parts in common wind turbines, and some designs with no moving parts are being tested: https://www.windpowerengineering.com/dutch-wind-wheel-genera...

Additionally, battery degradation appears to be primarily related to high speed charging. In decade old battery packs that were not charged at extreme rates like 2C or above, you rarely see significant degredation. Grid scale operators will almost certainly manage their battery farms to limit the C rate to optimize battery life and long term profits.

[viraptor]

Compared to a gas car a wind turbine is a completely different mechanism with a completely different scale, material requirements, elements exposure, and pretty much everything apart from "it has spinning things".

I can't exaggerate the maintenance burden for the turbines, because I didn't claim what it is, beyond that it exists. We'll have to compare it to new nuclear plants before stating which becomes uneconomical.

Solar degradation is commonly estimated at 20% in 25y, but then we get inverter failures on top of that which account for ~80% of issues in home installations. Batteries are commonly estimated to lose 20% capacity in 10y. All of those stack up too. Again - we'll have to compare the actual numbers which we don't have yet.