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Re:University of Texas-led team solves a big problem for fus... by fakedang on Monday May 12, 2025 @12:06PM (#43964561)
> We're at a point where even "free hot water" is not competitive with solar for power generation.

You're making the obvious mistake here of equating 1 GW solar with 1 GW of any other source with a 95-99% baseload capacity. To achieve the equivalent result, you'll need to have at least >2 GW actual solar power to equally compare the two.

Granted, in most developed places, solar still beats coal, but this is why in many developing economies with ample coal resources, it makes more sense economically to go with the coal plants.

Take any other resource, say hydel or geothermal - solar and wind quickly go down in economic efficiency terms compared to these, in most cases almost doubling or tripling in costs.

Re:University of Texas-led team solves a big problem for fus... by bryanlarsen on Monday May 12, 2025 @12:36PM (#43964914)
> To achieve the equivalent result, you'll need to have at least >2 GW actual solar power to equally compare the two.

Which is why I compared 1GW of coal power to 3GW of solar power.

Re:University of Texas-led team solves a big problem for fus... by bee_rider on Monday May 12, 2025 @01:05PM (#43965205)
I can’t really imagine how the person who responded to you managed to miss that, it was like the middle 1/5’th of your post. Oh well, I guess it is impossible to write a post well enough that somebody won’t jump in with a correction… right or wrong!