[victoro]

Setting aside the article's mention of moderately intensive solutions like natural gas which has a very real and obvious cost per KWH, your panels will still need maintenance and eventual replacement (the current industry standard lifetime for a panel is 25-30 years), as will any peripheral systems required for the panels to work (batteries etc) and even the space they take up has an associated opportunity cost.

[primax]

Again, no one is saying that isn’t true. He’s saying that the marginal cost, the main inhibitor to rapid scaling, is likely to approach zero.

[victoro]

Why is the marginal cost of a KWH the main inhibitor to rapid scaling? Wouldn't the main inhibitor be the marginal cost of additional capacity?

To put it another way, if my solar panel can currently support 10 GPUs running all day but I need to run 11, don't I need to add another solar panel?

[ianai]

Marginal cost is the derivative of the cost function. Fixed costs drop out of the derivative. You’re confusing amortizing a fixed cost with marginal cost.