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Comment by rmcginnis | Hacker News Reader

In order to make electrofuels cost competitive, you've got to use new utility scale solar, which is now less than $0.02/kWh : https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/04/08/saudi-arabias-second-...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2019/07/01/new-sola...

Assume an overall efficiency of approx. 40% to be conservative.

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Ok so the 40% efficiency and 2.5x reduction in electricity prices cancel each other out... we're still at electricity costs == energy in the jet fuel. No room for electrofuel plant capex or any other electrofuel plant opex. And to get those low electricity prices you have to only run your plant at 30% duty cycle when the sun is shining (3x capex).

How does capex and other opex fit in?

The second important thing is to make the CAPEX really cheap. That's been the core focus for us for the last 2.5 years since demo day and we're looking at really low costs for equipment now. Hope to announce some new info on this in the next few months.

Jet fuel energy content is approx. 37 kWh/gallon. At 40% efficiency that's 92.5 kWh. At $0.01/kWh, $92.5 cents per gallon for energy cost. Spot price for jet fuel is approx. $2.00 average over 2006-2021 https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=E... Add to this the LCFS credits which can be over $1.50 and there is a lot of room for Capex.

Not sure how we got to $0.01/kWh (half the cost of the lowest PPAs ever signed for solar in Saudi Arabia), but if the electricity cost is 10x lower than current California prices, I see how electrofuels could pencil.

By the time they get their technology ironed out & scaled up (5-10 years) we may see that, if historical decay rates of solar cell prices continue.

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