Solar has one of the lowest capital costs [1] so the discounting works in it's favor. And then the non-discountable operating costs also works in its favor since the fuel supply (light) is free.
Yup. It's why even in fairly red states like my own (Idaho) solar, wind, and battery are going up everywhere. Even without significant subsidies the economics are really good for renewables.
They'd be even better if we didn't have extreme tariffs on China.
That's actually what's convinced me that renewables are a better choice than nuclear. I still like nuclear, but renewables are just so much easier and faster to deploy while being a lot cheaper. To make nuclear competitive requires regulatory changes along with a government that's simply willing to tell it's NIMBY citizens YIMBY.
Government literally has to get in the way of renewable deployments at this point to stop them.
Nuclear is low carbon, it’s fine we lose heat to extract that energy versus stationary and mobile combustion generation, as there is no other effective way to extract that energy at this time.
Pumped hydro energy storage relies on the cheapness of water and existing geology. If you have to build the chambers instead of damming a river it's too expensive. Most of the good spots to have a reservoir are already used. If you have to manufacture the bulk media instead of just using water it's too expensive.
There are exactly zero economically viable pumped water storage systems where water towers are involved. If you do the math for the amount of a mass of water, you'll see why! It's not feasible.
> Batteries are now cheap enough to unleash solar’s full potential, getting as close as 97% of the way to delivering constant electricity supply 24 hours across 365 days cost-effectively in the sunniest places.
What does this mean? It means we are most of the way there with solar and batteries alone, even if we need a bit of carbon based generation to bridge the gap while solar and battery deployments scale globally. Solar and batteries will only continue to get less expensive and better.
Cheap electricity means you can do things that made "no sense" with expensive electricity. (e.g. smelt aluminum)
Cheap electricity means you can underbid regions that have expensive electricity...
As Technology Connections said, "Panels that cover your electrical needs for the next 25+ years? In the Midwest, we call that a good deal!"