[bruce511]

>> Solar power, wind power, hydro power, nuclear power are all heavy on capital costs and light on operational costs

I'm not sure I agree. Firstly, I can get solar panels without building a solar panel factory. Hence the capital cost of a solar farm is cheap. I can't buy a nuclear power plant off the shelf.

Equally on the running cost, solar costs pretty much nothing to run. I'd argue that the costs to run a nuclear plant are substantial. Plus I need highly skilled people on-site permanently. With solar I need skilled people to install (skills easily taught) but I don't need permanent engineers on site.

[IAmBroom]

> I can't buy a nuclear power plant off the shelf.

China will build it for you, and has. Not OTS, but still something you write a check and a spec for, and you get it made.

[leonidasrup]

How much of your yearly electricity amount can you get from the installed solar panels?

How much do you need get from electric grid, from non-solar power plants?

Try to scale this to a whole country.

[bruce511]

Currently I generate about 66% of my annual power requirements with solar alone. If I had even a small 10kw battery I'd be moving that closer to 80%.

But demand for base load is irrelevant to my thesis. My point is that financially it makes no sense. So private capital aren't interested. [1]

So that leaves govt. They could decide (especially in regulated markets) to ignore Financials and build it anyway. Which is great, except govts are typically really bad at large capital projects that span multiple administrations.

[1] private capital cam get involved if the govt signs guaranteed income contracts. It's a model that puts the bad Financials on the govt (hence the people) while the govt avoids the pain of building. This model typically works as well as you might suspect.

Ultimately what we (the customer) want or need is irrelevant. The real world revolves around the money. And the only way to make the money work is to make the customer pay a lot.

The base-load question is solved with better, cheaper, storage. Not expensive power stations.

[leonidasrup]

You would still need and have to pay for an electric grid for the rest 20% of your electric demand. How much would it cost to go to 100% solar+battery?

Governments can't ignore Financials, because in the end all money is just a payment for human labor and physical materials needed to realize a project. Successful governments do invest in long term infrastructure, like highways, bridges, hydro dams, but they have pay for this project by taxes, or they can borrow money from private investors and pay the investors with future taxes.

See for example the financing of The Hoover Dam:

"Hoover Dam was built for a cost of $49 million (approximately $1 billion adjusted for inflation). The power plant and generators cost an additional $71 million, more than the cost of the dam itself. The sale of electrical power generated by the dam paid back its construction cost, with interest, by 1987."

https://hoover.archives.gov/hoovers/hoover-dam

There are many places (mostly sunny and dry places) in the world where solar+battery can supply large part of electricity demand for 100$/MWh. Is this cheap? Yes, if you compete with European electricity prices, not when you compete with Chinese electricity prices (88$ / MWh).

https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-e...

https://www.china-briefing.com/news/chinas-industrial-power-...

Will China invest in large amounts of battery storage, or will it rely on cheap coal power to complement solar power? They do invest a lot in hydro power, which can be seen as energy storage. India and Bangladesh are quite unhappy with this development.

https://www.abc.net.au/asia/china-plans-to-build-world-large...