Long term coal price., page-129

Great. We could have got to this point much earlier if you hadn't run off topic.

Feel free to engage with me in other parts of the forum on such topics, unlike some of the other adults here, I don't mind helping to correct the poor scientific education which is given to high school students today.

Positive kudos for your reply
Negative kudos for taking the thread off topic.

In response to your positive reply:

Lets just use total cost and avoid those marginal costs and see what that brings.

Lazard cost of storage for a 4:1 system should really be a 12:1 system because there is a need for 12 hours of storage used at night when the wind isn't blowing. There is a need for 24/7 reliable power. This point should have been in the first post, it isn't, lets correct that now.

From the Lazard LCOS report we can again take the 4:1 system but just triple it to get an 12:3 system to create reliability. As you suggest, we should use the numbers as if they are total cost and not marginal cost, so again, the midpoint of the totals costs for a 12:3 system gives a number of US$365 per MWh for a reliable solar & battery system.

Going back to coal with the total cost of the system we'll again take the mid point of the total cost between 65 & 152 to give us US$108 per MWh.

The same logic flows from the first post in this thread to get US$168 per ton of coal as a floor price moving forward when using total cost for both renewables and coal.

I would argue using total cost for coal is incorrect because the industrial supply chains and production systems are very already well established and refined after several hundred years of manufacturing. Added to this point, efficiency of renewable systems is suffering from diminishing returns and they're not going to improve much further as technology approaches the limits of physics. There is also no consideration in this analysis for the extremely limited supply of battery minerals, especially cobalt. Whatever the case, it still appears that renewables are not as cost effective as coal and that the coal price is going to continue to rise. These unaccounted constraints/variables would all combine give a coal floor price of closer to the original first post number, especially considering the first post only used a four hour storage system. So now the final question remains: when are you going to buy?