Ricky I love you are writing something positive about solar, but I hate to be saying you seem to have fallen into a classic murky green energy crack here, into the world of "Renewables" and "Carbon management" sales pitches.
Its deliberately ambiguous, unprovable language, that invites argument, most folk can poke holes in anyones analysis using these terms, because its impossible to trace the concepts to anything solid, just profit driven group-think (Sales pitch!)
Russell S points out a flaw from the point of view of someone with in depth knowledge of nuclear, and here is the flaw from the point of view of solar:
There is no LCOE for solar either, computation of a figure requires a statement of a lifetime, which implies the solar plant will have a known lifetime, which is normally set at the average lifetime of a single panel.
This is an artificial limit set on the plant, because it could be maintained indefinitely by just replacing panels one by one as they fail. Further, this replacement could be paid for by having hydrogen generation capability built into the installation, hydrogen can be sold to get revenue for replacing panels, and even scaling up the facility. Since we also know use of solar, only solar reduces entropy, the more solar we have the better for the planet, in fact if/when we get to all solar, we will be cooling the planet rather than heating it.
Folk try to discredit this information but its inarguable, backed by hard rules of physics, there is no debate after the proofs are presented. But its anti-profit information, it means the end of business for profit, hence why it is so heavily resisted, the profit monster is a beast to be reckoned with, another long story.
Wind does have a cost to the planet, since it is technically negative energy, which heats the planet to some extent, removing wind that might have been useful to nature. However, its the least of extracted energy evils, amongst the main offenders like fossil fuels, and there might be a place for wind, now its becoming clear that its impossible to sell energy at profit from solar without indirectly forcing more extraction, it might be that the forced extraction associated with selling solar at profit could be restricted to wind only. Maybe that would work for a while, but previously I've always assumed we would go completely to solar. Why use any wind if we can do it all by solar?
