Solar power and storage prices have dropped almost 90%::undefined
85-87% reduced in last 10 years
I was still quoted 40K CAD. 20 year ROI. Not feasible for me.
If you are willing to DIY you can cut that number dramatically. Out of curiosity what was the size of the array in that quote and did it include battery storage if so how much chances are that you can cut it by anywhere from 50% to 75% if you’re willing to Simply purchase directly and install yourself. The amount that installers charge is absolutely asinine usually 50% or more of that quote is just the installation which is in the same because it’s not difficult at all. People like to act scared like oh that’ll be difficult or hard or dangerous, it’s extremely simple you’re dealing with DC which is very straightforward everything is very clearly labeled on that equipment and it’s quite simple to do yourself
Is there a go-to source for diy product and instructions? I’m interested in doing this in the near future.
I can’t think of any One-Stop shop for literally everything, but there is a lot of great material out there both on forums and on YouTube. If you take it one step at a time and look at each individual piece of the installation you’ll be able to find fantastic instructions for all of them fairly easily.
If you are in the US I recommend purchasing from signature solar, they have a lot of great bundles that will both save you some money and get you everything you need. I’d also say they have the best battery storage options, their rack mount batteries and their new wall mount battery are both fantastic and very easy to work with. They also sell solar panels by the pallet which helps you get a nice large array at a good price.
If I had to pick the hardest part it would just be making sure you get the grounding right on the inverter, if you’re not careful it’s pretty easy to end up with a ground Loop which isn’t particularly dangerous but it will cause lots of weird little issues like flickering lights and other annoyances. But it’s fairly easy to correct it it’s usually just a result of people connecting both the input and the output on the inverter as well as bonding the secondary panel to the primary panel which creates a ground loop. The solution is as simple as just don’t connect to the input power ground to the inverter only connect to the output ground so that it has to go through the ground Bond on the panels
It will definitely sound like a lot, but again if you just take each individual piece by itself it’s very straightforward very simple and you’ll be able to get it done while saving an absolute asinine amount of money compared to an installer.
I will warn you that if you try to do gridtie, which is where you’re able to send excess electricity back into the grid. That comes with a lot more red tape and can get a lot more complicated. I personally did an off-grid setup, which still uses the grid as a possible input so if my batteries are dead and there’s no sun out I can still use the power like normal it’s just not capable of sending Excess power back out into the grid so there’s a whole bunch of red tape that I don’t have to worry about.
An off-grid setup with grid power option is still considered a grid tie in my area since it needs a way to prevent backfeeding to the grid. Which is totally doable in several ways, just one additional thing to be aware of.
And as a former solar installer, I also remember looking at signature solar and thinking their kits looked the best.
That doesn’t really make sense, since an off-grid inverter literally cannot backfeed. It’s essentially just a computer UPS on steroids. It accepts the grid as an input that it can pass through but it’s not possible for it to push energy back to the grid.
I mean yes if you decided to hook its output directly up to your Mains panel without separation you would be back feeding. But only for maybe a few minutes at most as you would also destroy your inverter because it has no mechanism to synchronize the output with the mains since it’s not designed to backfeed
because it has no mechanism to synchronize the output with the mains since it’s not designed to backfeed
It’s 120v, there’s nothing to synchronize? Not sure what you’re talking about here. Same power is coming from the inverter, battery, grid, generator…
I mean yes if you decided to hook its output directly up to your Mains panel without separation
This is standard practice. Inverter - > monitoring - > maybe a knife disconnect - > main panel.
I’m not really sure what you are talking about, you need to synchronize both the phase of the power and the frequency. If they differ even slightly you damage your equipment. This is why when running multiple inverters in parallel they require both a Communication cable and a power sharing Cable in order to ensure that they stay perfectly synchronized. Inverters capable of doing grid tie have equipment in them to monitor the mains power and make sure that they stay synchronized with it. Whereas an off-grid inverter does not contain that equipment which is why they are generally cheaper
There are several different possible phases for 120 volt they are not all the same. And while hooking to the mains may be standard practice for something that can grid tie it is not standard practice for an off-grid inverter. You are specifically expected to have a secondary panel specifically for that inverter. The mains power will reach that secondary panel through the inverter when it’s in pass through but the panel should in no way be connected to the mains directly (other than a ground bond between the secondary panel and the mains)
With that having been said, I have no doubt that solar installers have instead opted to continue to use inverters that are capable of grid tie even in a installation that will not be backfeeding. Probably just to reduce the amount of inventory required so that they can get full purchase orders. But that doesn’t change the fact that a proper true off-grid inverter is not capable of tying into the mains without destroying itself
The fact that you say you were a solar installer, but you’re not even aware of something as simple as phases and frequency synchronization is part of the reason I feel like solar installers are wildly overpaid. You’re basically doing the bare minimum without really understanding what it is you’re doing
yea diy is the way: check Will Prowse on Youtube. He is the go to for diy solar and battery storage
You can’t get any of the stuff Will uses in Canada unfortunately, nobody will ship it here. We have overly strict regulations on importing bare lithium cells.
We have overly strict regulations on importing bare lithium cells.
i would kinda get that. since buying batteries from unknown sources could imply a risk hazard. but what about panels and inverters ? those should easily be shipped from ebay or aliexpress. Phone/electronic parts are usually shipped from asia, idk what the exception for solar for.
Well that’s nice but the vast majority of stuff he does is small-scale and there’s very little in the way of installation instruction. Mostly just product reviews.
Is that paying cash for the solar system or financing? Financing can devastate the ROI with interest rates today. I’m looking at as long as 12 year ROI with possibly as short as 7 year ROI if I consider the USA’s federal tax incentives. My slightly southern latitude (a border state with Canada) also likely contributes to slightly higher generation results using the same equipment.
How are the government incentives in Canada? I’m super envious of your great hydro power, my neighbor.
Bruh I got quoted 50k in St. Louis last year, would take decades for roi
$50k is a pretty large installation, 18kw-22kw I’d guess for solar only (no battery storage). I’m hoping thats only a max of 100% replacement of electricity sourcing (meaning essentially no net grid consumption after you’re installed). What’s the price per KWh for electricity delivered to your door in St Louis? Its gotta be pretty crazy cheap if you’re that large a consumer of electricity and you’re paying in cash with no battery, and still looking at multiple decades of ROI with the US federal tax credit.
I don’t remember the kWh specs and price off hand but a decent portion of the cost was that I’m in a 1.5 story that faces S and have a lot of small roofs rather than one large roof so it’d be a bunch of panels that didn’t have full sun most of the day. Which is true of all hundred houses in my subdivision as well. Basically build of the house made this difficult or impossible
Does that mean a substantial portion of the $50k quoted was setting up lots of panels is many small spaces, (because of the broken up nature of the roof) and that perhaps the system was oversized its electrical capacity because of the assumption that it would only be fractionally efficient because of the substandard angles and shading? I could see that. Certainly roof designs and even large mature trees can make solar unfeasible in those situations…
Maybe, I was so mad I didn’t even get more quotes, I should really do so but I was expecting 10-20 at most and hearing 50 kinda put me off the prospect for a while. Decided to spend effort on other home improvement we could see instead
That can’t be for a home. If it was it was predatory nonsense. It should be a 7 or 8 year ROI with a 20-30 year service life.
Maybe not all areas have much competition driving prices down? I’m in sunny hippie California where every other house has solar.
1800sq ft home, my power bill is a few hundred in the summer, I feel there just isn’t any competition here there only 2-3 companies doing it and they’re all small
It could be that those companies are evil, or perhaps their own prices are just very high because the industry isn’t scaled up in your area. Maybe they have a really hard time hiring equalities installers, and have to ship in parts from far away.
It was like that in California 20 years ago but it has changed enormously. When you drive down the street, how many houses have solar? It’s probably 3 in 10 here. I get nonstop Facebook ads and can name about 10 companies. With this comes lower prices. But there are still cheats out there. Never work with a “no money up front” company unless you only want to enjoy 10% of the benefit of the panels. For some it may be the only option but these companies are shysty as hell.
There almost 0 solar houses here, 1 in a hundred maybe. A few businesses have been doing it lately, I’ve seen 2 gas stations and several schools in the area do it. I’d like to get it done before my backwards ass state makes it illegal or something
Ouch that sounds rough.
In Canada you can get a 40k loan from the federal govt that is 0% interest on a 10 year term for doing green upgrades to your home. My solar generates more in credits than than the cost of the loan over the year. The Greener Homes Program is a bit of a pain to jump through all the hoops but getting thousands off in grants and a 0% loan is worth it.
for doing green upgrades to your home.
Who is owning a home in Canada lol. You’ll pay your landlord $3000 for 1000sqft or fuck off.
Not all of us live in big cities where we would need to cry over high rent and house prices.
Even in the middle of nowhere a house is a million dollars.
They aren’t.
I just moved last year.
But keep hyperbolizing, it only undermines the point you seem to want to hammer on.… I also have eyes, and family in real estate. A tiny house an hour from any town is 1 million. A crack shack that needs to be demolished and rebuilt is 750K.
Maybe you live in Alberta? The place no one wants to be?
Well it’s the company/ies not the product
How much of that is installation costs?
Was that recently or last year? Prices were out of control last year. Here prices have dropped almost 30% just since May.
July last year.
OK, you might be able to get offers at about half the price now then. If things are like they are here.
I calculated our ROI to about 9 years, the company however promises about 6, but I think that’s overly optimistic.
Wow. 3000 square foot home here so we had a sizable system. It was $15k USD.
Ha, mines like 1200
how much solar generation capacity and battery storage are u seeking ? where i live, a 2kw solar installation without battery (grid-tied system ?) costs about 3k$. system pays itself in 4 years and rest of existence is powered by free energy. want batteries ? a 1kwh costs about 300$. where i live 4kwh/day is more than enough, sometimes 10kwh/day in extreme heat/cold. but i guess american needs could differ (30kwh/day maybe?). to recharge 30kwh batteries, u would need extra solar capacity (maybe 7kwc ?), and that would run at 9k$, add 30kwh batteries ? another 9k$… idk what the 50k CAD are for
We ran for almost 16 months on 4kwh of storage and 4 350w panels. We don’t use it for heat since we live in a forest and burn our own wood in a woodstove, but for everything else we needed it was grand. Total cost was about $4500CAD
Having said that - When the power company offered to extend the grid out here, we took them up on it. So now the 4kwh is more than enough to run the garage and a few outbuildings, while the main tinyhouse is tied to the grid.
Conversely - Our neighbour who has big 2800sqft house spent about 25k to be able to run as if they are in the city.
Not saying any of this to bolster any argument. I just like talking about it :p
I just like talking about it :p
totally understandable. i am aware that prices aren’t the same everywhere, thats why i decided to share prices of solar of where i am living. sharing quotes could help one another save on costs, and ur number of 4k CAD is really quite reasonable for 1.4Kw system and a 4Kwh battery (which is really a good bang for the buck, since batteries are the expensive part most of the time) but the user of the comment above me was quoted 40k CAD which is really absurd, but they didnt disclose the specifications of their system yet, so not much to judge. But solar has been really cheap for a while now. 25k CAD for a 260m² house ? maybe their house required too much climate control or they are charging an Ev, u could help assess how much solar they r installing on the roof: 5m² would correspond to 1kw of solar, if they r not installing alot of panels and yet have spent alot of money the rest of it probably went for batteries, among many possibilities…
I am not judging the neighbour at all. He is a great guy with a ton of smarts. My ‘house’ is 420sqft, and his is over 2800. And he doesn’t enjoy the roughing it parts of life as much as I do. I work in tech so to me things like bringing water up from the creek, or cutting my own firewood, are like therapy. But when he comes out here, he wants all the comforts of his city house. And he deserves that.
And as a bonus - I get to see him test different configs and products before I even have to think about them :)
yea i agree. each has their way of unwinding from work.
Who did you contact for your solar install, or did you do it yourself?
I did it myself. But I cheated… The main storage unit is a bluetti unit. That runs about 80% of our needs. The other 20% comes from a DIY solution. I built in a couple of Rubbermaid tubs with six volt golf cart, batteries in series and an inverter.
15.75kW and an inverter, installation in there too. 41k - 5k gov rebate. Too rich for my blood.
16kw/0.4=38 * 100$= 3800$(usd). 1700$ for a 16kw Growatt inverter. Extra 5k$ for breakers and copper lines etc (total=10500$). Still, idk what the rest of 20k usd are for (40k cad= 30k usd). Yea, seems kinda too much. Is solar having a lobby now ?
It was July last year so maybe the prices were just that much more insane then
probably
Zero battery. Who did you contact? I only contacted one company. This was also about a year and a half ago
i dont live in Canada, but that quote was from a third party solar installation company, that gets a license from the utility company to install a two-way electricity meter to tie the solar system to the grid. and yea those prices have been the same for a year now, if not dropped. a 2kw inverter is about 300$, 400w panel is about 100$*5=500$. meter=60$. the rest (3k$-860$=2140$) are costs of copper wire,breakers, labour and margin. maybe cost of labour in Canada is high, hence the high quote. better install it urself: check Will Prowse on youtube, assembling a solar system is like a lego game
I heard the prices dropped a lot around 2012 too. Why are solar installations still rare?
In america the installation costs as much as or more than the panels. Until the install costs come down no one is going to do it.
About a third of the houses in my neighborhood have gone solar. My household was one of the first to do it about five years ago and every time I go for a walk I notice a new one that popped up. Our solar system payment is about half what our electric bill used to be and we make more electricity than we use every month of the year, even with charging a plug-in hybrid car. Far from “no one is going to do it.” I frankly don’t understand why more people don’t do it.
This is why I pay extra for my co-op to source it. Cheaper to build/maintain solar/wind farms
Keyword coop. People hate sharing here. It’s like a “socialist threat” to their autonomy.
Weird, here we got 11kW solar panels with inverter and 7½ kW battery for USD $12900,-. Installation (starting monday next week) is USD $ 4300,- complete with panels, wiring, inverter and battery including authorized electrician to connect it.
Meaning installation is only a fourth the total price. So clearly the panels are way more expensive, and that is in Denmark, where skilled workers are among the highest paid in Europe. AND on a ceramic tiled roof, which is the most demanding and expensive to have it installed on.
This is a completely new solar panel installation, which should begin next week. so prices are as they are now here.
PS:
For the above prices the hardware needed for installation is included with the panels.But I think that’s standard.
Insurance companies have a lot of bullshit rules in certain states about the roof(Florida) which drives up the costs to install.
That sucks, seems like an opening for an Insurance company to capture some market share. Unless of course it’s all one big cartel.
Prices for the batteries and panels themselves have dropped. Just not the cost to install them.
What a shame. Is there no competition among contractors or is it inherently expensive?
Lots of red tape, at least in the US. And lots of scammy contractors out there.
As the guy in charge of the red tape - there really isn’t much.
Show that it’s designed to be safely installed on the roof and that you have a licensed electrician doing the install.
Then submit to an inspection.
It takes 15 minutes to get a solar permit, and the whole thing videos like $250 in permitting - most of which is inspections.
But the contractor invoices $3,000 for permitting, so of course they’re gonna say there’s a bunch of red tape to justify it.
Depends on the area. They’re trying to force every solar installer here to be a licensed electrician, including the guys who slap the panels.
And our local utility and government inspectors take months to come out to do an inspection. It requires one person from the company to sit at the site all day because you never know when they’re actually going to show up. Or if they’re going to show up.
That’s weird.
Our insurance doesn’t even allow our inspectors to climb on the roof. We make sure the electrician doingg the wiring is licensed and has liability insurance, and we inspect the electrical panels when they’re done. The workers don’t even have to be there, and neither does the homeowner if the panel is accessible from the street-side of the fence.
We actually prefer doing inspections without the contractors being there. It keeps them from trying to guide our inspectors away from their fuckups and prevents the contractors from trying to argue. We take pictures of the violations, upload them to the permit, and tell them to fix it.
If they don’t, we eventually arrange it to be fixed by another electrician and file a claim against their insurance.
Because it takes months to get inspectors out, we wanted to do everything we could to avoid having them come out again. A lot of times I’ve saved a job by promising to do a spot fix and having the inspector swing back by later that day, or take pictures/video and send it to them.
Mine took weeks to get an inspector out, and the local permitting fees were thousands (yes, I called the city and county to verify). Then the utility apparently required their own inspection, which took another month, because their guys kept no-showing.
It’s mostly just time consuming. It took 5 days to get the solar installed on our roof.
Seems like a huge project. Or a challenging roof layout.
21 panels and very simple layout. The longest part was building the frame to hold the panels. Installing the inverters etc. took a little time and our town is a little strict when it cones to construction. This is a very good installer which doesn’t rush things just to move on to the next job.
Where I live, power companies successfully lobbied to charge a minimum fee to people using a grid-tied system (as opposed to off-grid). So now a bill that might have been lowered to $9.00 will cost the minimum fee of $30.00 (actual example). You might say, that $30.00 is still a very low power bill but how long will it take before that starts going up? They are also lobbying to buy power from homeowners for less than they charge homeowners. This was a huge turn-off for me considering the high cost of installation. When I asked the solar installer about off-grid installations, he said they weren’t allowed to offer those. Not sure why but got the impression it was a government thing and not a company thing. Not sure.
It’s a company thing. Government can’t force you to pay for electricity if you don’t want it.
However off grid setups are more complicated and require a different design philosophy, so most solar companies don’t do them. You have to shop for companies that specialize in off-grid setups.
They are not rare. It is the fastest growing energy production mode and is growing faster every year.
Residential installations lag behind the commercial due to installation costs, but they are blowing up as well. I can walk around my neighborhood and see a couple dozen homes with it.
It’s also highly regional. The further south in the northern hemisphere the more common.
Here in Canada prices have stayed stubbornly high. It’s the Canadian way.
I have panels that I bought for under $0.50/watt that they were clearing out at the local wholesaler years ago. Haven’t been able to find anything even near that price range since, and I’m an electrician with access to wholesale pricing.
I have found some decent prices recently but they’re all on full pallet lots. So you need to be a business dedicated to solar installs to get a fair price, and those businesses obviously don’t pass the savings on as that’s not the Canadian way.
Batteries are an even worse situation! If you live here and want storage, I hope you like lead-acid.
Have you looked into Lifepo4 batteries lately? Their capacity and deep cycle life are quite price competitive these days, even up here in Canada.
Not like lately lately, prices were so bad for so long. Got a supplier you could recommend?
I had hoped to start by building a pack for my small car using something like b-grade prismatics or good salvage cells from batteryhookup.com.
Currently running 8kWh of lead-acid which as we know might as well be around 3kWh usable. Going to lithium would really make a car out if it, but the car itself is a weird old thing and not worth much so I don’t want to invest a ton into it.
For a medium to large house, one pallet of panels is a normal size for an install
UK its partly roof size/shape limiting the amount of panels you can get in the optimum location, partly the weather, and partly install costs.
If its going to take me 8 years at least to pay back vs. not having it I am not going to bother. Some people got lucky with lifetime buy back rates for the panels to the grid so they made bank of theirs with 50p a kwh ( and electric was around 24p a kwh to buy from the grid) but those rates got cut to like 4p a kwh, when even a cheap EV tarrif is like 9p a kwh
There are some finance deals available from the likes of Eon but its hardly high end gear, which I think is needed to make the most of the UK roofs and UK sun. Time you start paying interest on it, it becomes an even worse deal.
I would save more money by just having a battery installed and charging it on my EV tarrif overnight.
I hate to be pedantic, but the things in the picture are windmills… you know giant whirly things that are powered by wind… kind of very different from things that lie around and absorb sunlight.
You want pedantic? Those are wind turbines, champ. Windmills are used to mill grain, no matter how many people like yourself try to bastardize the term to apply to anything that rotates with air.
What’s next for you people, pinwheels are now windmills?
Sorry, but not all wind mills are used for grain. Some ground stone and other material!
Or for pumping water!
Found the Dutch guy
What if the turbines are hooked up to an electric milling machine ?
Then it’s a windmilf
I told you I hate to be pedantic.
Fair enough.
Thank you! Seeing this more and more often and it drives me insane.
Wait until you hear what creates wind!
Beans?
There’s a man in the clouds who blows really hard.
But the plants he eats grow in sunlight.
But, but… what if we put solar panels on the windmills? ;-)
Actually I double checked and solar-assisted windmills are a thing though not likely what’s shown in the picture. Actually now I’m wondering if you could also use solar to concentrate a local heat differential and power a wind turbine (though liquid is probably more efficient)
That is inefficient, we should put windmills on solar panels.
Solar Panel Windmills. Checkmate, nukular nerds.
Yes it’s a stupid picture, the solar panels are in the background, not nearly as noticeable as the wind turbines.
It’s not pedantic, just wrong.
Wind power also involves batteries. This article is about solar and batteries.
POV reading this headline while paying $0.4-$0.5 /kWh
Are you using solar?
It’s the same here (Denmark), and it’s not about whether we use solar, but if countries more suited for it do, which should decrease the price of electricity across countries. Just like when the Ukraine war caused gas to increase in price, electricity of all of Europe increased in price, disregarding their use or dependency on gas.
Damn. Ontario Canada is 15.1-24 cents per kWh.
I looked into getting solar installed. Best I could get in my area was $45k for a 10kW system or $97k for a 20kW with 2 power walls for storage. F that, even with government subsided rates.
That’s just absurd, why is it so expensive for you? You could install it yourself for the most part, it’s not super complicated, just physically difficult. And then pay an electrician $500 to connect the inverter to your main panel.
Lack of competition, but mostly greed.
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Ah yes. This is why batteries in Aus cost the same as they did 10 years ago. Capitalism working as intended
Think of all the profits you’re delivering to shareholders!
Batteries definitely do not cost the same.
Well that’s a compelling case you make there.
Have a counterpoint:
Solar battery average price in 2018 was $10k for 10kw Its now $12k for 10kw.
So you’re actually right! The price has increased.
https://www.solarchoice.net.au/blog/home-solar-battery-storage-system-prices-april-2018/
https://www.solarmarket.com.au/batteries/battery-pricing-and-sizes/
Now do again with the same manufacturer and minus the ridiculous inflation we had in the last couple of years.
You are comparing the average to a high end.
If we use tax money, if it is important for entire world and survival of humans, then we wouldn’t even care or notice
Maybe raw battery cost has reduced but installed storage is 30% more expensive than it was a couple of years ago, and it was too expensive then…
probably when using carbon cathodes instead of cobalt, the energy density drops from 300wh/kg to just 150wh/kg, so u would need extra anode/electrolyte mass to store the same amount of energy.i bet that those prices hikes are a result of diversion from rare earth metal mining…but just a guess
Thanks, China.
The reason include the increased efficiency of solar panels, government incentive measures, the widespread adoption of electric vehicles, and advancements of battery technology, especially lithium-ion batteries. solar and energy storage are expected to continue becoming more affordable, contributing to efforts to address climate change.
Tell me again about how we need to build more nuclear.
We definitely need to build more nuclear.
And we need to do reactors with liquid fuels instead of solid fuel
You realize uranium isn’t a liquid, right?
No but you can dilute it into a fluid https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor
Agreed. 1000x. Solar alone can’t save us.
Nice straw man. Nobody is arguing 100% solar.
Hence why we need nuclear as well… nice fail.
I agree that you failed with your straw man. Got anything else?
I’ll let your downvotes and my upvotes speak for themselves. You fail. Again.
Thanks, now we’ve established you have no argument apart from a straw man and the realization that most people are wrong about the need for new nuclear. You can run along now.
You must construct additional nuclear.
Solar and nuclear address completely different goals.
I know. Nuclear provides base load power, which can be argued is not needed any more.
Maybe I missed some points by skimming, but the arguments made in that article are that:
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1 Australian researcher agrees with his stance
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a region had 22% of its power produced by wind at one point
I guess the claim “it can be argued” is technically proven true, but the majority opinion I keep hearing from the electrical grid engineers in the news is the opposite
And, well, sometimes it just simply is night, and sometimes the wind doesn’t blow. We don’t have the battery tech to run from storage alone
But, honestly why wouldn’t we use nuclear? It’s the one power source we have without any real downsides untill ITER finally brings positive results
And, well, sometimes it just simply is night, and sometimes the wind doesn’t blow.
Do you really think this isn’t already taken into account?
We don’t have the battery tech to run from storage alone
Nobody is making that argument, as far as I’m aware. There are plenty of ways of storing energy, e.g. pumped hydro, that would work in conjunction with battery storage.
But, honestly why wouldn’t we use nuclear?
The obvious one. It’s wildly expensive when compared to renewables, and that’s before the usual nuclear build issues of cost and schedule overruns.
-
It can be argued but only poorly.
Feel free to offer corrections.
The argument is one of efficiency and load distribution. Base load power plants are capable of greater efficiency than variable ones. This is down to optimisations made around specific output levels and the infrastructure required to support said loads. For example if you know the characteristics of your power output and that of the grid you can build a transformer or switch mode power supply to bridge that specific gap. This outperforms variable input transformers in every case.
There is an argument that low efficiency doesn’t matter if the source is renewable, but this fails to take into consideration the embodied energy cost of producing renewable generators, not to mention the increased cost. An inefficient system may not produce enough energy over the course of its lifetime compared to the energy it cost to make.
Finally, most sources of renewables are intermittent and are not necessarily related to the population’s power consumption. This makes the storing of energy necessary in order to regulate supply. Storage of energy is a large source of inefficiency and one of the key areas that is being focused on. Base load plant is absolutely necessary to minimise this inefficiency as much as possible.
For a good overview I recommend this site from Penn State Uni: https://www.e-education.psu.edu/eme807/node/667
These sound more like arguments in support of a distributed power grid rather than arguments for nuclear.
You keep referring to inefficiency but in real terms nuclear is so expensive that inefficiencies in renewables are a drop in the bucket in comparison.
What do you mean by a distributed power grid? Do you mean power generation happening locally? This is already a thing and is growing in the form of Combined Heat and Power. This doesn’t get rid of the need for base load, the overall grid will still need balancing and will still have a base load unless you plan to disconnect local grids from each other in which case welcome to Texas…
Money is not the point here (even though nuclear really doesn’t cost much per kWh). I’m talking about the need to build a system that will produce more power over it’s lifetime than it costs to make. This is still something that is surprisingly close in many cases so any extra bit of inefficiency risks making the overall system pointless.
We need nuclear because it can cover 20% for 50 years, then we are out of suitable Uranium (allegedly).
That includes an expected undiscovered amount of twice of what has already been discovered.
Clearly nuclear can’t solve the climate change problem alone.
