I’m a solar energy nerd myself and watching the prices of LiFePO4 batteries over the past 2 years has been astonishing, I wonder what will happen with sodium batteries in the upcoming years. I wasn’t aware of the overall economic maturity of solar+storage as of today, and it’s impressive.
My only argument is: the prices for nuclear in all sources you’ve sent, from what I’ve seen, are in the west. US, Sweden, Denmark… China is planning to build 150GW of nuclear over the next 5 years, and more afterwards. What would be the environmental impact and the cost of Chinese new-gen nuclear when compared with Chinese PV+wind+storage? The data for China is hard to find in English unfortunately.
Given that China is probably always 5+ years ahead of us both in nuclear and renewable generation tech, it’s hard to know…
China has a lot of different terrains, it may be more suitable locations that do make economic sense, it may be to just utilise existing industrial chains to maximise the speed with which they can ramp up energy production, maybe the new-gen nuclear is somehow that much magically better, or it may just be outdated decision making.
Without knowing highly technical chinese, who knows. But to be honest, there’s no reason to think the picture is that drastically different. Probably a complicated combination of all the factors and more.
I agree the onset of stuff like cheap cheap sodium batteries could be further game changers.
Thanks a lot for providing the sources.
I’m a solar energy nerd myself and watching the prices of LiFePO4 batteries over the past 2 years has been astonishing, I wonder what will happen with sodium batteries in the upcoming years. I wasn’t aware of the overall economic maturity of solar+storage as of today, and it’s impressive.
My only argument is: the prices for nuclear in all sources you’ve sent, from what I’ve seen, are in the west. US, Sweden, Denmark… China is planning to build 150GW of nuclear over the next 5 years, and more afterwards. What would be the environmental impact and the cost of Chinese new-gen nuclear when compared with Chinese PV+wind+storage? The data for China is hard to find in English unfortunately.
Given that China is probably always 5+ years ahead of us both in nuclear and renewable generation tech, it’s hard to know…
China has a lot of different terrains, it may be more suitable locations that do make economic sense, it may be to just utilise existing industrial chains to maximise the speed with which they can ramp up energy production, maybe the new-gen nuclear is somehow that much magically better, or it may just be outdated decision making.
Without knowing highly technical chinese, who knows. But to be honest, there’s no reason to think the picture is that drastically different. Probably a complicated combination of all the factors and more.
I agree the onset of stuff like cheap cheap sodium batteries could be further game changers.