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Wind-feed-in and solar-feed-in are diffrent in kind due to a diffrence in degree.
Each KHW of wind is warranted a minimum price of some 8 cents, and because it gets dispatched first, it mostly displaces (very expensive) gas, which means that the real subsidy is fairly theoretical. Solar is guaranteed a minimum price vastly higher than any other energy source, including all other green energies. Merit order or no, that means the extra costs are in no way theoretical, and let us, just for a second turn the merit order logic on its head. Nuclear inherently comes at the top of any rationally managed capacity dispatch order, so an investment of this size in additional capacity would crash electricity prices far and hard, no?

3 billion/epr is fairly reasonable for an average cost of a 20 reactor buildout in Germany. Germany has historically had lower nuclear construction costs than the rest of the western world, and 20 is enough to get major savings from series build

by Thomas on Wed Apr 28th, 2010 at 04:33:39 AM EST
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I agree that today, feed-in tariffs for wind and solar are different in nature.

The trick is to give support to the early projects and make it possible for costs to tumble down before the absolute cost of the support mechanism becomes too heavy a burden on the system. For wind, this happened rather successfully; for solar, it seems to be more difficult.

It can still be argued that it can be good long term industrial policy, but we are at the most difficult junction right now - already some scale, and still high costs.

Wind power

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Wed Apr 28th, 2010 at 01:05:18 PM EST
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