[Retric]

It's not an orders of magnitude difference anymore. Grid scale energy storage costs about the same amount as nuclear power per KWh right now with the added benefit it doesn't need to operate 24/7 or massive subsidies to break even. Though only if they can be charged with ultra cheap solar power.

Which is why so many grid scale solar installs come with enough batteries to store ~50% of daily output. It's not about nighttime power it's about reducing demand for peaker power plants. Basically combined cycle natural gas operates at ~64% efficiency assuming long term operation, but open cycle has much lower efficiency and thus much higher costs.

[llm_trw]

> Grid scale energy storage costs about the same amount as nuclear power per KWh right now

[[Citation needed]]

[Retric]

How about you first.

> grid scale storage is orders of magnitude more expensive than production.

[[Citation needed]]

PS: I have little interest in looking for citations when you can do your own research using 2024 data.

[llm_trw]

If you can't back up your claims it's fine. No need to be so unpleasant about it.

[stavros]

That said, I would like to see some references for your claims.

[llm_trw]

Sure, here's the world's largest battery installation: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/batteries-large-scale-energy-...

It can provide 400MW of power for 4 hours before it goes offline and cost $560m.

You need 6 of them to provide 24 hours back up. That's $560M * 6 = $3.4B. That's not counting the three times as large solar plant that you will need to build to charge the battery or that the battery will lose 50% of it's output within a decade unless you build an even larger battery installation to prevent full discharge. On top of that to prevent yearly black outs you'd need somewhere between 3 to 20 times the capacity above depending on region and climate.

Meanwhile the latest nuclear power plant produces the same power without degradation for less than half the rosiest estimate above and was build in a country with no history of nuclear power and no indigenous expertise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barakah_nuclear_power_plant

[Retric]

You double dipped, use outdated numbers "in 2020", hand waved, and still didn't get orders of magnitude difference.

Pairing batteries with solar provides actual useful power from solar for most of the day. You don't need both 24h of batteries AND redundant solar farms to get 24h of energy. Extremely redundant solar costs less per kWh. Therefore a combined system will cost less, provide more useful power, and charge the batteries at zero additional cost. I'll stick with batteries alone, but include that zero charge cost as part of a cheaper overall system.

Construction costs vary by country so you need a country with both battery systems and nuclear to get an apples to apples comparison. For the US "In 2023 costs had increased to $34 billion, with work still to be completed on Vogtle 4.", with work still to be completed on Vogtle 4, and that's just construction on two 1.1GW reactors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla...

400MW * 6 = 2.4 GW, 4h * 6 = 24h. 36 * 560m = 20 billion so well under that 34+B even before considering the cost savings from solar. We are comparing with Nuclear at 2.2GW which again goes offline for long periods, but we care about orders of magnitude so redundancy is a non issue.

Now you need to consider operating costs for both systems. In constant dollars without subsidies construction works out to roughly 1/3 of nuclear total lifetime costs ~1000 workers + fuel + insurance + new equipment + decommissioning adds up. I'll be conservative and double that 34 billion instead so 68B.

Actual studies look into foretasted costs. However for orders of magnitude 5%/year of install costs per year in maintenance would be equivalent to creating redundant facilities to cover 50% degradation in 10 years, so that's conservative as swapping out batteries would lower costs here. Lifetime costs should therefore be below 20B + 20B * 5% * 50 years = 70B ie roughly the same as Nuclear per kWh and far more flexible.

Now, you can easily quibble about these numbers but your not getting an orders of magnitude difference here.

[stavros]

Interesting, thanks. I'm a fan of both nuclear and solar, I just hope we build one of those instead of more coal/gas.