Remote solar PV vs small nuclear reactor – electricity cost comparison

You’all missing the bigger picture! Such solar implementation are NOT grid connected. They run *exactly* that 14 hours a day….actually it’s more like 4 hours for the peak/name plate capacity. Most to NOT have batteries and those batteries only last about 5 years anyway then they, their lead and acid, get tossed in the Savannah someplace. Africa, BTW, is a major used-battery dumping ground.

So realistically, solar systems are “light-switch” compatible (not refrigerator, no lights when you need it, no power on demand). Even with batteries you get those dust storms and very cloudy tropical periods with weeks of cloud cover.

The smallest of reactors being discussed this year…and what a year it is!…are ALL grid compatible. In fact, they are great in *starting grid infrastructure*.

You take a 50MWe reactor. You build a grid that can serve…at least 100,000 – 200,000 people. You are asking yourself…WAIT! 50MWs isn’t going to serve this many people. You would be oh-so-wrong. This is because initially, that is for years, instead of 200 to 1000 KWhrs/month like we all do in Perth and Dallas, the average use, per month, might be about 25KWs…for that ONE light the average non-electrical-non-connected-to-the-grid-but-now-connected-to-the-grid-family might have. So *over years* they start adding some important appliances: a *small* affordable TV set, a small, say, 12 cu ft. refrigerator, and, maybe, one or two lamps.

This is who grids are build. This region of 100k/200k people spend *most of their investment* on such a low usage distribution grid around the new nuclear reactor. Assuming the economy gets better, people’s living standards rise *some* because of access to regular electrical power, you start investing more money into this small grid to buff it up as people start using more power. A larger refrigerator, maybe an electric hot-plate. Middle class elements might go for AC here and there.

Now two things start to happen. Based on rising expectations…the load increases and:

1. We can add another reactor module and
2. We start interconnecting the grid to perhaps larger reactors around the main capital city to develop a truly national grid that can back each region up.

The solar cells some well meaning European or American NGO donated years before? Well, they are broken down to use on kid’s remote controlled toy cars and other worthwhile distractions.

David

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Grid…….. Have grid costs been factored into these calculations or if a very small reactor unit the per kW cost of wiring up the village?

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I’m not really satisfied with Gene Preston’s assumptions e.g. “Lets say that we develop a solar system to serve a 5 kW peak load with an average load of 1 kW. ”

So I wanted to work through the numbers.

I googled ‘peak sun hours for Sydney’ and got an annual value of just over 5 kWh/m^2 from http://www.yourhome.gov.au/technical/fs67.html. This website also claimed that the average Sydney family uses 5000 kWh per year of electricity or (5000/8760)*24 = 13.7 kWh in one day.

If this figure for a Sydney family is correct then lets assume a non urban African household uses less electricity and so can we say that we can cut that figure by, say, 3 so its 4.6 kWh a day.

Now Gene says a few houses, OK, can I assume three households so we are back up to our figure of 13.7 kWh and lets round it up to 14 kWh for simplicity.

If we take 5 Peak sun hours (I’ve just googled peak sun hours Africa and got this http://www.solar4power.com/map10-global-solar-power.html) then we will need 14kWh/5kWh/m^2 or 2.8 m^2 at 1 kW so if we assume an efficiency of 15% (in between present PV technologies) then we need 1/.15 = 6.7 m^2 of panels.

Lets round the 2.8 kW of panels up to three kW for simplicity. Obviously this is where I would disagree with Gene.

Gene’s figure of $ 8 A Watt gives us 8 X 3000 = $24,000.

Now we’ve got to go for storage for peaking. Is 5 kW a realistic peak for three households? We certainly need storage for nighttime etc. So would a better expression of storage be in kWh as a battery can supply 5 kW for a certain amount of time and 1 kW for a longer amount of time. What can we assume? So I’m going to follow Gene’s lead and use one days storage of 14 kWh and then double it to give two days storage so 28 kWh of storage. Googling around (sorry) for costs of storage using lead acid batteries I’ve come across a number of websites and am choosing electropedia from Chester in the UK for no particular reason. They quote $150/kWh and that gives us 28 X 150 = $4200, obviously different from Gene’s so I’m going to be pessimistic and double it to $8,400 and will round it up to $9,000 for simplicity. I will assume they need to be relaced once in the 20 year lifetime so its $18,000.

So perhaps we should add 1/3 more PV to charge the batteries (i.e. $8,000 worth).

I’ll keep the electronics the same.

So my costs for the PV option are:

Panels: $32,000

Batteries: $ 18,000

Electronics $5,000 (only because I haven’t had time to go into this)

Note neither my nor Gene’s costing have added in construction costs unless Genes cost for the panels is a delivered cost.

So my total cost is:$ 55,000 over 20 years though PV does better and I would expect nuclear to to better.

So using Gene’s formula:

Then A = (55,000)(.06)(1.06)^20 / [1.06^20 – 1] = .08718 (55,000) = $4794.9 annually or 54.74 cents a kWh.

Now that doesn’t need the cost of grid connection because gene’s figures of the nuc plants CAPEX didn’t say whether it included grid connections costs so I’m going to assume it doesn’t.

If we add the cost of grid connection into a centralised generator and again I’ve googled (sorry, sorry but its all I’ve got time to do) the website Practical Action (http://practicalaction.org/practicalanswers/product_info.php?products_id=293) on their grid connection page quoting a 2000 World Bank study gave the cost of rural grid connection as $8,000 to $10,000 per km in non difficult terrain (up to $22,000 in difficult terrain).

If we assume an average distance of 5 kms and the lower cost thats $40,000 per three house holds

So back to the costs of our nuclear plant

Then we have operational costs for the nuclear plant and here I am going to assume its largely auotmated and so say three people per operational shift across three shifts plus leave, illness etc so thats 12, then a small engineering dept of say 3 then thats 15 and I’ll add 5 more for back office etc so I will assume the plant has 20 people on ist pay roll @ $50,000 each or $2,000,000 per year or $40,000,000 for the 20 year lifetime. I’m excluding maintenance costs, land leasing costs and so on. The $40,000,000 is equivalent to 6.4% of the $5000 or $320.

So we have:

$ CAPEX $5,000

Op costs $320

I didn’t really understand Gene’s battery costs for the nuclear installation so what I’m going to do is use what I did but halve it (and I will assume that the nuclear plant has a 99% availability and when its down other plants can cope along with the batery systems)so thats….

Battery $9,000

Grid $40,000

Thats a total of

$54320.

Plugging that in to Gene’s

0.08718 X 54320 X 100/8760 = 54.06 cents per kWh.

Thats as opposed to 55c per kWh for PV. Believe me I haven’t worked backwards from this answer, I have only worked forwards choosing assumptions as I go. Its a big suprise to me.

But thats one of the killers for centralised systems….. bloody grid connection!!

And I’m assuming the $,5000 costs for the nuc doesn’t include grid connection.

So what we need is those even smaller nucs so we cam eliminate more and more of the grid costs…….. that is if we are prepared to swallow the idea that a grid connected system may not be the in the best interests of rural development.

I am happy to have my assumptions challenged, ripped into and my maths is notoriously bad. And the data I found if anyone can find better data especially on the grid connection costs that would be helpful, but I was pretty conservative on that i.e. 5 kms distance.

There are some other things that could be factored in apart from the use of small nucs to lower grid costs. PV costs are coming down and $1/watt is being talked about for a 2012/13 time frame. Then there is the cost of money. Will the entire output of Gene’s 125 MWe plant be connected to every customer from day one, otherwise that foregone revenue will have to be paid for? I also haven’t factored in maintenance costs for the PV cells apart from battery replacement. We could add @ 6% to the cost of the PV in that case.

I’m doing this because I like both nuclear and renewables and think the debate about the two is based on faulty outlooks.

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Hi Neil Howes,

I was wondering where you had gone. Did you see the comments I addressed to you in answer to your questions about pumped hydro: https://bravenewclimate.com/2009/09/10/solar-realities-and-transmission-costs-addendum/#comment-27662 ? The comments are 248 and 249. I thought they might be of interest to you.

I am still hoping you might post your cost estimates for Blowering – Tantangara – Eucumbene pumped storage scheme.

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Barry and Neil,

I believe Gene Preston missed one important point in his analysis. He says:

The cost is $8/watt (W) and runs about 14% of the time (its capacity factor).

I presume the 14% Capacity Factor is the annual average. What is the capacity factor on the worst days, and for a sequence of overcast days? At Queanbeyan, NSW (Latitude 35 South and 150 km from the coast), the capacity factor for the worst days is 0.75% for 1 day, 1.56% for 3 days, 4.33% for 5 days and 9.4% for 90 days of winter. (The annual average is 13.7%; so similar to Gene Preston’s site)

To keep the calculation simple I’ll assume the worst case capacity factor is 1.4% for 2 days. So, either the Afican village’s solar PV system needs 10 times as much storage as Gene assumed, or the village must be prepared to go without power for days at a time. Once the villagers have seen electricity they will not be happy with power outages. So in reality, we will have to provide sufficient storage capacity to meet demand continuously, even through sustained periods of overcast conditions.

Let’s recalculate the cost. Assuming the capacity factor is 1.4%, not 14%, over the worst two days, we will need 10 times the generating capacity of solar panels. So the cost of the panels is 10 times what Gene Preston calculated. The cost of the panels is $640,000 not $64,000.
So the total system cost, with 2 days storage, is: $664,000 not $88,000.

Gene Preston said:

(see what I mean about this being a rich person’s energy source?)

He is certainly correct about that. But it is even worse than he told the African school teachers. About 7 times worse!

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You can make nuclear reactors quite small. Both the United States and the Soviet Union launched fission reactors into space before the nuclear test ban treaty. Here is a picture of a technician loading fuel rods into the core of one such unit and you can see that the core isn’t much bigger than the canister on an Electrolux.

I don’t think it would be cost effective for running a village. I think a solar thermal system running a Stirling Generator would be better. If you want, you can hook it up to a flywheel system to provide power at night.

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Home built wind power works for at least one village in Malawi:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/10/kamwamba-windmill/

Thanks to Eli Rabett for finding that article!

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Peter Lang,
I now have my hard drive up and working again. I did see your post about Tantangara/Blowering. It would seem to me that having one tunnel(2.8GW) would be a less expensive way of using the 500GWh as long term(5-10day) storage, and adding more turbines to reservoirs requiring shorter tunnels or pipelines for short term pumped storage.

Your statement that wind power cannot be used for pumped hydro seems to be wrong as the present 18 wind farms connected to the NEM grid often produce 1000MW during off-peak periods when existing pumped hydro is in operation. There is a good surplus of spinning reserve to accommodate 1000MW, and at least the 5 min output doesn’t change very much over 30mins-1h. It looks like about 100MW spinning reserve would accommodate 1000MW of wind power. Since we have >6GW of hydro turbines in addition to the 1GW used in pumped storage we should be able to handle the minute by minute fluctuations of up to 60GW of wind capacity.

Longreach solar output would be more relevant to most of Africa( within tropics) than Queanbeyan. The point I was trying to make is that very small amounts of power to keep a mobile charged or a refrigerator cold is much more valuable($/W) than large energy uses( cooking, hot water, air-conditioning) that would require grid power or very substantial battery back-up.

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For the life of me I just can’t imagine village scale nuclear systems… and if it were cheaper to do a larger (but sitll small) generator and grid connect all these small places to it… then how come that isn’t being done now at least with coal or other fossil fuels…

I struggle to imagine that these places are being given small poxy renewable systems that confine them to a future of poverty (not my opinion ust going with the flow of other comments) instead of simply whipping in a state of the art grid connected power system, giving them a 1st world power supply at a fraction of the cost of a system that only gives enough energy to boil a kettle when there are 3 or more sunny days in a row…

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You all do know that there are “village size” nuclear power plants that have been designed and built, do you not? One that I am very familiar with is AECL’s SLOWPOKE series.

SLOWPOKE is an acronym for Safe Low-Power Kritical Experiment (the “K” is justified — it is the traditional symbol for “criticality” in the field of reactor physics). SLOWPOKE is a low-power, compact-core reactor technology developed by AECL in the late 1960’s. There are five SLOWPOKE-2 reactors operating in Canadian universities, rated at 20 kW and supporting nuclear education and/or neutron research. The SLOWPOKE-2 core is only about 22 cm diameter by 22 cm high, and sits in a pool of regular (“light”) water, 2.5 m diameter by 6 m deep, which provides cooling via natural convection. In addition to passive cooling, the reactor has a high degree of “inherent safety”; that is, it can regulate itself through passive, natural means, such as the chain reaction slowing down if the water heats up or forms bubbles. These characteristics are so dominant, in fact, that the SLOWPOKE-2 reactor is licensed to operate unattended overnight (but monitored remotely).

In the early 1980’s AECL developed a higher-power variant of this technology, called SLOWPOKE-3, which could act as a district heating source for remote communities, and can be hooked to a Rankine-cycle engine to crank out 600 kW of electricity.

Naturaly these were designed for the Canadian North but they were also designed to serve small communities with a passively safe reactor that could be safely operated with a minimum of training. Of course fuel changes and other more complex procedures would be done by visiting experts, but nevertheless these reactor were expected to power a village over the Winter without outside intervention.

Obviously district heating is not needed in Africa and other tropical regions, but this type of reactor could have provided good, clean and reliable power had the program continued. As it was the cost of oil at that time was such that SLOWPOKE’s were not considered cost effective at the time.

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There are several references to the B&W $5/W. Here is one reference http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=319360
The new NRG 2700 MW plant at the South Texas Project site has had its estimate creep upward until now it is also about $5/W. I’m sure if we had a few good installation experiences the cost would be lower.

I wasn’t envisioning a grid connected nuclear plant either. However, there would have to be a local distribution system to collect together enough loads in an area to make a small nuclear plant feasible. Who would run a small nuclear plant? How would it be made safe from attack from terrorists. Who will run the small nuclear plant? The education level needed seems to be at odds with what the local population is capable of. This applies to a village in Africa as well as my neighborhood wanting to build and run a small nuclear plant here in the US. The same impediments exist here for small nuclear as they do in Africa.

With regard to installing solar without storage, forget it. Even solar on a sailboat has batteries for storage. A stand alone solar system without some storage is useless. I was simply proposing a minimal battery system capable of supplying power to a school. You will have the students using many PCs in their classes (this is a way to skip the need for books) and batteries are necessary to store enough energy so the school can function without interruptions during classes and at night when they have time to do their homework. The PCs I am thinking about are of the $100 variety – see http://www.wharton.universia.net/index.cfm?fa=viewArticle&id=1535&language=english. This PC program has been highly successful but it needs power to run it.

With regard to the comment about solar cells costing $2/W, which is true. However when you add all the supporting hardware and electronics and labor to install the panels, the $8/W is a more realistic estimate. If you are installing a large system, such as a centralized tracking array, you can get the total cost down to about $6/W. This observation about the difference between solar panel cost and the total solar system cost is interesting because it shows that even if solar panels went to 0 $/W there are still other costs that make the overall system rather expensive. Think of the solar cells as being the engine in a car and the solar panels as being the engine and transmission. There is still the cost of the wheels and body of the car, the insurance, and other costs involved in owning a car. These other costs must also be reduced to make solar more economical. Unfortunately the other costs have been creeping upward cancelling out the cost reductions of the solar panels themselves.

The 5 kW system I chose was just an example. Each installation would need to be sized for the load to be served. The comments about not having enough energy on the “worst” days is a good point. If the solar system ran a school, and there were too many cloudy days, the student would just have to not do school those days. Thus this points out a fundamental problem with relying on solar power and batteries. Its not a reliable source of power. Concerning the Sterling Engine, fine, go for it, but the economic calculations are about the same and the reliability problem is the same. For areas with wind, they are fortunate, and the wind economics calculations are similar to solar, except wind power is usually more economical than solar – if the wind blows enough. I would think that pumped hydro would be a nice storage system for anyone who can install such a system. Its definitely better than a battery storage system. But how many of us can install pumped hydro? Very few.

Thanks for the reference on the small nuclear generator. We need more experience with small nuclear facilities. Can I get one to power my electric car?

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There is a reason that small villages in Africa don’t have electricity. In relative terms (ie relative to income) both the solar option and the nuclear option are expensive. If the villagers want electricity then the best option is to move to a town that is grid connected.

Speaking of electricity in Africa the following youtube discuss an important paradox about electicity in parts of Africa. In this case rules and price are the issue. But in this case the price isn’t too high, it’s too low.

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Eugene,

your comment

“I was simply proposing a minimal battery system capable of supplying power to a school. You will have the students using many PCs in their classes (this is a way to skip the need for books) and batteries are necessary to store enough energy so the school can function without interruptions during classes and at night when they have time to do their homework.”

I think demonstrates where we all perhaps bring our own outlooks and presuppositions into discussions like development. I would question why use PCs over books? Books are still the best random access device ever invented and are self powering where ever there is light to read by. I think in many situations they remain superior to PCs (I know, I know, I’m an engineer and this sort of talk is supposedly heresy for an engineer). I’m not saying give away the PCs but use them for what they are perhaps best for rather than just a blanket application.

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How will solar energy in Africa support 24/7 365 usage? I don’t see it.

Several things are going on there. One, there is a huge hydro development scheme going on in Congo…the single largest hydro development in the world, larger that 3 Gorges dam.

Secondly, several African nations are *beginning* to explore their nuclear options: Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria and Uganda. These are all big, larger LWRs.

Thirdly, S. Africa’s PBMR was saved by the intervention of Dr. Chu’s US Dept. of Energy that wants to partner with the S. Africans over deployment of their PBMR.

Africa will only be saved from further resource depletion, wars and civil wars, by development. The more semi-developed areas of West Africa would be ideal for a regional grid plan around a few larger LWRs. Building out from the Congo River hydro project for local grids would also be appropriate. There are no plans to do this now which is a major problem.

D.

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Just some perspective on Nigeria, which as David Walters points out is working on opening their grid to nuclear power plants. The country is 25% larger than Texas with 150+ million inhabitants (compared to Texas’ 25 million). Lagos is home to nearly 20 million.

The church I attend paid for the construction of a health clinic in Jos, Nigeria (Faith Alive Clinic) and the medical doctor/director recently spoke to our congregation. He sleeps only 4 hours per day and sees thousands of patients each month. Humbling compared to what we do here. Would love to place a NPP in that city to assure the clinic (and all the inhabitants) have reliable electricity without the need for back-up generators.

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The question of variable capacity factor will be paramount in asking whether a proposed wind farm ‘offsets’ the emissions from the giant Wonthaggi desal plant
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/10/06/2705702.htm
Rough calculations suggest the plant will consume over 100 MW of energy and perhaps much more depending on what output and technology is planned. If the ‘offset’ wind farm has 33% CF that suggests 300 MW nameplate would cover it if the energy could be stored or the process is interruptible. But sometimes that wind farm will be becalmed while water flow is needed. Then places like Hazelwood power station will be spewing well over a 100 tonnes per second of CO2 to cover that demand.

Another ruse I expect is that the ‘offset’ wind farm won’t be built in time so they will declare that an installation built years ago will carry that mantle. However when or if the five year ETS holiday for brown coal ends then the average Melbourne water and power bill could be breathtaking.

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John … by all means use the word spew in relation to Hazelwood, and coal plants generally. Personally, given that the matter is has passed the plant’s digestive tract and is now composed entirely of what the plant deems waste I see it as more like effluent, so “defecate” sounds more apt, anthropomorphically speaking. (There you go DV8 …)

Mostly though, one wopuld expect that a desal plant’s operations would be interruptible, since its output — potable water — is capable of being stored and would require significant inventories. It being costly to white start plants, you pretty much have to keep the plant going during the night so the marginal cost is really only the difference between desal and the reserve. Since a large chunk of the demand for Hazelwood power is aluminium smelting, as long as that’s there, it’s the cost above that that is marginal.

I’d happily close the aluminium smelters running of these old coal plants of course. They attract a significant cross subsidy as things stand and there are far more GHG-friendly places in the world than Victoria to do smelting — Iceland for example. Of course, if the aluminium plants want to buy hydro or some other low footprint energy, then fine, let them do that. The sunk costs might make it worthwhile switching.

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Where are we going to get the hydro in Australia?

Ever heard of the Ord River?

There were plans for a tidal plant off WA (near Derby) as well. And of course if they could get nuclear through, I’d support that.

Conceivably though, they could run the plant from waste biomass — it’s not as if there is a shortage.

Several bloggers on these threads have made comments about “sunk costs”. What do you mean by your comment? Do you mean that the investors (eg our supperannuation funds) who have invested in the coal power stations should be told sorry, we’re not going to pay you a return on your investment.

What I mean is that if the subsidy aluminium smelting gets were eliminated — during the early years of this century about 250k per job apparently, the sunk cost losses of shifting aluminium smelting someplace else would probably discourage moving offshore. So eliminating the subsidy would be a good thing.

Fran, if you were approaching retirement age you might be concerned about the effect on your superannuation.

I’m 51, so I don’t know if I meet that standard, but I do hope that my super fund doesn’t have assets tied up in filthying up the planet, and if it does, then I’m in favour of that being remedied as soon as possible regardless of the cost to my super. If fixing the problem would entail measures that would cause the value of my super to drop to zero and stay there until first I then my younger son drew our respective last breaths, then so be it, as far as I’m concerned. There is no economy without a healthy biosphere and I want no part of harming my fellow humans, regardless of the “benefits” to me and my heirs.

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AFAIK processes requiring critical pressure (reverse osmosis) and temperature (aluminium smelting) are not easily interruptible. Of course producers could maintain a large battery bank (ie a UPS) for the required shutdown power but that would cost more than the 1-3c per kwh they feel they are entitled to.

I don’t know about Ord hydro but Neil Howes’ idea of a trans-Nullarbor HVDC could make sense for another reason. That is because most of the population lives in SE Australia but in future most of the gas reserves and hence cheap peaking power will be in the NW. Perhaps add some hydro to that. That would create a national grid, not separate E and W grids. Then with that new cable tack on a NPP/flash desal plant at Ceduna to power (700 MW) and water (200 ML/d) Olympic Dam and surrounds, with surplus electricity going to the national grid. Somebody who knows costs should do the sums.

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Barry,
Looking at that picture reminds me that Australians are currently installing a solar panel, one 12v battery and one light in rural homes in East Timor and are charging the householders 10 USD each. They think that this is their value and trade them for another $10 article. They currently seem to all use candles. Not even lamp glasses which will magnify a candle considerably, enough to read by.
This seems to indicate that good lights aren’t highly valued.

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Peter Lang

1. Aluminium smelting is probably not cost-competititve in Australia and if a prioper price on CO2 (ie about $100 per tonne) reveals that, so be it.
2. see this link: ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/fp7/ict/docs/20080703-iea-study-summary_en.pdf

What it shows that the most energy efficient place to produce Aluminium is Africa. Since nearly every serious aluminium exporting country uses less coal than we do to produce it and/or has lower per capita emission that we do, the fugitive emissions risk is zero. In Iceland, they have near zero emissions for stationary energy. If aluminium can survive without subsidies and with this price so be it

3. I’m in favour of nuclear (see my posts at LP and elsewhere), but I’m not dog in the manger about it. If the choice is 30 years of coal, then nukes or 15 years of coal phase out in favour of gas/biomass and then nukes, then I take the latter.

4. I favour reconfiguring our cities to radically reduce energy demand per person so that we can live with a sharply increased cost per unit of energy. We need to greatly increase densities to achieve this. When each of us demands a lot less dwelling space and less private transport then the fact that energy might cost three times what it does now won’t matter that much.

If we can process water locally then we can also cut water supply costs too and maybe avoid those big desal plants.

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Fran, well, I think your post #48 was a perfect example. Evidence is in your actions, and someone only needs to cast back over your many previous comments to see this illustrated many times over.

As I said, you’re quite subtle, but your motive for delay and careful admonition is plain enough to me, and I’m sure many others reading this blog. I’m certainly not going to bother to take the time to engage in a battle of wits with you. No, I’ll simply point out to others what I am carefully observing (as mostly a lurker and only occasional commenter on brave new climate), and let others work it out for themselves (or not, as the case may be).

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Peter,

Regarding your post .37

Thankyou for the link to Muriel Watt et al’s paper, its an interesting paper.

My question regarding thre performance of Queeneyan was whether it has been optimised for operation as you find in Muriel’s paper where she asks similar questions of technical design and performance for Mudgee and the Olympic village. I asked that question both as an engineer and because I have been in meetings with Country Energy on other matters when the Solar Farm has been raised and there have been mutterings about the system but being outside the scope of the meeting I wasn’t able to delve into the comments.

Regarding your reference to Mudgee in Muriel’s paper you said Table 1 but I think you meant Figure 3 if we take your usage of capacity factor (if I have understood it) then there are a number of days where the O/P falls below 3 kWh so I would take the approach of what was driving the sizing of the system e.g. how much of the load is it meant to meet and then decide what storage might be appropriate.

With your reference to Gene Preston using two days storage don’t forget he plucked those figures and the load out of the air to illustrate the point he was making. That’s fine but we must consider that and if you have read my critique of him you will see that I used those but arrived at a different result because I considered tha energy available.

Yes, capacity factor is relevant but its one factor in design, amongst a number of relevant things, but you seem to be divorcing it from what someone is trying to trying to do, i.e. what is the load and its characteristics, what is the energy available and what sort of system will bring the two together. Its interesting that Muriel Watt et al’s paper doesn’t make use of it and also the analysis she and her colleagues made of the Olympic village PV system is very interesting in demonstrating how to regard the use of PV in a grid system.

I think if capacity factor is taken on its own wrt to systems such as PV we can end up misleading ourselves.

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My worldview differs quite substantially with that of Fran Barlow (particularly on economics) but I generally find her to be a worthy contributor to discussion. I haven’t seen anything here to suggest otherwise.

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Jeremy C #52,

I believe the questions you are asking are answered in the paper. Could you follow it through first. If there is a serious error in the paper, I’d be pleased to find it and fix it. So far there have been 445 comments, so it has been fairly well chewed-over so far.

Solar power realities – supply-demand, storage and costs

No, I meant Table 1. Look at the June, Min. That is the minimum daily output for the worst day in June. If you calculate the capacity factor you’ll find it is similar to the minimum CF recorded at Queanbeyan.

How much difference will optimising the system make? It needs to be a factor of 20 to be cheaper than nuclear, and that is if we could have 30 days of centralised energy storage (which is totally impracticable). With on-site chemical storage, we’d need to reduce the cost of the solar system by a factor of 40. The point of the papers, and what came out in the discussions on that thread, is that there is no point in talking about improvements of 10%, 20%, 50% when we are looking for a factor of 20 or more. There is simply no point in wasting time exploring the solar option when faced with these sorts of differences in the cost.

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If you want to know what will happen to small scale nuclear reactors in impoverished villages, Eli suggests you consider the “pipline tapping” that is endemic in the Niger delta, and the occasional murderous explosions. That is not a good idea. You are also competing high tech solar against high tech nuclear. More realistically the solar/wind sources in small villages will be low tech, serviced by the local jackleg mechanic, at best, simple wind generators with a few high tech parts, or some sort of mirror heating a fluid with thermal electric generation. The first few watts are the most valuable as was pointed out in the discussion.

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Eli,
Africa’s own vision is not based on “jack-left” mechanics. It’s based on a modern high–-tech nuclear infrastructure, scaled way down for the current low load usage. This means developing, with a lot of outside help, a nuclear infrastructure that includes an understanding of where they want to go, educational and training resources, elevating math and other pre-engineering in high schools, developing security, etc.

No one is going to be *tapping* into a nuclear plant, only the distribution network if there is a grid.

The idea, again, is to start small, and slowly develop small grids, then in country regional grids, then national grids, then a continental grid.

It’s called development.

David

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I have been thinking about the original problem. An alternative to both PV generated electricity and much higher cost nuclear batteries, would ne radioisotope generators. Using fairly long lived isotopes, these quasi batteries could put out respectable amounts of electricity at a fairly low price. The Stirling radioisotope generator would be an example.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_Radioisotope_Generator

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@63 Jeremy,
I garner this from a lot of sources including national plans that are published. The WNA for example had general nuclear infrastructure plans for most countries in the world. Many countries file overall development plans with the World Bank/IMF and UN that I’ve look at years ago.

I’m not trying foster any technology on to unwilling recipients. It is generally the policy of *every* underdeveloped country to become *at least* a developing country. As such, there are a lot of plans out there. But all have a common ‘something’: the need for cheap, abundant and reliable energy.

Starting with that one makes *proposals*. Some reject this altogether; many idolize the “nobility of poverty” and low energy usage and consumption. Like most in Africa who if given half a chance, would like *more* energy, not less. Thus my POV is in line with the majority, I believe, of Africans and other countries in Asia and Latin America who want to increase, *vastly* their energy production and per capita energy consumption.

No country I’m aware of, except S. Africa which has thought this through, along with the Indians, has actually grabbed onto the small-reactor, small-grid concept…yet. I propose this simply as way to implement, extremely incrementally, and cheaply, the adoption of nuclear energy and, as a seed-kernal for developing national grids with distributive atomic energy.

As some of you know, I’m not, generally, a ‘small reactor’ proponent. I like the big ones. But that’s because my focus has been on countries like the US and China that can use “big ones”. Africa has a whole different type of menu of problems that I think the sub-400MW market is preferable for.

David

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Peter,

Regarding capacity factor, in your paper, Solar Realities’ you define capacity factor as “Capacity Factor is the actual energy produced over a period divided by the total energy that would have been produced if the generator had run at full power throughout the period.” What period or periods did you use for capacity factor on the Queanbeyan Solar Farm? Was it 24 hour days or daylight hours and does it factor in aspects such as tracking vs non-tracking? As well did you consider aspects such as the efficiency of the inverters (under different conditions) used on the installation?

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Jeremy C (#57)

Factor of 20 to 40!!

Transmission costs here: https://bravenewclimate.com/2009/09/10/solar-realities-and-transmission-costs-addendum/

Alternative to transmission is on site energy storage. Refer to post #12 above and to https://bravenewclimate.com/2009/08/16/solar-power-realities-supply-demand-storage-and-costs/

Note, I agree there is a role for remote, off-grid power supplies. But it is very high cost, and the poor coutries cannot afford it. A cheaper and better option in most cases is to electrify the larger population centres and facilitiate people moving to these for improved health, education, work opportunities and personal fulfilment. All options will take time. The least cost alternative overall is the one that will win out. Pushing high cost alternatives is bad policy.

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Mr Siadora

Finally some substantive claims …

On other blogs, she harps on about nuclear. Here, she harps on about other solutions and cautions about nuclear.

That’s simply wrong. I don’t “caution” about nuclear anywhere. In every place where I post, I alwaysadvocate resort to nuclear power, and have been the subject of abuse for doing so.

Always, it is exercise caution, take what we can, or offer the listening crowd something they don’t really want, as a compromise.

Actually, it is nearly the opposite. Where people reject nuclear power but assert an interest in lowering GHG emissions, I merely point out the implications of trying a non-nuclear course with suggestions that would work, albeit at a greater cost than with nuclear in the mix. Here in Australia, it is politically improbable that nuclear power will be used in the next 15 years, and so although I continue to advocate resort to it I don’t wish to do the very thing you suggest — force people to choose between what for them are unpalatable choices, coal or nuclear. If in Australia, you make these the only choices, coal will win every argument. That is precisely why the advocates of coal demand that if the greens are serious about GHGs, they support nuclear power. It’s an effective wedge which leads to massive subsidy of “clean coal”.

Coal is not clean and never will be at a cost that would make it viable.

TerjeP, I don’t put much credence in your objection, as like Lawrence, I also consider you in a similar light.

Now you are calling someone else a troll. I don’t agree with Terje. He’s a supporter of American “libertarianism” and I am a leftist. That doesn’t make him a troll though, IMO.

Point 1 = She wants a carbon price, but then carefully reinforces the negative view among those who oppose a carbon tax that, hinting subtly it will destroy jobs that this will indeed occur.

There’s no question that the aim of carbon dioxide pricing is to reconfigure industry and human activity away from reliance on dumping industrial effluent into the biosphere. This will destroy some jobs, demand others and improve the life chances of almost everyone under 50. There’s also no question that it will tend to preserve those fossil resources that would be hard to replace at the moment, thus preserving the jobs of those in those industries. Neither coal nor oil will last forever and at current projected usage will not be available at close to the currenbt real cost by 2100. We need coal for steel and oil for polymers and yet we are burning these for fuel.

Point 2 = More on this: the jobs got Africa or Iceland, but all couched in terms of this being better for the planet. By now the anti-carbon price people are foaming.

The anti-carbon pricing people are always foaming. Peter’s point was about fugitive emissions, since a ton of CO2 released anywhere does the same damage to ecosystem services as anywhere else. My point was that in almost all places, the CO2 footprint of aluminium production wouyld be less than it is here, and that since the jobs here are being subsidised at 250k each, even if production went to Africa, we would be better off. At that price, you could pay people to lie on the beach — and frankly, at 250k, what laid off worker wouldn’t like that?

Point 3 = She’s in favour of nuclear (of course Fran), but will settle for gas because nuclear in 15 years isn’t really a decent prospect after all, is it? So gas isn’t really so bad, is it?

Be honest. What I’m really doing is accepting the lesser evil. In most countries of the world, nuclear power is a part of the mix. Australia is a sideshow in this respect. While I’d prefer we accepted nuclear, I still prefer gas to coal.

When you walk into a restaurant, you choose from what is on the menu or at any rate what is on offer. Perhaps you’d prefer something else, but if it is not available, you accept the next best thing. Perhaps you think the prices are too high, but at that point you either walk out or agree to pay. That’s how life works.

Point 4 = An appeal to the power-down doomer crowd, once again hinting (carefully) at the negative aspects of energy efficiency to those who oppose a drop in their standard of living or take a libertarian viewpoint. This way, she enhances the bad vibes of a couple of crowds – the anti-carbon people and the anti-power down people. But of course she does it all in such a nice, earnest way that no one could surely disagree could they?

This is simply nonsense. It is clear that the current configuration of cities is unsustainable and doesn’t serve people’s needs, quite apart from the CO2 footprint. Sitting for hours each week in cars driving to work paying too much for housing and working overtime to do it are not good things. Changing the configuration makese sense not only in energy efficiency terms, but also in human terms. We get better quality of life. Given that in Australia, we are not going to get nuclear power anytime soon, it also means cleaner skies and cleaner water and less demand for desal, massive ocean outfalls etc.

Divide and conquer. She’s smart, I’ll give her that, and ultimately, her ways are totally destructive to positive and constructive thought. We’ll, I’ll have none of it, and I hope other people on this blog are not hoodwinked either.

It’s nothing to do with divide and conquer — at least not on my side of the argument. I do want to divide the other side, i.e. the pro-business-as-usual side by pointing out that their slanders of mainstream science also harm humanity in other ways and that coal and crude oil is not essential at the current scale to producing useable energy.

You are attributing to me attitudes that have nothing to do with my advocacy. There are far better grounds for me calling you a troll than the reverse.

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Moving to cities has been going on for some time in Africa and it does not (usually) work out. Maybe better let each African country and region work out their own solutions, hmmm?

I disagree David that you can generalise in this way about urban life in Africa. While I agree that Africans (and indeed any viable community) ought to be allowed scope to ‘work out their own solutions’ it’s unclear in this context what that would mean.

Certainly it is clear that if Africans, amongst others, are to have access to the kinds of benefits we westerners take as the starting point for dignified existence, then urban existence will be the scaffold for this leap forward. It’s far easier to bring people to existing infrastructure and the associated resources than the other way around.

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Kind of interesting that so many people presume to speak for Africa, which I should remind you all is a continent, not a country, and very diverse in technology and culture.

Anyone arguing for a particular solution is liable to make the alternatives seem really expensive. Here is a different calculation for solar that comes out much cheaper. No doubt you could questions some of the assumptions; your batteries for example are 4 times the price. But the assumptions for nuclear here are very favourable. Nothing is allowed for building a grid over potentially inhospitable terrain (I presume we are talking about regions with no existing infrastructure, otherwise we would not need batteries).

Solar PV offers the potential to build up access to electricity on a small scale without a grid, and gradually extend access until a grid is built up. In parts of Africa that lack infrastructure, a good example to compare is the roll-out of cell phones, which also do not need a wired grid to get started. Anyone working the numbers like call charges based on developed world costing would think cell phones are the technology of the rich, and we ought to be pushing wired phones to third world countries.

Another factor neglected in this calculation is that there are extremely strong incentives to reduce the price of batteries, a big factor in the pricing here.

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Fran Barlow (74) — Get somebody who has been there to tell you about Nairobi turd missles!. Sorry, but many parts of cities in Africa have no infrastructure to speak of.

spangled drongo (75) — Exactly.

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Fran, et al, I never mentioned urbanization. Urbanization in Africa, Asia and Latin America is a function of the decay of the free enterprise system in under developed countries as nations have adapted Structural Adjustment Programs that smashed subsidies to farmers, health care etc. The whole socialist revolution movement in Latin America is a *direct* response to neo-liberal, usually US supported, SAPs.

I’m not talking about urbanization. It exists now and I’m not, for one, passing judgment on it good or bad, it exists, period, as part of the result I describe above. I’m saying is that countries want to develop. Does anyone here dispute this?

Solar does not make it. Is it “better than nothing”? Yes, of course. Is it a solution? No, it’s charity, at best. I’ve seen the systems developed for Africa, specifically, and they are woefully inadequate. At best the provide some form of power for low wattage, single bulbs with a small TV for a few hours a day. The batteries become huge waste issues and often do not stand up to tropical heat.

I went to a fair last year in California for these systems. Nice shinny systems. No one was adequate to run a home with a 3 cu ft refrigerator. No one had more than a days storage of power. In the tropic, cloud cover can last for weeks when it rains.

Much of Africa, even in urban areas, relies on charcoal, propane, wood etc. The first latter stand as ‘renewables’ I might add. Such ‘renewables’ are destroying what’s left of Africa’s tropic. Those in government and at the universities, almost totally, want to end reliance of on the trees-into-charcoal, savannah-into-cow dung forms of energy. They want 24/7 electricity.

What most countries there do is this: they build diesel generators. Basically the same kind that run trains in the West. The do this in parts of the US as well, i might add. Like in Maui, parts of Alaska, etc. Lot’s diesel and very expensive, of course, but you *can* build a small grid around it. Most of Africa’s major cities run on this sort of power. It is, oddly, very expandable but it places the country in a dependent relationship with western diesel suppliers. You might see why this has disadvantages.

Countries with hydro try to exploit that and of course, this is a good way to go if you consider the short term environmental damage it does but it’s reliable and, unlike Australia, it doesn’t appear to be ‘going away’, yet, under the impact of climate change. But countries are also interested in nuclear and that’s where the choices they make are very, very important. S. Africa and Esckom, it’s major utility, is trying to market the smaller PBMR for exactly this reason, to build grids, slowly, outwardly, and then attack the issue continentaly.

If countries in Europe took the ‘me alone’ approach, David B. Denmark would have NO wind industry. It’s silly and ridiculous for countries in regions not work together to solve problems that are intrinsically international in solutions.

What I hope they do is investigate the possible usage of the small IFR and LFTR regime.

David

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Australian libertarian? You’re probably better off saying “Randian” or “Hayekian” or “Norquistian”

None of those alternatives really fit in a way that is useful or even accurate. You could call me a social democrat who believes in a very small role for the government but that would simply confuse people. Labels suck but they are useful and libertarian is the best fit that I’ve been able to find. Classical Liberal would also be a pretty good fit.

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Re Fran Barlow
After much thought I think I agree with Esteban Siadora – Fran is a VERY subtle troll!

Her last remark @ 42 in which she proclaimed that she wouldn’t worry if she lost all her super to “sunk” or “stranded” assets, as long as we stopped spewing filth into the atmosphere, was very cleverly aimed at worrying those on the blog dependent on their super (like me)now, or worrying about their future balances. Just the people the Coalition and big business want to frighten! Who are you working for Fran?
The only other explanation for her tactical remarks could be that she is one of those contrary people who always has to have the last word and loves to play the Devil’s Advocate. However, in her case, it seems more devil than advocate!

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Here’s another reality check. This site costs a typical home system as needing 2kW solar panels, batteries with 20KWh capacity, inverter, charge protector and installation kit at US$22,000-25,000 plus installation. The same site costs connecting to the grid at $15,000 to $50,000 per mile. Even if you convert this to per km, it’s still quite an impost on the basic price. And that assumes you have a national grid to connect to; in a really remote location, you won’t have that.

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Barry #93 said – “…dissension is the grist of interesting comment and I welcome that!”

I couldn’t agree more!

Damn it Fran, don’t be scared away by a handful of lurkers.

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Jeremy C,

I’ll make a short response here. However, if you have more questions, could you please ask on the appropriate thread so we can keep the dialogue together for the benefit of all readers who want to follow the discussion.

The Capacity Factor is over the period defined. It can be 1, 3, 5, 10, 20, 30, 60, 90, 365 days. A day is 24 hours. The capacity factor is determined from the average output (kW) of the solar farm over the period divided by the capacity of the solar farm (55 kW). The average output is from the actual output measurements (recorded every 30 minutes for 2 years) not estimates calculated from insolation.

I am not sure what you are referring to with regard to the BOM course insolation data. If more questions, please ask on the appropriate thread.

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I think this stuff is directly related to Gene Preston’s material.

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Peter,

I disagree due to the subject of this thread, and that you did bring up capacity factor on here.

But anyway, thankyou for setting out how you calculate capacity factor. From what you have posted and reading your papers I think your method is of limited use in assessing the usefulness of a PV installation. If you think it is worth it we can pursue it on the other threads but that may limit other people from contributing if they are interested.

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Marion Brook @ 94 said:
“Damn it Fran, don’t be scared away by a handful of lurkers”
I resent that comment – I doubt Marion is unaware that I have been commenting on this blog since its inception and Barry Brook can hardly be called a lurker on his own blog! Marion is entitled to her own opinion, just as I am, but calling us lurkers, when that is patently untrue, only serves to weaken her case. And that is my last comment on the subject!

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Which capacity factor you use (minimum 24 hour in a year or annual average or other) will in tandem with the storage system selected determine the system reliability. So one way to sort this out is to add reliability to the system specification. For instance can we tolerate outages 10% of the time, 1% of the time, 0.1% of the time etc. I’d suggest that except for things like refrigeration of critical products the power probably doesn’t need to be super reliable. And you can quarantine some of the energy storage specifically for refrigeration such that it gets a more reliable supply relative to other loads. And for PCs and the like you might be able to improvise some form of alarm that indicates when a power outage is imminent.

Obviously this is still a simplification because there are other things that also effect reliability.

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