Reply To: would nuclear energy really be accessible to all?

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Any calculations that can be made are currently pretty rough IMHO.
The cost of any technology goes down with time, where the efficiency goes up.
This should be true for PV, CS, transmission, storage costs.
Also the economies of scale can reduce the price a lot.

How much exactly storage, transmission, area or efficiency is required I don’t think is currently clear,
especially when transmission/storage can be interchangeable in some situations as well as efficiency/area.
Maybe for now a maximum cost limit can be calculated, for a single home-based installation in this case I would agree to about ~$5-8 usd/watt (payback 15-30 years),
but it should get better with new technologies (i am betting on roll-to-roll manufacturing for everything – from PV (now) to batteries (later) to control electronics (much later)).
Of course it makes sense for well insolated areas such as Africa, Middle East, Australia, southern USA.

Still probably the best costs can be seen after the implementation stage (for any project).

Also I don’t see a problem for Europe to get most energy from Africa-Middle east, because there would be some competition by energy providers,
home sources (Europe based PV vs Africa based CS), as well as it could make poorer countries richer.