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chris222
Renewable wind power comes in at a fraction of the cost.
RobinL
To put it in context, the current price of electricity from Octopus on a new contract is about 30p/kWh. These high prices are a historical anomaly due to the high price of gas in Europe, but still, I think it's relevant context.

I imagine this price is not strictly comparable to the one quoted in the article since it includes various additional factors such as tax, network costs etc

chris222
Not comparable. Wholesale market vs residential price is not the same.
mytailorisrich
It is always overlooked, though, that a nuclear plant can deliver its rated output whenever needed, day in, day out.
chris222
Thats good for steady baseload but actually a problem since our demand is quite variable and spinning up and down Nuclear is hard.
mytailorisrich
It's less of a problem than not having electricity because there's no wind or it's night.

And with EVs the demand is going to massively increase.

It's good to have as much renewables as possible but it's also very needed and useful to have Hinkley C.

chris222
Utility scale battery storage is already here which solves that issue. The price of renewables + storage is cheaper (there have been PPAs in the 8-12 cent range).

Also electric cars are not the demand generators that people think. I live in the New England region and our NE ISO has studied this and put out their forecast for the region already. Heat pumps are a much bigger issue.

https://www.iso-ne.com/static-assets/documents/2023/04/trans...