I’ve done the math multiple times. It makes no sense in my area. I would pay more for panels then I would save in electricity. Once the panels are paid off they need to be replaced. If you don’t buy a battery you have to rely on the good will of the power company to pay fair rates for 30 years. Those rates were cut in half last year. The battery only has a 10-year life expectancy so needs to be financed over that time period or less. You’ll have to pay for removal and re-installation when your 15-year roof needs replacing.
It also depends where you got your quotes and estimates. Retail sales reps are a complete disservice to the industry, often quoting double what an installation _should_ cost.
I highly recommend EnergySage for quotes. It's free and unbiased for sourcing local installers while skipping the sales reps.
And do keep in mind warranties cover 90% efficiency on panels and they'll continue working beyond warranty at reduced capacity.
Some don't have an ideal roof layout (which can easily double costs). Even more so, trees can sometimes be in the way, which can be even more inhibiting. 2-3x cost can still see an ROI, but when you get into 5-10x cost things tend to break down.
Panels are great for VERY SPECIFIC USE CASES. They do not fill the role of energy security.
You need reliable , clean nuclear plants. The ones from fifty years ago are great, imagine what we could do if the fucking NRC stopped adding such incredibly dumb and onerous requirements on any new permits for new tech.
I too am in favor of nuclear energy to supplement solar and other renewables because we can't afford to pick and choose favorites for net zero at this point, and indeed it will help to bridge windless cloudy days, but this is just off the mark. Solar panels are not so specific, especially not when it's the sun's heat that causes people to use more energy on cooling.
>The ones from fifty years ago are great, imagine what we could do if the fucking NRC stopped adding such incredibly dumb and onerous requirements on any new permits for new tech.
I'm in France, where we should get ~78% of our electricity from nuclear. But half the reactors are down partly due to issues with the old reactors and maintenance problem (planned or not). https://nuclear-monitor.fr/#/mix
So electricity is crazy expensive and the government just hold an emergency meetings (minutes ago) to try to find a solution before the winter. Some manufacturers (esp in the glass business) might go bankrupt as they cannot turn of their plants…
I wish I could install solar panel on my roof (but I'm in Paris and the building is shared among by many owners so it isn't easy to get them on board).
No plan for a backup, those aged reactors more than served their time.
The word you're looking for is "Incompetence". It is also poetic that the present fleet of French Nuclear plants was built to wean France off another energy crisis in the aftermath of the oil cartels moves. It seems history repeats itself for those who dont learn from it.
No. Only Fessenheim has been closed and it accounts for a very small % of the power that currently lacking (1.8 GW at best vs 37.8 GW of the whole fleet).
34 reactors are off now + 4 partially down. You can't blame this on a single plant and politicians, especially when we can't build a working EPR [0], and when the old ones have defects (corrosion) that require them to be turned off in the middle of an energy crisis [1]
1. Phase out all active reactors without a plan for extending their life
2. Reactors reach end of life gracefully. France decides to extend their life since they don’t have any backup energy sources.
3. Cry that 34 reactors with the same rough age and same design are down for preventive maintenance since they start showing signs of aging.
Are you insane, stupid, malicious or just ignorant?
The grid is failing on hot days because of the amount of thermal generation they still use. When it gets hot, thermal plants produce less power because their production capacity is related to the difference in temperature between their steam and the ambient air.
Nuclear plants are thermal plants. They are not magic. They have to abide by the laws of physics.
The VERY SPECIFIC case is adding power to the grid? How many other situations besides continuous power and intermittent power exist that makes it a "very specific" case?
I can add as much power to the grid as i want to, if there's no storage and demand is low, that makes zero difference to the grid.
Storage being what it is, we either accept the costs of routine (10 year cycle) swap outs or we dont. Simple. Oh, and please remember that present demand will be a fraction of future demand and hence any storage you build must grow in capacity over time.
Photovoltaics serve a very specific use case of aiding domestic energy production at times when conditions are right. They are great for a lot of reasons, but for cases where there is a high demand for reliable supply such as industries producing things, they are . . not the first choice.
Given the equivalent amount of dollars spent by an entity as large as the state of California, with the laws of physics as we know them today, there is only one logical solution in Nuclear energy. The energy density and scale just can not be beaten.
You paying?