The Cost of the First Plant
What would the first grid-scale space solar plant cost, as opposed to the tenth?
Chapter summary
several times the mature cost.
Key takeaways
- 1
First-of-a-kind plants bear design costs, low-volume hardware, conservative margins, slow assembly and expensive finance.
- 2
If a first 2 GW plant used hardware at $20 per watt rather than $2, launch at $1,000 per kilogram and a 12-year build at 10% cost of capital, the cost of electricity would be well above $500 per MWh.
- 3
That is why the first plant would almost certainly be a government programme or a very large buyer's strategic investment, and why a stepwise path, demonstrators, niche plants, a subscale grid plant, is more realistic than a leap to gigawatts.
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