Wind and Solar Energy Becomes Cheaper than Coal

Funny, I don't see any reference to your claim of this being ten times more expensive than coal. I admit that storage for both of these renewable sources is not addressed if these power sources were the only source on a grid but I and the article never made the claim that this was a stand-alone system.

Naturally, whenever any new commodity approaches the old commodity's cost threshold, there will be conditions where the old still wins over the new.

..." the article never made the claim that this was a stand-alone system."...

But you're comparing it to one...? How can you compare installed capacity price of an on-demand generation source when wind and solar are only putting out 1/3 of the rated capacity? ...and even that is not reliable...So you might start off by multiplying the quoted installed capacity price times 3...and realize that if you spent that much again on battery bank storage, that you would only have about 30 min of backup....so that's times 6, and still falls short...now add in the recycling cost and subtract the 30% subsidy being paid...add the needed land cost for comparable output....You're over 10 times the cost, and it still doesn't equal the value of on-demand electrical generation....

So you don't have an answer that makes any sense, and your response is to turn on me....typical

Sorry, I could not make any sense of your babble in order to reply. That's why I called it babble.

I guess the comparison you, SE, are alluding to is the article's comparison of the financial cost of building a new coal-fired electric power plant versus a solar or wind renewable power source. I am not making this comparison nor am I saying the article is accurate. Often reports on reports of scientific/financial studies get warped for the periodicals readership.

I am saying when and if this becomes true the greater expense of new coal-fired electric power will curtail the development of coal power.

Interesting isn't it this lambasting of coal, when it has enormous reserves, a nearby coal mine has been mining coal for 60 years and so far has only used less than 8% of the known resource which has kept the Asian steel mills and power generators going for that many years. So extrapolating that out there is enough coal for 540 years.

Already wind generators are failing in the local district and they have only been installed for maybe two years. Today on a trip in my ICE I saw for the first time some of the white elephants actually turning and maybe making subsidised power for their foreign owners.

Not an EV in sight, nor a charging station and the solar panels would have been generating bugger all as the sky was 100% cloud cover, ah the denudables!

Depleted uranium, for Gen IV nuclear reactor fuel, also has enormous reserves. It is zero-carbon along with wind & solar but doesn't need that 1/3 utilization factor. Depleted uranium, U-238, is a by-product of the enrichment of uranium for weapons. We have lots of it.

Yes, IV Generation Nuclear power looks very promising for the future. I personally like the Sodium cooled reactor approach for it can consume spent fuel from thermal reactors to make more power. Thorium can be used in these, too. We have a lot more Thorium than Uranium on this planet.

I did not see any Gen IV reports claiming to use U-238 for fuel. Where did you hear that?

I did not see any Gen IV reports claiming to use U-238 for fuel. Where did you hear that?

Probably from the book Plentiful Energy--The story of the Integral Fast Reactor by Charles Till & Yoon Il Chang. They did research on the sodium-cooled fast reactor at Argonne National Lab before the program was stopped by Clinton. The U-238 transmutes to Pu-239 to become fissionable. I worked at Argonne for a while in the 1960s, but in support positions. EBR-I was in mothballs by then.

Thank you. I will locate that book. It looks interesting. I will read it with a cautious eye. Many of this type of "they killed my research" post mortem books lament the great hopes of the researcher without a fair appraisal for why the program was killed.

I think this research is the predecessor for the nuclear power proposal I heard of at work. That reactor used sub-critical amounts of fuel, including thermal spent fuel from fission piles. It sustained fission only by accelerated proton bombardment. The major safety advantage here is fission stopped when protons stopped. It was not self-sustaining. The residue was still radioactive isotopes but with much shorter half-lives than the original spent fuel. I think this proposal failed with complications of the proton beam.

I think you'll like the book. It's been quite a while since I read it; I don't remember it being a post-mortem. And some it was very technical when getting into reprocessing.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/05/22/when-wind-turbines-are-no-longer-useful-they-get-explosive-demolition/

Deadly wind turbine fails are becoming more common....

Interesting! I'll WAG that there are 2 reasons for failure: electricsal and fatique. Of course, each can have various routes from OK to failure.

Nobody notices here when a coal power plant fails, even when lives are lost.

I'll add another, the subsidy payments ran out....20 years and it's scrap...or landfill I guess in this case...

Here is one of the best explanations I have seen on the subject:

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-6-25-new-york-has-no-idea-whatsoever-how-to-decarbonize-its-electric-grid

I have been preaching that same information to whomever would listen for a few years now.

The make-up of the panel is particularly troubling, and really the crux of the problem.

When we take ex-bartenders out of the selection comittee for new power sources, we will always wind up with natural gas fired power plants.

The math doesn't work any other way.

Until of course the tokomak or other exotic power plant is perfected.

Windmills are great theater - Majestic beasts gently wafting kw's into the grid. Fortunately it is getting harder to site the things, especially as towns are finding their landfills filled with blades from the retired units.

Blackouts start around the US...

https://gizmodo.com/new-york-faces-blackouts-as-extreme-heat-strains-the-gr-1847206009

https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/northwest-heat-wave-triggers-blackout-with-u-s-east-due-to-boil

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/23/us/california-electricity-flex-alerts.html

https://theprint.in/world/killer-heat-wave-triggers-blackouts-damages-utilities-people-flee-to-hotels-in-us-canada/687060/

Let's blame global warming because the grid is not longer reliable...it wouldn't have anything to do with shutting down dispatchable sources in favor of unreliable green sources like wind and solar....Shirley you jest!!

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-29/power-grids-getting-fried-by-heat-in-preview-of-what-s-to-come