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As usual, the older the person the more wrong they are.

Solar is the cheapest energy source man has never come up with the IEA has reams of data confirming this. The basic math is easy to see why. Even at the retail level you can get panels for 18 cents per watt of capacity. Those panels will make electrons for a 25 year lifespan to 80% capacity and longer to 50% but 80 is the industry nor for end of life or EOL.

Placed in a sunny place like say Texas you can expect 220 days of sun per year or more. The Sahara has 360+ days of sun and the Mexican deserts are in the 330s with AZ and NM not far behind them.

220+ days of sun over 25 years gives a EORI of under 8 months for energy used to mine,refine and create those panels. Google scholar and 15 seconds of AI efforts will confirm this.

So you have 24+ years of net energy at production at a initial capital outlay of 18 cents per watt of capacity for the panels themselves. Wholesale is cheap by up to half depending on the negotiated contract for the amount of panels. I have paid 10 cents per watt for a pallet of panels before.

Even at 18c per watt over a 25 year period you are talking fractions of a cent per kWh in energy costs. West Texas, NM and AZ have KWP values in the 5.6 per day or 2045 KW per year per installed KW of capacity these are 30 year solar insolation averages. This means over a 25 year lofepan a single KW of installed capacity would make over 50,000 kWh of energy and cost $180 at 18 cents per watt of capacity. That works out to $.0035 per kWh or three and one half tenths of a cent. No other power source anywhere can come close to that not even nukes. The IEA has the data for commercial level its lower than that since its so easy to get i leave it up to the class to read it but it’s there in multiple peer reviewed and approved journals, white papers and IEA reports.

Solar is intermittent this is and always will be the issue. The raw cost of the electrons it produces cannot be beat cost wise. This key fact is why LCOS (levelized cost of storage) is so important.

LCOS is exactly what it sounds like the cost for the round trip storage of a single kWh of electrons in cents per kWh or really dollars per megawatt hour. $10 per MWh is equal to 1 cent per kWh.

Solar electrons can be had for $3.5 per megawatt hour at the retail level and in the $2 to $1 wholesale. This is also easy to find. Look at wholesale ERCOT data available in Csv format weekly around noon time on a sunny and windy Texas day where solar has first right of refusal and the grid wholesale price is $1 or in the case of last week negative $8 because there was so much solar and wind ERCOT was paying people credits to take it.

Any battery tech that can hit a LCOS of $30 or under is going to be cheaper than any gas turbine plant even if the natural gas was $0 MMBTU it never will be zero so it is not a viable economic point. At $2.50 - 4.5 MMBTU gas turbines are in $33-105 for GTCC and peaker turbines are $105-209 per megawatt hour. Again ERCOT actual sale prices to the wholesale market.

Aqueous batteries cannot burn , neither can lithium ions, what does burn is the flammable electrolyte liquids in lithium ion cells. By default using water as the electrolyte solvent removes the ability to combust.

Seawater battery means it’s a polyvalent cell using all the ions in seawater as opposed to lithium. Seawater is sodium,magnesium,calcium,potassium in that order all of then replace lithium at the anode. magnesium and calcium are 2+ electron ions twice what lithium is. Sodium and K are 1+ like lithium.

Gridscale seawater ion battery if they can hit 300,000 cycles the LCOS is a factor of capital outlays over cycle and calender life the longer of each or both reduces the LCOS in a direct ratio. Sodium ion cells are already doing 50,000 cycles to 100% DOD so it’s little surprise a sodium plus ion cell could do more. Unlike lithium sodium doesn’t swell its anode causing wear on it.

The numbers that matter is how much per kWh of electrons and how much to store then round trip. Total efficiency doesn’t if you can get electrons for 2/10s of a cent per kWh and store them for $20 megawatt hour or 2 cents per kWh. Even throwing 50% away in storage losses is only 4/10s of a cent per kWh in electrons.
Then sell them at $35 per megawatt hour already beating gas turbines at the cheapest fuel cost to them, you laugh all the way to the bank with that $11 per megawatt hour profit.

Texas has 10,400 megawatts of energy storage in the grid right now this second those are all 4-8 hour megapacks. That’s TEN one gigawatt reactors worth today right now. As of 1025 CST this morning they took 3,999 megawatts from the grid that’s FOUR reactors worth of power put into the battery banks. What was happening at 1025 this morning...Solar ramped up to its daily plateau at 23,500 megawatts which was 47% of the total power grid at that point. Yeah almost 50% of 30 million Texans were getting solar power this morning AND 4 gigawatts were at the same time being pulled off the grid it would have been well over 50% if they were not charging huge power banks. Including wind at that time 62% of the grid was wind and solar.

Cost?? Wholesale was $5.09 that’s HALF a cent per kWh. No way no how will gas turbines ever be that cheap not even with zero MMBTU gas.

Flat out you are wrong , it is not cheaper the mine or drill it the numbers , data and real time real world published public power data confirms this is spades.