The National Renewal Energy Laboratory estimates that grid-scale, four-hour batteries can be built for $1,300 per kilowatt, as compared to around $2,500 for combined cycle gas turbines.
This sentence misnames DOE’s lab and overstates combined-cycle gas plant capital costs. EIA’s published overnight-cost table puts new combined-cycle units at roughly $1,176–$1,330 per kW, not “around $2,500 per kilowatt.”
Full reasoning
Two separate factual problems appear in this sentence.
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The institution name is wrong. DOE identifies NREL as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory; the sentence says "National Renewal Energy Laboratory," which is not the lab's official name.
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The gas-cost comparison is badly overstated. EIA's published Cost and Performance Characteristics of New Generating Technologies table lists overnight capital costs for new combined-cycle plants at $1,330/kW for single-shaft units and $1,176/kW for multi-shaft units (2022 dollars). The same table lists battery storage at $1,270/kW. That means the article's claim that combined-cycle gas turbines cost "around $2,500 per kilowatt" is roughly double EIA's published estimate for plain combined-cycle plants.
So the sentence is inaccurate both in the lab name and in the claimed gas-turbine cost benchmark.
2 sources
- National Renewable Energy Laboratory | Department of Energy
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is dedicated to the research, development, commercialization, and deployment of renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies.
- Cost and Performance Characteristics of New Generating Technologies, Annual Energy Outlook 2023
Table 1 lists Combined-cycle—single-shaft at $1,330/kW, Combined-cycle—multi-shaft at $1,176/kW, and Battery storage at $1,270/kW (2022 dollars per kW).