New metric shows renewables are 53% cheaper than nuclear power [View all]

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New metric shows renewables are 53% cheaper than nuclear power

A new metric for assessing total system costs puts a least-cost mix of offshore wind and solar at about €46 ($54.20)/MWh in a future climate-neutral energy system for Denmark. Researchers tell pv magazine that figure is less than half the equivalent cost of nuclear under the same conditions.

April 17, 2026 | Brian Publicover

A peer-reviewed study using Denmark as a case study has found that renewable energy portfolios outperform nuclear power on total system cost in the modeled future integrated Danish energy system, once the expenses of grid balancing, storage, and sector coupling are included in the comparison.

The “SLCOE – system-based LCOE for comparing energy technologies in different systems” study, recently published in Energy and led by Henrik Lund of Aalborg University, introduces system-based levelized cost of energy (SLCOE) as an alternative to the standard LCOE metric. LCOE only measures the cost of producing a unit of electricity from a given technology, but SLCOE adds the cost of integrating that technology into the wider energy system. The co-author list includes 10 other researchers.

“While the LCOE is a function of the technology itself, the SLCOE is a function of both the technology and the energy system context in which it operates,” the paper states.

Co-author Christian Breyer, a professor of solar economy at LUT University in Finland, told pv magazine that the metric addresses a fundamental gap. “If one only optimizes within the electricity sector, one will not be able to identify these much better solutions,” said Breyer...more
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/04/17/new-metric-shows-renewables-are-53-cheaper-than-nuclear-power/

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