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deepnotderp | 7 months ago

This is a lot of words to say “solar + battery lcoe is $70/MWH and gas is $40/MWH, but most places outside the U.S. don’t have access to tons of cheap gas so it’s more expensive there”

And no, they are wrong, gas is still currently cheaper ($40 is less than $70)

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triknomeister|7 months ago

In other places outside US, cost of gas electricity is not 40/MWh. In Germany for example, the cost of natural gas power plants is 110 to 170 Euros/MWh.

For solar in Germany, it is 37 Euro/MWh to 80 Euros/MWh not including storage.

rapsey|7 months ago

Yeah ok but without storage you are comparing apples to oranges. Even with storage it is barely comparable. Since even with batteries you can't provide power 24/7.

burkaman|7 months ago

Where is your $40/mwh figure from? The claim in the podcast is that average LCOE for new gas in the US is "around $76, $78" or "around $70".

zdragnar|7 months ago

Combined cycle can be as low as $37 during low price periods of natural gas; combustion cycle is around or higher than the $70 in the podcast. Dedicated peaker plants can be much more expensive depending on the design.

rstuart4133|7 months ago

> This is a lot of words to say “solar + battery lcoe is $70/MWH and gas is $40/MWH,

No, that isn't what the article says. I'll quote it for you:

    I think it was around $70 for new gas. It was a weighted US average — from memory, but I might be wrong on that.
I suspect your $40/MWH isn't LCOE, it's the marginal cost of producing an extra MWH from an existing plant. A second problem they don't mention for gas is the demand is so high, the wait time for a new turbine is around 4 years. Batteries on the other hand can be bought with very short lead times.