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2019 numbers: https://www.nrel.gov/news/video/lcoss-text.html

California has contracts with 8 Minute Energy to buy energy from their solar+storage plants for 4 cents per kWh.

That system has 4 hours of storage. It is extremely disingenuous to compare that to fossil fuels.

4 hours is all that's necessary in a large grid that's well distributed and diversified.

Agreed, it's amazing what you can do with an idealized grid. But that grid does not exist, and is still quite far away from ever existing. Meanwhile, the costs they present are for today.

When the public (and even policy makers who know should know better) see these numbers, they fairly assume that the sources are being measured by the same criteria.

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