[tonyarkles]

You’re right that there has been huge advancements but there’s still a pretty brutal economic cost with it. I generally use the Tesla Megapacks as an easy example because prices and specs are easy to find on Wikipedia (and my local utility is testing them, so it’s relevant to me).

A Megapack 2XL can output ~2MW and has a capacity of ~4MWh for $1.39M.

A GE BWRX-300 is rated for 300MW and an 18-24 month refueling cycle and allegedly costs ~$1B.

You can build 150x Megapacks for $208M to match that 300MW output, but there is only enough energy stored to provide that output for two hours. If you want to provide 12 hours capacity (to run through the night), you need 900 units at a cost of $1.25B. That’s just for the storage though, you still need the source of electricity to charge the packs, overprovisioned to deal with the capacity factor issues that solar and wind have.

Will the nuclear plant go over budget? Almost certainly. Will it then provide a long-term baseline source of power? Also yes.

I’m pro-renewables and pro-storage, but there’s a mix needed here. Even with storage tech, there needs to be something else that can just sit there and run and produce reliable and controllable power output long-term.

[applied_heat]

Some Solar and wind farms I’ve seen have capacity factors about 30%, and run of river hydro commonly 30-40%

[tonyarkles]

Right, so that means that to produce 300MW reliably from the solar or wind farms you'd need about 900MW nameplate capacity. I'd be really curious about the solar side of it too and whether that 30% is overall or just during daylight. Either way, you end up having to overprovision the unreliable sources such that you have enough capacity to both charge your battery pack and provide power to the grid.

[applied_heat]

30% overall, including night time. Honestly seems high to me and makes me wonder if they have overprovisioned panels vs the maximum allowable injected power to get a better capacity factor.