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The Olkiluoto 3 plant in Finland, was planned to be finished 2010, now it is delayed till 2019.
https://www.reuters.com/articl...
and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Capacity: It will have a nameplate capacity of 1600 MW.
Costs: The cost of Olkiluoto 3 was initially put at 3.2 billion euros but Areva in 2012 estimated the overall cost at closer to 8.5 billion euros. Since then, it has not updated its cost projection.

EDF on Monday confirmed a 10.5 billion euro cost estimate for a similar European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) it is building in Flamanville, France, which has also suffered delays and cost overruns.

Lets check what a ~10MW windmill costs?
The costs for a utility scale wind turbine range from about $1.3 million to $2.2 million per MW of nameplate capacity installed. Most of the commercial-scale turbines installed today are 2 MW in size and cost roughly $3-$4 million installed. Source: http://www.windustry.org/how_m...
and https://www.wind-energy-the-fa...

With "installed" in this case is meant: already operational ... so lets find a 10MW one ...
Siemens said it has committed to reducing offshore wind costs to â80/MWh including connection costs by 2025. Hannibal said the target of â100/MWh will be met by 2020. This are production costs of power, not the cost of the turbine, from: https://www.windpowermonthly.c...

This is a 9.5MW turbine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Hm, still not finding anything concrete regarding the price of a turbine, lets go with this corner numbers: https://about.bnef.com/blog/2h... The price of wind turbines set for delivery in 2H 2017 averaged $990,000 per MW according to Bloomberg New Energy Financeâ(TM)s Wind Turbine Price Index.

So, the nuclear power plant above costs close to 10billion for 1600MW. That is 6.2million per MW.
So with the cost of the nuclear plant I could build offshore wind parks 6 times as big. Considering CFs, that still two to three times more power for the same price.

Of course you can blame me for cherry picking a new power plant famous for cost overruns. But it is the most soon finished on in the west. Costs for nukes will increase, cost for wind is constantly decreasing.

P.S. this is an interesting read, too: https://www.irena.org/Document...

It's not impossible but it would be damn hard then. If you could manage a build out of all 600 GW of wind power, that would be a cost of $600 billion minimum, based on halving the cost figure I found here - http://www.windustry.org/how_m...

Japan has 27GW of hydro currently so that will cover the short fall of the 25%. So I guess it is technically possible. But it leaves almost no room for growth in power demand in the future. It would also require every possible location to be approved and to find money that Japan doesn't have.

A payback analysis can be done very easily: how much does it cost to buy and install a 2MW turbine, how much does it cost to maintain a 2MW turbine each year, and what is the value of the resulting generated electricity?

One source has the cost at around $3 to $4 million to install a 2MW turbine. source

In one year, assuming 20% capacity--which is not atypical in the real world--such a turbine would generate 3,504 mWh. (2mW * 365 * 24 * .2)

Using $50/mWh for the wholesale price of electricity (which I got from scanning the current wholesale prices listed here, with $50/mWh eyeballed from column 'G'), I get a gross profit of $175,200/year for the generated power.

So just with my back-of-the-envelop calculations based on about 5 minutes with Google, the report seems to be bullshit.

Even if the numbers were off by a factor of two--remember, I only spent 5 minutes with Google--I don't see how you can make $116,800 (8 months of generated power) into $3 million (the installation cost quoted above), for large values of $116,800 and for small values of $3 million.

And notice what is missing from my admittedly stupid and simplistic analysis: the cost to run a standby generator, the cost of power storage, or the maintenance cost of the turbine, which I assume like any complex machine requires periodic maintenance.

The problem with research reports like this is that they do their hardest to not talk about the actual costs involved, and instead focus on a very small subset of the costs of construction. In this case it looks like we focused strictly on the power used to construct the turbine, and not the overall material costs, or labor costs. It's the only way I can explain a greater than one order of magnitude gap.

According to the wiki on Pumped-storage hydroelectricity (PSH), 'PSH accounts for more than 99% of bulk storage capacity worldwide: around 127,000MW, according to the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), the research arm of America's power utilities.' Since in pumping the size of the reservoir is not the limiting factor, but rather the throughput of the pumps, this means that PSH can be used to store the daily output of 127GW worth of power plants. Britain's consumption is 35.8GW on average, and 57.490GW at peak (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_Kingdom), so the global installed PSH's could easily absorb the UK's production.

In the UK, however, there seems to be only one plant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station), costing 425M GBP in 1974 capable of absorbing around 1GW worth of power, so nowhere near 50% of base load, so it seems that PSH costs around 425M/1G = 0.5 pounds per watt capacity. Apparently, a new nuclear plant costs about US$ 5,339/kW., or 4 pounds per watt capacity, while windmills cost around 1-2 pounds per watt. So, assuming enough sites for PSH can be found, the costs for power storage capacity seems to be 5-25% of the cost for generation capacity.

According to the wiki, "The stalling of the UK nuclear power programme in the late 1980s and the coincident "dash for gas" increased the network's ability to respond to changes in demand, making the use of pumped storage for day/night load balancing less attractive. As a result, a similar facility planned for Exmoor was never built.[2]"; so it seems that at the time the demand is what limited PSH construction, not cost or environmental factors.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/i...
http://www.windustry.org/resou...

http://www.windustry.org/resources/how-much-do-wind-turbines-cost
Most of the commercial-scale turbines installed today are 2 MW in size and cost roughly $3-$4 million installed.

so 9-12 million per 2MW (when you figure out a 33% usage) or 4.5 million - 6 million per MW

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http://www.powerengineeringint.com/articles/2012/07/chile-suspends-endesas-planned-14-bn-thermal-power-project.html
1.8 million per MW

http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2006/LunChen.shtml
Each ton of coal consumed at an electric power plant produces about 2000 kilowatt hours of electricity (or 2 megawatt hours)

10*24*365/2=43800tons of coal in 10 years

http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=coal-australian&months=60
Seems to be $100 per ton of coal

43800*$100 = 4.38 million

Cost for a new coal power station(including the coal over 10 years) = 6.18 million per MW
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For solar

http://www.lowenergydevelopments.com.au/index.php?route=product/product&path=69_75&product_id=138
$10,000 for a 5KW system (assuming $1,000 to install)

http://aussiervproducts.com.au/webcontent4.htm
Using 4.5 hours

5kw,10years,4.5 average,365 days
5*10*4.5*365=82,125KWh generated
12.17c/kwh($122/MWh)

Yes it is more then the $50/MWh the generators are getting here but a lot less then >$250/MWh we pay retail.

Using just 2KW locally with no money for the excess would cost you $307/MWh for the system.
The other 3KW that you export (at the $50/MWh) would get you to $229/MWh which is less then the price we pay for grid power.

The costs for a utility scale wind turbine in 2012 range from about $1.3 million to $2.2 million per MW of nameplate capacity installed.
http://www.windustry.org/resources/how-much-do-wind-turbines-cost

Say, a dollar per watt (nameplate).

An installed nameplate terawatt would cost about $1,000,000,000,000. That's a pretty expensive experiment. And wind turbines' real world average output is a fraction of their nameplate rating.

The total levelized cost of an advanced combined cycle natural gas fired plant is about one third less than onshore wind and 80% less than offshore wind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source

Just for the record: According to this source, wind turbines cost around 1.2-2.6 million USD per MW. Assuming a (I think conservative?) capacity factor of 25%, that's 4.8-10.4 million USD per produced MW, so for 1 billion USD you should be able to buy 96-208 MW.

You are aware that Apple didn't pay their $1 billion to generate energy, but for a data center?

Just for the record: According to this source, wind turbines cost around 1.2-2.6 million USD per MW. Assuming a (I think conservative?) capacity factor of 25%, that's 4.8-10.4 million USD per produced MW, so for 1 billion USD you should be able to buy 96-208 MW.

Of course, wind power is not exactly environmentally neutral if you consider constructional, maintenance, and impact on bats, birds and weather patterns.

In terms of maintenance, wind is already more dangerous than nuclear per TWh generated. Maintenance deaths from wind just aren't on the radar yet because wind generates so little electricity. But if you normalize for the amount of electricity generated (scale up wind's output numbers to match that of nuclear, or scale down nuclear's to match that of wind), you find it kills about 3 to 4 times as many people as nuclear.

As for construction costs, a 2 MW turbine costs about $3.5 million. Multiply it by a 20% capacity factor, and you end up at a cost of $7.9 billion for enough turbines to yield an average 900 MW generating capacity throughout the year. An AP1000 reactor at 90% capacity factor generates 900 MW, and costs about $3.5 billion. So wind is about 2x as expensive to construct as nuclear, kWh for kWh. (I should note however that offshore wind frequently has capacity factors exceeding 30%, which is beginning to become competitive with the more expensive tail of nuclear and fossil fuels. Despite being pro-nuclear, I am not anti-wind. I just come across that way because so many wind proponents seem to have little grasp of the numbers.)

I also calculated the waste produced by each technology. Lemme dig it up...

Any definition of "cleaner" must be normalized to the same amount of energy generated. Since most people have little concept of what a MW or kWh is, let's put it in terms they can relate to. How much electricity does a typical U.S. home use in 30 years? The average U.S. home in 2009 consumed about 11,040 kWh/yr. So in 30 years it would use 330 MWh.

According to the EIA, a ton of coal yields about 2000 kWh of electricity. To power a typical U.S. home for 30 years with coal will take about 165 tons of coal. You'll see this is so high I'm not even gonna bother calculating the steel and concrete needed for the coal plant itself.

Commercial solar panels generate about 125 W/m^2 peak. Factor in night, weather, angle to the sun, and they have a capacity factor of about 15% (ranging from about 12% at northern latitudes, to about 19% in the desert Southwest). So on average you're getting about 20 W/m^2 throughout the year. I'm feeling generous so let's say this house is in the Southwest and you're getting a 20% capacity factor. 25 W/m^2. One year is 8766 hours, so to generate 11,040 kWh in the year would require 50 m^2 of solar panels. They typically have a 20-25 year rated life, but let's give them 30. And ignore any battery requirements - pretend there's another power source (like nuclear) providing base load. The stats I'm finding online say with support structure, solar panels are about 16 kg/m^2, so 50 m^2 would 800 kg of trash after 30 years.

How about wind? A 1 MW wind turbine needs about 150 tons of steel and concrete. It operates at a 20%-25% capacity factor, but let's go with the higher 25%. So the average generation from the turbine will be 250 kW. Over a year, that's 2192 MWh/yr. A typical home uses 11 MWh/yr, so the single turbine will provide for about 200 homes. They have a rated life of 30 years (U.S. accounting uses 40 years, but the rest of the world uses 30 years before they're expected to need to be replaced). So after 30 years of wind electricity generation for your home, you're talking about 150/200 = 3/4 ton of trash = 750 kg. I'll make the same assumption about batteries as with solar.

How about nuclear? The U.S. generated about 800 TWh of electricity using nuclear in 2008, producing about 2000 tons of nuclear waste in the process. That's about 2.5 tons per TWh. So the 11 MWh of our typical home in 30 years results in the production of 0.0000275 tons, or 27.5 grams of nuclear waste.

That's pretty much the conclusion I've reached. By cost, solar (20-45 cents per kWh) is currently nonviable except for places with extraordinarily high electricity costs (e.g. the more remote islands of Hawaii) or extraordinarily strong and consistent sunshine (e.g. the desert Southwest U.S.). Wind is getting there, down to about 7-12 cents per kWh wholesale, compared to 3-5 cents for coal.

But the biggest problem I think people are overlooking for wind is the sheer scale of the wind farm you need to replace a decent-sized power plant. Roscoe Wind Farm is the largest wind farm in the U.S., with 781.5 MW peak capacity, 627 turbines, covering 400 km^2. Note however that that's peak capacity - how much electricity the farm generates under ideal conditions if each turbine is running at maximum power and efficiency. In practice, the average power generation from land-based wind farms has been about 20%-25% of peak. Be generous and go with the high 25% capacity factor. So 627 turbines and 400 km^2 gives you 195.4 MW of power on average.

A single AP1000 nuclear reactor generates 1154 MW. Figure maintenance and other reasons will drop that to about 90% capacity factor, or about 1000 MW. A plant will typically have at least two so one can remain operational while the other is shut down, so 2000 MW for the plant. How big would the wind farm need to be to replace that?

2000 / 195.4 = 10.3x bigger. To replace two AP1000 reactors will require nearly 6500 turbines covering over 4000 km^2. Each turbine requires 100-200 tons of steel, so that's around a million tons of steel. I don't even want to think about the transmission lines needed to string them all together. And wind turbines cost about $1.2 - $2.6 million per MW of peak capacity. Since this hypothetical wind farm has ~8000 MW of peak capacity, that's $9.6 - $20.8 billion in construction costs. The AP1000 reactors are estimated to have a total construction cost of about $4-$5 billion each. So $10 billion for two of them would actually line up with the low end of an equivalent wind farm's construction costs.

4000 km^2 is about 1% the land area of California. In 2010 California generated about 200 TWh of electricity, or an average of 22 GW. So even if you assumed lots of areas are as wind-productive as Roscoe Wind Farm, and that we developed some technology which could store 100% of generated electricity for later use, California would need to cover 11% of its land area with wind turbines to replace its current electricity generation with wind. That's a bit far-fetched to say the least.

Wind and to a lesser extent solar are not the panacea a lot of people seem to think they are. They're going to primarily be supplemental power generation technologies for a long, long time. My hopes had been on deep well geothermal, but that's run into significant problems of its own.

in Ohio at all.
80% of our electricity is coal generated.

Apparently Ohio's potential wind power is pretty good, onshore as well as offshore. According to one person mentioned in the second link above Lake Erie along the Ohio shore can provide more than 100% of the states electrical needs. It may not be enough with a lot of EVs on the road but to discount EVs in Ohio just because most of the state gets it's electricity from coal doesn't work.

Falcon