$3.6 trillion is only a portion of just the materials cost. It's like the price of lumber, as compared to the total cost of building a house.
Elon chose that particular spot because the economic of solar is geography dependent. The infrastructure costs of distributing 100% solar will be astronomical.
I think you could pat yourself on the back if you figured out how to make it work for only 20x the cost of just the panels.
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> As I stated above, I have no idea how to estimate the cost of nuclear
There is extensive data about nuclear costs, both estimated and empirical.
In 2010, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimated total captial costs for nuclear power at $5.4k per kW. http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/beck_plantcosts/index.html (This is a rather safe estimate -- the EIA reported inflation-adjusted costs for actual, real-life plants build in the 1960s was $1.5k per kW. But I'll use the higher estimate.)
The U.S. used 3.9 trillion kWh last year, twenty percent of which is already nuclear. So that's $1.9 trillion of capital for 100% of U.S. electricity to come from nuclear.
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At this point, coal makes the most economic sense of course. And the U.S. has enough for the next couple centuries.
Thing is that it is literally more expensive than photovoltaic at around 4k$/kW (same source). Even the Operation and Maintenance is 5 times as expensive (~93$ vs ~26$).
I must say that I did not expect the evidence to be in my favour here (as evidenced by my initial comment).
> Elon chose that particular spot because the economic of solar is geography dependent.
> The infrastructure costs of distributing 100% solar will be astronomical.
> I think you could pat yourself on the back if you figured out how to make it work for only 20x the cost of just the panels.
What's nice about solar is that it can be very localized (with the efficiency loss described above).
I agree that the costs of distributing all the power required for the whole of the US from the Panhandle would require… interesting, distribution architecture.
Going by the solar potential map, I guesstimate the Panhandle average to be about 525 Wh/ft^2/day and the worst parts of Washington and Oregon to be at about 350 Wh/ft^2/day. So let's assume the national average to be 440 and so assume that we need about 120% the panels needed before. Actually, let's bump that up to 140% just because my number is rather rough and the population of the US is mostly on the coasts.
Now, what do you expect the other costs to be? Probably batteries. Going by somewhat sketchy graph on the Internet, I'll approximate the energy use as constant throughout the day, with a 2X peak offset just after the sun sets. So let's assume that one third of the energy needed through the day doesn't need to be stored at all, it's used as it's generated.
So 30E12 kWh * 2/3 * 1/365 = 53E9 kWh of storage needed
Now, Tesla sells the Powerpack for about 2.6 M$/4MWh. 53E9 kWh * 2.6 M$/4E3 kWh = 34.5E12 $ AKA 34 trillion $.
I don't know what the economies of scale would look like on producing 530 million powerpacks, but I'm pretty sure it would make the cost substantially lower (besides, those numbers are not for bulk orders).
As for panels, going by your numbers, I get 10$/ft^2 = 10$ * (3.3 ft/m)^2 = 109 $/m^2. Assuming 15% efficient panels and assuming 420 Wh/ft^2/day * 0.15 = 686 Wh/m^2/day. So 109 $/m^2 / .686 kWh/m^2 = 159 $/kWh
Now, I don't know what to think of the ~350-fold price reduction for really large installation, but it seems sensible going by electronics bulk pricing.
Assuming a more conservative 10-fold reduction for the price of batteries, we'd get 13+3.4 trillion $ = 16.4 trillion $.
Going by the EIA report, nuclear would be about 5/4 the cost/kW of solar (presumably without storage), which is about on par with the price of storage + solar: (13+3.4)/13 ≈ 5/4
> The U.S. used 3.9 trillion kWh last year, twenty percent of which is already nuclear. So that's $1.9 trillion of capital for 100% of U.S. electricity to come from nuclear.
At any rate, I don't have much of an issue with nuclear, at least the newer breeder designs since breeders produce very little waste and the new designs are presumably very safe. But obviously, all costs being equal (assuming no error in my calculations) I'm 100% in favour of renewables over nuclear. Renewables don't have the international concerns linked with exporting nuclear reactor technology for one and that's a serious drawback of nuclear honestly.
Elon chose that particular spot because the economic of solar is geography dependent. The infrastructure costs of distributing 100% solar will be astronomical.
I think you could pat yourself on the back if you figured out how to make it work for only 20x the cost of just the panels.
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> As I stated above, I have no idea how to estimate the cost of nuclear
There is extensive data about nuclear costs, both estimated and empirical.
In 2010, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimated total captial costs for nuclear power at $5.4k per kW. http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/beck_plantcosts/index.html (This is a rather safe estimate -- the EIA reported inflation-adjusted costs for actual, real-life plants build in the 1960s was $1.5k per kW. But I'll use the higher estimate.)
The U.S. used 3.9 trillion kWh last year, twenty percent of which is already nuclear. So that's $1.9 trillion of capital for 100% of U.S. electricity to come from nuclear.
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At this point, coal makes the most economic sense of course. And the U.S. has enough for the next couple centuries.