I was half joking, although cost escalation would actually account for a major portion of the cost increase.
We did a new building project. Started during 2021, and by the time we received the final bids costs had increased 50%. All within 6 months. We’re at 10% cost escalation this year alone.
Imagine 6 years of that.
However, it also sounded like these companies had no clue what they were doing. Similar to California High Speed Rail.
Of course. That happens. Luckily, we have countries like China with less red tape to use to measure. They’ve been building a lot of nuclear and solar. Their end-to-end solar looks like around $750M per GW (possibly including storage? Not sure. About $2.2B for a 3.3GW plant). Looks like they’re spending about $5B per GW of nuclear.
Sorry I don’t have the solar reference anymore. I was building a math equation for another comment and realized they weren’t talking price, so scrapped it without thinking.
Since those numbers seem to match US figures, I think people in the Western World forget that a lot of bid cost increases or “escalations” are due to the fact that companies try to low-bid to win the contract, knowing every little inconvenience will require a cost increase. It evens out more than people want to admit.
Yeah I hate dealing with that. Then they send back every design decision to be reopened, resulting in literally years the meetings to decide which source for which equipment, all the while the Costco up to the point where if we just built a damn thing 5 years ago then it would have been cheaper than trying to go with a low bid now. Not to mention years of delays.
Care to substantiate that the red tape amounts to more than 100 years worth of the same MWH of solar? Or is that just your gut feeling?
Also note, even if the construction cost were 30% inflated, nuclear is still losing handily to solar by the figures I cited.
I was half joking, although cost escalation would actually account for a major portion of the cost increase.
We did a new building project. Started during 2021, and by the time we received the final bids costs had increased 50%. All within 6 months. We’re at 10% cost escalation this year alone.
Imagine 6 years of that.
However, it also sounded like these companies had no clue what they were doing. Similar to California High Speed Rail.
Of course. That happens. Luckily, we have countries like China with less red tape to use to measure. They’ve been building a lot of nuclear and solar. Their end-to-end solar looks like around $750M per GW (possibly including storage? Not sure. About $2.2B for a 3.3GW plant). Looks like they’re spending about $5B per GW of nuclear.
Sorry I don’t have the solar reference anymore. I was building a math equation for another comment and realized they weren’t talking price, so scrapped it without thinking.
Since those numbers seem to match US figures, I think people in the Western World forget that a lot of bid cost increases or “escalations” are due to the fact that companies try to low-bid to win the contract, knowing every little inconvenience will require a cost increase. It evens out more than people want to admit.
Yeah I hate dealing with that. Then they send back every design decision to be reopened, resulting in literally years the meetings to decide which source for which equipment, all the while the Costco up to the point where if we just built a damn thing 5 years ago then it would have been cheaper than trying to go with a low bid now. Not to mention years of delays.
Agreed. It doesn’t end up saving a penny, but it definitely leads to greased wheels along the way and richer politicians.