this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2026
291 points (99.0% liked)
Green Energy
4205 readers
227 users here now
Everything about energy production and storage.
Related communities:
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
How do you even compare something that generates energy for decades and can then be recycled and generate energy for further decades vs something that you use once and then it’s gone forever?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity
calculate total costs of power plant + fuels over the power plant's lifetime, divide by total kWh produced --> that gives you the average cost per kWh.
it is key here to see that even if solar panels produce energy over and over again, they still have a finite lifetime so they only produce a finite amount of energy per panel. so you can still calculate the cost per kWh by dividing panel cost by total kWh produced. the result then is non-zero because total kWh produced is not infinite.