Solar prices have dropped significantly. In the last 3 years, solar panels and batteries have dropped over 3 fold in cost. Utility solar is being installed at $2 per watt at the most recent data we have - prices are *lower* now.
Unsubsidized solar+batteries beats subsidized nuclear handily in most energy markets. Palo Verde is on 4000 acres (1,600ha) and produces 3.72GW. This is very typical of US nuclear plants. 16 million square meters at 50% coverage and 15% efficiency is about 1.2GW. So 3x the land usage for solar over nuclear, assuming you don't use strip mall parking lots or rooftops.
"Useless" (not useful for mining/farming etc) land in the USA only costs $60 per acre per year to lease. A pittance. Even $50,000 an acre land cost only increases the cost of a utility solar installation like 8%.
Colorado, a state that has *no* feed in tariff, no carbon dioxide tax, and renewable mandates already more than met - solar and wind are beating out anything else. All this project gets is the 10% federal rebate.
Run the numbers on that capcost list at 4% interest along with O&M etc. with PV at $2/watt. You install the solar at 2.5x (which gives you a coverage of about 0.5) and then back with about 2.5 kilowatt-hours of LiFePO4 batteries per (less than $200 per kilowatt-hour in volume, 20,000 cycles at 1C leave it with 65% capacity). Extra nighttime demand shortfall is already covered by existing non-fossil fuel baseload wind power (existing nuclear, hydro, and pumped storage, and also wind). About 45 days a year you buy power to cover solar shortfall or use fossil-fuels (fossil fuel plants already bought and paid for). So I gigawatt of "other" power can be replaced by 2.5 gigawatts of solar and 6.25 gigawatt-hours of batteries.
Nuclear has maybe 15 more years, and only in countries like Russia and China, before it must dramatically reduce its capital and operating costs. Otherwise its R.I.P. nuclear. You won't hear any announcements about new nuclear plants.
P.S. Solar and battery prices continue to drop rapidly. P.P.S. Source for $2/watt installed (IKEA announced $2.60 *installed* per watt in England on people's roofs too coming soon). http://www.seia.org/sites/default/files/Figure2.8_0.jpg
Disclaimer: I'm neither a solar or nuclear religious nut. I like solutions that don't waste money. Right now solar+batteries beat nuclear handily.
You can calm down. They're studying cheap ways to extract oil from the tar sands reserves in Alberta. It's going to happen. And there's more salvagable oil there than there is in all liquid oil in the entire planet. So it isn't going to be a problem for a long time, definitely not in the next decade.
Actually, the companies making oil from the Canadian tar sands make a decent profit at $25 per barrel already. Their big problem/concern is price stability; because of the huge capital investment required to get production going in the tar sands they would have to pack up and shut down (and lose their whole investment) if the long term price of oil dropped below $25/barrel. However, due to increased demand from the developing world it looks like the long term price of oil will stay at least $40/barrel. You can read about it here:
In short, there is no worry about running out of oil anytime soon - there is something like 70 years of reserves if you count Canada, and that is including projected increases in demand. In addition, as the years go on new supplies of oil WILL be discovered, they will just be more expensive to get at (things like deep sea oil rigs like in the sci-fi movie Abyss etc.) which will mean the days of cheap oil are over, but there will be a ready supply if you're willing to pay.
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You missed the entire point of the article.
Solar prices have dropped significantly. In the last 3 years, solar panels and batteries have dropped over 3 fold in cost. Utility solar is being installed at $2 per watt at the most recent data we have - prices are *lower* now.
Unsubsidized solar+batteries beats subsidized nuclear handily in most energy markets.
Palo Verde is on 4000 acres (1,600ha) and produces 3.72GW. This is very typical of US nuclear plants. 16 million square meters at 50% coverage and 15% efficiency is about 1.2GW.
So 3x the land usage for solar over nuclear, assuming you don't use strip mall parking lots or rooftops.
"Useless" (not useful for mining/farming etc) land in the USA only costs $60 per acre per year to lease. A pittance. Even $50,000 an acre land cost only increases the cost of a utility solar installation like 8%.
Colorado, a state that has *no* feed in tariff, no carbon dioxide tax, and renewable mandates already more than met - solar and wind are beating out anything else. All this project gets is the 10% federal rebate.
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/xcel-energy-buys-utility-scale-solar-for-less-than-natural-gas
Look at this capital cost comparison (pg 6)
http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/capitalcost/pdf/updated_capcost.pdf
Run the numbers on that capcost list at 4% interest along with O&M etc. with PV at $2/watt. You install the solar at 2.5x (which gives you a coverage of about 0.5) and then back with about 2.5 kilowatt-hours of LiFePO4 batteries per (less than $200 per kilowatt-hour in volume, 20,000 cycles at 1C leave it with 65% capacity). Extra nighttime demand shortfall is already covered by existing non-fossil fuel baseload wind power (existing nuclear, hydro, and pumped storage, and also wind). About 45 days a year you buy power to cover solar shortfall or use fossil-fuels (fossil fuel plants already bought and paid for). So I gigawatt of "other" power can be replaced by 2.5 gigawatts of solar and 6.25 gigawatt-hours of batteries.
Nuclear has maybe 15 more years, and only in countries like Russia and China, before it must dramatically reduce its capital and operating costs. Otherwise its R.I.P. nuclear. You won't hear any announcements about new nuclear plants.
P.S. Solar and battery prices continue to drop rapidly.
P.P.S. Source for $2/watt installed (IKEA announced $2.60 *installed* per watt in England on people's roofs too coming soon).
http://www.seia.org/sites/default/files/Figure2.8_0.jpg
Disclaimer: I'm neither a solar or nuclear religious nut. I like solutions that don't waste money. Right now solar+batteries beat nuclear handily.
You can calm down. They're studying cheap ways to extract oil from the tar sands reserves in Alberta. It's going to happen. And there's more salvagable oil there than there is in all liquid oil in the entire planet. So it isn't going to be a problem for a long time, definitely not in the next decade.
Actually, the companies making oil from the Canadian tar sands make a decent profit at $25 per barrel already. Their big problem/concern is price stability; because of the huge capital investment required to get production going in the tar sands they would have to pack up and shut down (and lose their whole investment) if the long term price of oil dropped below $25/barrel. However, due to increased demand from the developing world it looks like the long term price of oil will stay at least $40/barrel. You can read about it here:
http://www.investorplace.com/free/navl73.htm
In short, there is no worry about running out of oil anytime soon - there is something like 70 years of reserves if you count Canada, and that is including projected increases in demand. In addition, as the years go on new supplies of oil WILL be discovered, they will just be more expensive to get at (things like deep sea oil rigs like in the sci-fi movie Abyss etc.) which will mean the days of cheap oil are over, but there will be a ready supply if you're willing to pay.