Open Thread 23

Peter
I have read and scanned the ROAM report and can not find a total capital cost estimate of the installation of the 34 GW generating capacity that provides 516 GWh of electricity. Did you find total capital cost figure any where in the report?

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Deep De-Carbonization Would Increase Electricity Costs 20–90 Percent, Says J.P. Morgan
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/deep-de-carbonization-would-increase-electricity-costs-20-90-percent-says-j-p-morgan/

“Where the report really triumphs is in its careful balance of technical rigor with accessible language and well-reasoned assumptions.”

A pricey and a South Korea price for nuclear power plants is considered. “In both of these future scenarios, the balanced (nuclear plus renewables) system still provides a better cost-emissions tradeoff than a heavy-renewables system.”

This gives the appearance of being a paper worth some study.

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Peter Lang

You seriously post out of date figures that are out by a factor of 3, 5 or 20 and you accuse me of error

The costs in the JP Morgan report on P20 show wind is far cheaper than nuclear, and so is solar PV, biomass and geothermal and surprisingly even solar CSP. It should therefore be obvious to anyone that a grid operator would include as much of those as possible in the grid, to lower the overall cost of power. Only when you run out of economical hydro, geothermal and biomass would you consider nuclear as residual load. Wind and hydro are almost perfectly complimentary so more wind means better use of hydro mean less thermal

I stand by my comment. It is you who don’t understand the report

LGC’s are $70 per MW.hr because there are too many written off coal plants on the grid and no one wants to go the expense of closing and remediating them. Even if a coal plant was losing $10m per year it is cheaper to keep running it than close it and incur $200-300m in decommissioning and cleanup costs. If an individual owner hangs on for a few years someone else might blink and close down or perhaps the lower currency might increase Aluminium demand etc. so the logical course is to keep open even with no immediate profit.
You refer to the AETA report which has been superceded by both the facts and the Australian Power Generation Technology Report link again http://www.co2crc.com.au/dls/Reports/LCOE_Report_final_web.pdf.
Please keep up to date.

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PeterF provided a link to a site with an article about recent installations of utility scale batteries. Thank you.

This caused me to consider thermal stores on any thermal generator for similar purposes. I know of none except for some solar thermal projects. Why not on nuclear power plants?

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To Eclipse now

Perhaps nuclear has not lost the propaganda war. It has lost the 100% nuclear war. The danger in the all or nothing approach is that you get nothing. An aim for about 20-30% nuclear (US and China seem to be heading that way) would still be a lot more nuclear than now.

When the French decision was made to adapt nuclear there were no alternatives. Now there are, so designing a nuclear grid that played well with renewables and storage is more likely to be acceptable and therefore enacted than insisting on 100% nuclear and just being ignored.

If all the reforms and innovations that nuclear proponents want are made and all the technology is successful then the proportion of nuclear energy may rise to 30-50-60% in 50-60 years time. But if you start out telling everyone else their solutions are not acceptable you will not get anywhere.

In the meantime China is building about 20GW of nuclear by 2020 adding 150TW.hrs/annum and increasing wind by180GW and Solar by 120-150GW (500+180)TW.hrs.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/climate/2015-paris-climate-talks/china-raises-its-targets-for-renewable-energy.

This seems to be a sensible way to go, including your opponents in your plans generally gets much more traction.

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PeterF says: “Thermal storage does not increase the [thermal] plant’s peak capacity, which is usually when the power is most valuable.”

On the contrary. If the power station had an extra steam train (turbine, generator etc) that ran off the thermal store, then at peak demand, all of the nuke’s steam goes directly into generation along with the supplementary generation running off the thermal store. As demand lowers, the peaker is shut down, and as demand lowers further, the nuke lowers its generation while topping up the thermal store.

Perhaps we don’t need gas at all.

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Edward
Please explain the economics of a 100% nuclear system vs a 70-80% nuclear system with hydro and storage.

If nuclear w/o storage is such a good idea why does every country with high nuclear capacity Japan, Switzerland, France and Sweden have either or both large storage in the form of hydro/pumped storage and/or connections to other grids for backup/peak shaving

Nobody on this forum has attempted to answer the question of the economics of nuclear supplying peak/shoulder demand

Just asking.

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Edward

We agree on hydro and pumped storage and the formulation of my question was poor. Of course pumped hydro is not new energy. However my point is that whatever low carbon generation is selected, storage is necessary to maximise economic efficiency.

I also agree that many of the anti-nuclear fears are over rated if not ridiculous.

Again your point that Gen II was built the way it was because that was the technology available at the time and new technologies will have a different mixes of ramp rates flexibility, part load economics, life etc.

The same is true of renewables. 1990’s wind turbines had capacity factors of less than 18% and annual product of around 500 MW.hrs. The best new on shore wind farms around the world have capacity factors around 40% and annual product of 8-10,000 MW.hrs per turbine. New turbine designs are being released with 10-15% more annual production than those. Solar panels have increased from 80W to 320W in around 10 years while falling in price by a factor of 10.

Consequently if you have storage you can top it up/balance with wind or solar at a lower marginal cost than currently available nuclear. Hence the best low carbon energy system for the next few years is a mixed grid. In every grid there will be a different mix. In a few grids nuclear may get to 80% In most grids there will be more renewables. In some grids there will be no nuclear.

Every 5 or 6 years we can re-assess and select whatever technology is best at the time. You never know Lockheed’s compact Fission system or supercritical CO2 geothermal might come good

I don’t care, I just don’t want zealots of either side to hijack the debate. Even worse the FF lobby will use the disagreement between proponents of low carbon technologies to stall the transition and all our grand-children will be much worse off.

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Edward Greisch,

I never advocated relying on a single technology to deal with the intermittency problem, so your links are irrelevant.

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Peter F. – – Your link for the selected comments from John Rowe is to an anti-nuclear journalist’s piece, which I think is fair to characterize as “cherry picked.”

Mr. Rowe was realistically recognizing that denying recognition of nuclear energy’s carbon-free benefit will pose economic challenges to it in a static market awash with cheap gas and massively subsidized wind energy.

The financial impact is a key driver of decisions by people in the position of Mr. Rowe. Utility executives have a fiduciary duty to stockholders, not to society, to the future, or to the climate. The way to bend their attention is through limitations, either created by the market, or by society, e.g., though regulations.

The elimination of the emissions benefits that nuclear brings seems to be exactly what many institutional environmentalists want and celebrate. This is why it is hard for some of us who comment here to believe they really are concerned with climate change. Based on my own observation, I would say that, emotionally, they are concerned, but that many seem unable to accept the shortcomings of the analyses they present. This is, I believe, why their opposition to nuclear (despite disclaimers of the same, such as your own) is intractable in the face of what comes down to fairly straightforward arithmetic.

What Rowe indicated is that, if the market will not recognize nuclear energy’s emission-avoidance benefits, then nuclear is uneconomic in the 2012 environment (when the interview was done).

Although it may take awhile, this circumstance will hopefully change after Paris. Hopefully it will change in the US if the Administrations Clean Power Plan is sustained against legal challenges. If it doesn’t change in the US and across the world, then carbon goals will not be met.

Most likely the thing that would change it the most would be actualization of low cost next generation nuclear, something that environmentalists managed to set back by 20 years by eliminating the IFR development program in 1994. Pricing GHG might help, but making nuclear cheaper than fossil would seem the best route. For this reason, the focus on innovation is encouraging.

I have digressed. (Glad this is an open thread).

If anyone wants to take up Peter’s challenge as to “why” Mr. Rowe said the (cherry picked) things that Peter references, they can go here for a transcript of the whole interview:

http://elpc.org/tag/john-rowe/

Mr. Rowe, in 2012, identified three economic challenges for nuclear: 1) lack of overall growth (the US, like many advanced economies, has been de-industrializing and exporting its production of goods, and the associated emissions, elsewhere, and, finally, seems to be accelerating improvements in energy efficiency); 2) cheap gas (primarily a U.S. phenomenon, for now) and 3) subsidized wind, about which he said:

“The third factor is the subsidized wind — which you really pay for, and it runs whether it’s economic or not — that hurts. The wind really annoys utility people because it runs at night. At night, you have more than enough electricity, and wind just ruins the price.”

Another Q&A is also telling:

“EW: So you think the rule should be written to help existing nuclear plants that are struggling?

Rowe: We’re writing rules all the time to help wind and solar. One of my old friends in the utility industry said a long time ago that renewable standards were like Gresham’s law: Its bad power drives out good power.”

Mr. Rowe noted that institutional environmentalists might see it the opposite, i.e, they might view wind driving emissions-free nuclear off the grid as a good thing. You can find a lot of evidence for this inference in the comments celebrating closure of nuclear plants.

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Frank Jablonski

Your post clearly captures the issue and I quote.

“Mr. Rowe noted that institutional environmentalists might see it the opposite, i.e, they might view wind driving emissions-free nuclear off the grid as a good thing.”

Most of my ‘greenie’ friends while concerned about climate change are much more worried about nuclear and point to Germany as an example of “good” climate policy.

They are not at all interested in the fact that French emissions are just 40g/kWH (like most COP21 delegates), which is more than 10 times lower than Germany (500g/kWh) .

http://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/chiffres-cles-en

https://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/graphics/2015-04-28-carbon-emissions-from-electricity-generation-for-the-top-ten-producer.html

Or that German electricity CO2 emissions are unchanged since 1999 at about 350M tonnes annually despite installing 80GW of weather dependent renewable generation.

http://www.indexmundi.com/facts/germany/co2-emissions

If we are to reduce CO2 emissions in the foreseeable future we cannot continue to replace nuclear with renewables (Germany) or gas (USA) and celebrate this as environmentally responsible.

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Peter, your ask:

“b. If your solution to peak capacity involves storage why would you not at least partially recharge that storage with wind which is currently cheaper per MW.hr than nuclear”

Peak capacity can be addressed in a variety of ways, as you note (will not have that debate now).

If you are relying on storage, you would prefer nuclear because it is more dependably available to recharge the storage. Storage is useless if it can’t be recharged due to weather being dreary and still. Potentially cheap kWh are useless if they are not available when you need them. This is as true for a storage system that needs them as it is for an ongoing simultaneous supply-demand system that needs them.

An intermittent-dependent system needs more storage and more non-coincident (with each other) sources of energy. This triggers a need for more capacity, more storage, and more interconnection costs. All of these costs and the associated infrastructure also imposes environmental impacts, as well as raising EROEI issues.

Perhaps you might want to do the math on a system basis, and then consider how it is that diverse societies, where most people are neither energy hobbyists nor renewable energy enthusiasts, are going to underwrite and accept this kind of system, and why you, as a person concerned about energy and emissions, should want to bet the future on them doing so.

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David
Your estimate is technically correct, if you had a single generation supplier. However if you have a market based system and award contracts to build power stations a few at a time then the first ones into the market sign PPA’s with retailers, hopefully for all their output. Then as the later ones come along there is less and less remaining demand for them to share so no-one will build the last one because they can’t get enough contracts to get the finance to build the units.
The retailers have only a rough idea what the total demand will be in 7-10 years time and even if there is sufficient demand, increasing energy efficiency and continuing de-industrialisation will see energy demand trend down for a long time. The problem is, no-one knows the rate of decline. It may have some upward bumps but if there is a recession or two it may have some dips and then the guy who contracted to take power 7-10 years out may be bankrupt by the time the plant is built.
Even if you can forecast demand in 10 years, to make money out of the last few nuclear stations you have to not only forecast demand very accurately but what the peak prices will be for 30-40 years. Who is going to take forecasts like that to the bank.

Re fast ramping. Unless you can dramatically reduce the capital cost, ramping ability doesn’t help with the economics of an individual power station. Because 75-85% of the costs are fixed if you use ramping to run the power station at an average of 60% capacity the cost of power is about 40% higher than if it is running at 90%. The best case scenario for any grid without significant storage is an average of 60% utilisation. In my surveys of the US, France, Germany and Australia, everyone of these grids has less than 55% capacity factor for all assets. If it is all nuclear they will still average 60%. If it is 25% nuclear they may average 90% with a fair bit of load shifting, after that utilisation will fall unless there are very large investments in storage.

There are many fast ramping designs (eg. submarines) but all of those that have been tested or proposed, actually have shorter lives and/or higher cost per MW. That will in fact make the cost worse. It may save system costs, eg less storage and fewer regulation assets, but so far the economic cost benefit is not proven. I have already posted references for both China and India where they are investing in renewables at two to three times the rate (in annual energy capacity not nameplate power) that they are in nuclear. This is because they see nuclear as very useful for large residual loads but nowhere near as fast, flexible or cheap as renewables for the rest

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Edward
Demand is intermittent, trips on large generators are unpredictable, the system copes. If you care to look at data outside your usual sources you will find that wind and solar can be integrated easily and have more predictably supply profiles over minutes and hours than large generators.
Ercot studies indicate that the cost of backup for wind is half that per MW.hr generated than that for large thermal generators
http://www.aweablog.org/fact-check-winds-integration-costs-are-lower-than-those-for-other-energy-sources/

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To Tony

Thankyou for the link, I do try to read yours and I try to learn, even if others don’t. It is unfortunate that some papers are written in very safe turgid science speak and others fanboi style and it is often hard to discern the truth from either.

From the same paper Edward quotes

“The concept of balancing the net load with conventional generation is well understood
in the integration literature and power system operations. In fact, the NERC Area
Control Error (ACE), Control Performance Standards (CPS1&2) standards, Disturbance Control
Standard (DCS), and balancing requirements are based upon it. However, within the past year we
have seen two integration analyses that have attempted to balance wind and solar in isolation
from the remaining load. This means that when wind/solar and load are both increasing, a
conventional generator must decrease output to hold the wind and solar constant, but at the same
time, generation must increase to meet the increasing load. This does not reflect how power
systems are operated and greatly overstates the balancing costs of wind and solar”

So in the same paper we have an opening comment saying that integrating wind and solar is complex yet further on it says that it is much less costly than others have projected.

Here is a short article (from a pro wind site) about the costs of integration with links to other papers to support their argument
http://www.evwind.es/2015/12/23/nerc-report-show-increasing-reliability-contributions-of-wind-energy/55037
and a later NERC report than the one you have linked to

Click to access ERSTF%20Framework%20Report%20-%20Final.pdf

Here is another way of stabilising non synchronous grids
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/zombie-coal-plants-reanimated-to-stabilize-the-grid

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David

You have again confused my statements.

The current French nuclear penetration rate is 75% we agree. The capacity Factor on their nuclear power plants is 67%. See reference.

If the remaining demand is intermittent which it is from your very own reference at RTE then the Capacity factor of additional generation will be less than that of the existing base load generators. This is not word games it is logic and it is supported by the ZTE paper above.

My statement was that in a modern grid overall capacity factor for the total generation system cannot exceed 60% unless you have very large storage capacity. If you have very large storage capacity then you can recharge with whatever is the cheapest per MW.hr power source because intermittency is irrelevant.

To confirm my opinion every advanced grid in the world today has an overall capacity factor less than 55%

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Edward Greisch — As the wind waxes and wanes the contribution from hydro shrinks and grows. That is the balancing.

I’m not writing about ancillary services, just bulk power flows.

If a grid has little hydro then the balancing is accomplished efficiently by OCGTs or inefficiently by other thermal generators. Nuclear would be a good choice if there were a carbon dioxide emissions fee…

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