[red75prime]

Some batteries? Battery-backed solar has the highest cost as a baseload power source due to high intermittency of solar power.

[applied_heat]

Do you have a source for this? I constantly point out that several cloudy days in a row often happens but am rebutted with graphs of the declining costs of solar modules and batteries

[red75prime]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S036054422... Figure 3

When used as the sole source of electricity solar clocks at 565 EUR/MWh. Nuclear, for comparison, is at 141 EUR/MWh.

[konschubert]

Nobody is suggesting to use solar as the sole source of electricity. That would obviously be insane and then leads to silly numbers like the ones you gave.

A MWh of solar is about 30 Euro/MWh if you levelize the capital costs.

[red75prime]

The article discusses why LCOE is not a good estimate of the costs. Yes, combining different sources lowers the total cost (by damping intermittency). For Denmark it's offshore wind and solar in a 7 to 1 ratio (plus natural gas or biomethane power plants).

> Nobody is suggesting to use solar as the sole source of electricity.

You weren't clear on what you propose.

[konschubert]

https://has-electricity-decoupled-yet.strommarktberatung.de

Germany has a lot of solar. It's suppressing prices below the electricity price you would get with pure gas power generation.

[red75prime]

The electricity price is not decoupled from the gas price because there's not enough energy storage, wind turbines, interconnections (that is the energy grid can't function without natural gas). The cost of building (and operating) all this goes into SLCOE.

[reitzensteinm]

Well, I found the proposal clear and your response confusing.

There are reasons it might not work, not least of all political. But a link to a paper picking a bone with LCoE is talking past GP.

[red75prime]

I wanted to remind that "just add solar" comes with the costs that are rarely mentioned.

[konschubert]

I was very clear, even before the edit. I wrote "reduce the gas bills". Not "cut the gas line".

[engineer_22]

Konschubert, it's widely reported that German energy prices are some of the highest in the world.

Exempli gratia: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germanys-household-powe...

And the proposal to fix this is more accounting games to transfer costs to different constituents.

[konschubert]

Batteries are good to cover evening peaks or maybe a while night. Not multiple days of low solar, that’s not economical.

[throwaway-11-1]

good point, I guess the market says we have to poison the earth

[red75prime]

No, it means that if you expect that sticking solar panels everywhere will solve all the problems for cheap (because solar panels are cheap), then you are up for a disappointment. I am of the opinion that handling out rose-tinted glasses will not go well.

[konschubert]

The rest of the world seems to be doing exactly that, though: Sticking solar panels everywhere.