[eqvinox]

For context, nuclear and peaker natural gas are the two most expensive sources of electricity in overall lifetime cost per energy output nowadays. It's not clear what exactly he's comparing there on the natural gas side.

Also, his data is from 2013.

cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity

(warning: the graph on that wikipedia page has a really poorly cut Y-axis.)

[earthnail]

LCOE assumes that electricity generation is comparable. However, renewables have a high variability, which puts a much higher load on the grid.

The grid investments are sizeable. You not only need to add a lot of batteries, you also have to make other investments, for example to add moment to the grid, because unlike big turbines like nuclear, water or gas, solar or small wind turbines have almost no moment of inertia, which was one of the problems behind Spain's power outage.

This isn't new stuff, it's all solvable and countries already do this; the power outage of Spain would've been impossible in Germany for example. It's just important to highlight that with old-school power plants, you don't need a lot of that stuff to stabilise the grid. You need to include the grid costs when calculating the true LCOE, which most of these charts, including the Wikipedia one, don't do. Wikipedia isn't lying about that; they outline this very fact as one of the key weaknesses of the LCOE metric.

[ZeroGravitas]

When grids set up markets to let people compete to provide those grid balancing services batteries totally dominate. Which suggests that is just another area that modern renewables win and reduce costs.

On the other hand Nuclear LCOE generally assume they can sell a high proportion of their power for the next 40 years.

So really the big hidden assumption is that solar won't eat half their market in that timeframe. And then solar plus batteries eats into it further. Which would drive up their cost, letting solar plus batteries win more business in a vicious cycle.

With the recent Iberian power situation half their nuclear was offline because they were already in a huff because they weren't being paid enough money.

[Calwestjobs]

exactly that is why we need to put electrolyzers into mix, that way we can have load on nuclear and on renewable at same time, we need insane amounts of hydrogen for chemical industry anyway.

also chemical industry needs big investment because they have to change mindset about procuring carbon and other inputs in net zero economy.

(similar thing as what some datacenter companies say they do with buying nuclear capacity)

i think most people do not want to understand, they want socialized grid payed by citizens instead of putting real energy price into pricing for goods/services.

hydrogen as energy carrier, not as transportable comodity. hydrogen as MEANS not as a goal. we need iron + water to have from 20 sec up to seasonal storage of energy in megawatts per meter cubed...

https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2024/08/iro...

https://www.tue.nl/en/research/institutes/eindhoven-institut...

[Calwestjobs]

99.9999% of people do not understand that point about inertia, you are one of them. and no it was not problem with spain, problem with spain was badly selected and configured inverters. if someone says otherwise he is liar.

" with old-school power plants, you don't need a lot of that stuff to stabilise the grid."

you just need proper sizing of renewables inverters + firmware update...... so no you do not need to have inertia of huge mass in turbines. also 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of all problems stem of peoples need to regulate grid to flat line for nonsensical reasons, IF you have slight artificially made "fluctuations in grid" which are generated by all inverter synchronized and planned ahead, there is no problem. grid has to have "pulse". THAT is decentralized / new grid. what you are describing is Stanley/Westinghouse grid. so mixing is resulting in nonsense.

[ViewTrick1002]

This is wrong. It has since been confirmed that the Iberian blackout had nothing to do with inertia.

It was an over voltage issue coming from reactive power causing trips.

https://minener.com/spains-power-crisis-deepens-renewables-c...

[pfdietz]

> Also, his data is from 2013.

I see this sort of thing so much. Renewable and storage costs have changed so fast that using numbers from even a few years ago gives misleading results. Going back 12 years you might as well be using numbers from another world.

[Calwestjobs]

but LCOE is price only for WATTS, not for watts at specified time!!! you need watts at night too. so be careful about that, this mistake can make shareholders loose interest in your point...

but yes, LCOE of PV+12hour battery was lower then nuclear, even before 2020/2019 saga...

[energy123]

Nuclear is still more expensive even when you account for the cost of storage and transmission. So your point is a good one but it doesn't alter the conclusion.

[Calwestjobs]

read it again