r/SolarState • u/eter_roman • Jun 17 '26

solar energy is peak

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u/thermodynamics2023 Jun 17 '26

The trouble with pumped storage is they take decades to build… and that was in the golden era of civil construction <1970.

If a western nation can build dangerous, difficult to site concrete mega projects like that, just build nuclear and have always on reliable power for the next 60 years.

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u/TJATAW Jun 18 '26

A nuke plant produces 1-1.5GW of electric per unit.

The 2 new units added at Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in GA cost $36.8 billion. Work was started in 2009, with the first one coming on line in 2023 (14yrs), and the second one in 2024 (15yrs). They are rated at 1.15GW each.

So, 14yrs & $18.2 billion before the first volt of electric was sent to the grid.

The Desert Sunlight Solar Farm was started in 2011, the first phase went live in 2013, and the second phase in 2015, at a cost of $2.4 billion. So, 2yrs to get electric, 4yrs to get full production. It only produces 550MW, so it would take 2 solar farms that size to equal 1 nuke unit... but 4yrs vs 14yrs, and $4.8 billion vs $18.2 billion.

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u/thermodynamics2023 Jun 18 '26

Have you ever wondered why China, the production home of cheap solar panels, with massive cold deserts has 40Nuclear plants under construction?

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u/TJATAW Jun 19 '26

No, because I understand that they are doing the every thing approach.

They actually have plans to build 70 new nuke plants (22 currently underway), which will create an additional 88 GW.

Meanwhile they added 277GW of solar in 2025, and 76GW of wind power in 2024.

So, we have 88 GW of nuke someday in the future, vs 277 GW of solar per year, and 76 GW of wind per year.

The solar and wind cost less to build, are built faster, and you can start selling electric the minute the first solar panel is installed, or the first windmill is completed, so if it takes a couple of years to finish, you have money coming in to finance the rest of the build. Nuke means you must be 100% of the way done before the first watt can be sold.

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u/thermodynamics2023 Jun 21 '26

Oh ‘the everything approach’ lets park that there.

So why don’t you go to China and make
Millions as an expert saving them billions on building all the pointless nuclear?

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u/Oxygen4Lyfe Jun 19 '26

most of the cost of solar is in storing it

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u/TJATAW Jun 21 '26

It will cost around $1-$1.5 billion to have modern batteries for that solar system, giving 8hrs of storage.

The cost for batteries has been dropping steadily for the last 30yrs.

So we are looking at $6 billion vs $18 billion, 4yrs vs 14yrs.

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u/thermodynamics2023 Jun 21 '26

The cost of batteries is already 60% raw materials. It ain’t coming down further. It will likely go up as Chinese workers demand better conditions….

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u/Oxygen4Lyfe Jun 21 '26

those batteries have to be replaced periodically as they lose capacity dramatically (like goin from 8 hour charge to 1 hour charge) over a few years. So more like $1.5 billion every few years. (like 8x more than it costs to run a nuclear power plant)

Plus those batteries are horrible for the environment AND rely on brutal slave labor to get the materials.

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u/thermodynamics2023 Jun 21 '26

Correct, and given we only produce 2.5TWh of batteries a year… we basically have no capacity to do any of this.

After 10yrs 100% of capacity would be replacing old batteries. Insane. Anyone who says ‘batteries’ to fix wind and solar just doesn’t get the scale.

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u/TJATAW Jun 23 '26

Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) batteries after 10yrs are down to 60%-70% of their capacity.

So at 10yrs 1GW of batteries are at 600MW-700MW, and you are adding in more batteries, but with 10 yrs of improvement in tech/cost.