So, a solar power plant equipped with a QBotix robot will generate power at a levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) that is 8 to 15 percent lower than a power plant with single-axis tracker and 15 to 20 percent lower than a power plan with panels in fixed positions.
Down 40% in the past year, PV modules now account for only about a third of the cost of a power plant.
First, economic planners and bankers have to start accounting for the hidden cost of carbon in power plant feasibility studies on their own volition.
For one thing, there's disagreement over how much it should cost for the Capitol Power Plant--which provides heating and cooling power to Congress--to use cleaner-burning natural gas instead of coal power.
Opponents point to the enormous cost of building a nuclear power plant and question whether the industry is economically viable without taxpayers footing much of the bill.
As a result of current low natural gas prices, natural gas-fired power plant operating costs have fallen so much that they are now displacing previously lower cost coal-fired power in the dispatch order of many electricity supply regions.
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Solar panels typically account for only about the third of the cost of a single-axis power plant, thanks to a plunge in photovoltaic module prices in recent years.
Britain, Australia and others have also vowed to help fund demonstration plants partly because they reckon the private sector is put off by the huge price-tag on a single CCS power plant, and also in the belief that the cost of CCS will fall with experience.
Small enough to fit on a large kitchen table, the new reactors can be manufactured at very low cost and shipped by truck to power-plant sites.
They frequently depend on venture-capital funds which are dwarfed by the cost of even a single utility-scale power plant.
The tea party groups are also targeting Georgia Power over the rising cost to build two new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle.
Nuclear plants in particular have low running costs but enormous capital costs: investors must make a 20- or 30-year bet that power prices will remain high enough to pay off the cost of building the plant.
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However, a spokesperson for Enron told the BBC that the average price of power per unit sold to the state government in the last year came to five Rupees and the cost will come down further once the Dabhol Power Co becomes a fully gas-based plant.
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