In the US, it's cheaper to build and operate wind farms than buy fossil fuels

Re:In the US, it's cheaper to build and operate wind farms t... by Retric on Sunday August 18, 2019 @12:12PM (#20731045)

Combined cycle thermal efficiency’s are breaking 60%. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_cycle_power_plant

But, for very long term storage efficiency is not that import. If you’re buying at an average of say 1c/kWh and selling at 20c/kWh in 6 months it’s mostly a question of what your storage costs per day as well as maximum output is.

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Re:In the US, it's cheaper to build and operate wind farms t... by Gibbon1 on Sunday August 18, 2019 @04:27PM (#20732596)

I first worked that out in response to a claim that solar thermal plants were better than PV because they can store energy as molten salt and produce power at night. What sinks that claim is solar is cheap enough that you could heat your salt with electricity from solar panels and be ahead.

At the point there is no need to use salt. You can use a referable electrically driven gas turbine and get about 70-80% round trip efficiency.

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