Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "The SunZia Wind Farm: How To Do Greentech Well || Peter Zeihan" video.

SORRY PETER BUT YOU DESERVE SOME OF THE CRAP YOU GET WHEN IT COMES TO SUBJECTS LIKE THIS I have pointed out some of your faults on engineering previously but you keep repeating the similar mistakes. First - as an engineer who does projects I can tell you that you can't talk about percentage of life time costs when the technologies are so different and the construction costs are so radically different. You DO NOT NEED 100% up front capital for a Wind Farm or Solar Farm. This is because they are fundamentally different to something like a Coal or Gas fired plant and especially a nuclear plant. You have to build 100% of a nuclear, coal or hydro plant. You can't build part of one of those plants BUT YOU CAN build a fraction of a wind farm and get it making money before being 100% finished. Yes you need a higher percentage of the life time costs up front but its a much smaller number. Its like 99% of 10 (as in 9.9) is a smaller number than 50% of 50 (as in 25). 99% of 10 is even smaller than 10% of 100 because 9.9 is less than 10. You might be right that the percentage is higher but the actual capital cost is much lower. In terms of a real world comparison for plants under or near construction RIGHT NOW. Vogtle in Georgia and Hinckley Point C in Britain are 2 nuclear plants for which data is readily available (see Wikipedia). Vogtle has 2 x Westinghouse AP1000 reactors with a CONSTRUCTION cost of of US$34 Billion for 2.2 GW (Gigawatts). Hinckley Point C in Britain with 2 x EPR 2s has a CONSTRUCTION cost of £32.7 Billion (US$ 41.5B) for 3.2 GW. THESE ARE UP FRONT COSTS Vogtle has up front costs of US$15.46B per GW and Hinkley has US$12.97B per GW. SunZia at US$11B for 3.5GW is US$3.14B per GW. For comparison Snowy 2.0 In Australia which is a massive pumped hydro plant with estimated costs (so far) of AU$15B for 2.0GW. That's about US$5B per GW but I'd also warn that those costs might blow out. I am Australian and despite that I think it will eventually prove worthwhile that project is a dumpster fire in terms of project mismanagement. NOW BEFORE ANYONE SCREAMS - Yes I know 3.5GW of wind is NOT the same as 3.5GW of nuclear, gas, coal or hydro. The general rule is that it takes 2.2 times as much capacity to produce the same effect as coal, nuclear, hydro,..... The Germans proved that with a better mix of wind & solar that number can come down to as low as 1.7. It might come lower with bulk storage and by bulk storage I don't mean batteries even mega batteries. Bulk storage is when you can supply from storage at least 1 day if not 2 of reliable. Australia has a planned Mega battery on the site of a recently decommissioned coal fired plant. At 750MWH it sound impressive but the power station was 2,000MW and that 750MWH is about 22.5 minutes worth of power. So by current general practice SunZia has costs more like $6.9B per GW, but that might be lower with the right balance of wind & solar coupled with a bulk storage system. Irrespective US$11B its a lot less money than the US$34B that's been paid for Vogtle for a similar amount of power.
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