“does not account for intermittency”
Wow! The chart shows that the lifetime kwh cost from natural gas is a almost 3 times cheaper than coal or nuclear, which are about tied. Nuclear is creeping up. I’d think it would be coming down with more standardized designs being offered.
Natural gas was the big driver for retirement of coal plants before the greenie insanity arrived. Actually, the big increase in gas is what ignited and drove a lot of the greenie insanity.
The big advantage of gas is you can have combined cycle plants that combine the gas turbine making power (the Brayton Cycle) and a waste heat boiler running a steam turbine (the Rankine Cycle). You get a high peak cycle temperature in the gas turbine and a low exit temperature because of the heat recovery steam generator. Combined, they give you an overall efficiency of 60% to 65% which is way higher than the best coal plant (35%). The utility gas turbines were all derived from aircraft jet engines (”aeroderivative”), so they capitalized on that extensive R&D. The high efficiency keeps the fuel component of the total cost low. Plus, gas turbines can ramp up and down very quickly (more so for “simple cycle” gas turbines without a boiler at the back end). Also, the capital requirement for a a gas turbine is far below the capital required for a coal plant.
The industry has talked about a “gas bubble” for 35 to 40 years, but the supply just keeps growing — at least the supply that various states have not put off-limits with bans on fracking.