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Coal is being replaced as fast as they can build new capacity with cheaper sources. Coal costs around $100/Mwh. So does current nuclear (fantasy future tech doe

by beat 7y ago

Coal is being replaced as fast as they can build new capacity with cheaper sources. Coal costs around $100/Mwh. So does current nuclear (fantasy future tech doesn't count). Fracked natural gas costs around $40/Mwh, new onshore wind costs slightly ore ($42 or so), PV solar costs less than $60/Mwh, but its costs have dropped over 80% in a single decade so it's hard to say where it'll be in even a year, much less another decade or two. Existing coal and nuclear plants are shutting down before end-of-life because they're losing customers to cheaper competition. Intermittency for wind/solar are well understood problems, with a growing body of performance logs, which makes them very predictable (and "wind ain't blowing" is much less of a problem than you probably think). That makes cost modeling for storage predictable as well, and storage technology costs are improving as fast as production costs. This isn't magic. The math is very straightforward. As long as renewable + storage + gas is significantly cheaper than coal/nuclear - and it already is - we're going to see the industry shift rapidly in that direction. Is this a perfect, carbon-free solution? No. Is it radically better carbon-wise than the old coal plants? Yes. Is it significantly cheaper than the old coal and nuclear plants? Yes. I'll take two wins and a draw over three losses.

celeritascelery 7y ago
From your analysis sounds like natural gas is the way to go. Consistent, cheap power.
- beat 7y ago
  Except natural gas is still contributing to global warming, and someday we'll run out of it.
manfredo 7y ago
Your cost estimates are contradicted by a variety of sources. Almost everyone puts coal at a cheaper price than gas. That's why emerging economies like India are so heavily dependent on coal. Furthermore your estimates for nuclear are contradicted by real world performance. How is it that France's electricity is 20-25% cheaper than the EU average despite 70% of it coming from the purportedly more expensive nuclear power?
- beat 7y ago
  A variety of sources? Fine. Show your work. 2018-2019 vintage sources only, not something from twenty years ago. edit: Start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source Feel free to offer rebuttals of the numbers in there, with sources.
  - manfredo 7y ago
    https://www.lazard.com/media/450784/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-version-120-vfinal.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/450784/lazards-levelized-cost-o... https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/08/f25/LCOE.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/08/f25/LCOE.pdf https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.... <- Note that in this one, coal is only counted with carbon capture technology, which increases cost Coal is among the cheapest conventional source. Note that solar (other than solar thermal) and wind do not include cost of energy storage. Gas combined cycle (basically, a jet engine + a steam turbine heated by the jet exhaust) does beat coal in many of these estimates, but this is new technology that has only been deployed widely by first world countries. Generally, only countries with developed aerospace industries have that infrastructure to built thermally efficient gas turbines. Thermally efficient gas turbines need advanced materials and fabrication techniques like monocrystal casting. These figures are highly dependent on the kind of infrastructure available to a country. What's cheap for a country like the US with extensive gas turbine manufacturing is not going to be cheap for other countries. There's a reason why so many developing countries use coal: it's a much more low tech solution that does not require complex industry. If your claim about the lower cost of gas was limited in scope to the US and similarly developed countries, I'd agree, but I was talking in global terms. Many countries are sticking to coal because it's cheaper: https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/08/02/india-shows-how-hard-it-is-to-move-beyond-fossil-fuels https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/08/02/india-shows-ho... https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/08/22/asian-governments-are-the-biggest-backers-of-the-filthiest-fuel https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/08/22/asian-governmen... https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/natural-gas/100419-analysis-next-wave-of-asias-lng-demand-hinges-on-affordability-competing-fuels https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-ne... There are good reasons to move off of coal, regardless. Coal extraction is dirty, and it generates pollutants that are much worse than gas turbines. It'd probably be good policy to facilitate the export of gas turbines to developing countries.
beerandt 7y ago
Wind and solar are also killing millions of birds, and are likely affecting the local weather in unpredictable ways. Messing with turbulent boundary layer flow does not have predictable results. We just don't fully appreciate side effects of new technology until it's fully deployed. It took decades to realize that fish hatcheries weren't going to solve the salmon problem for hydro. If anything history should teach us to approach all new miracle tech with skepticism, especially when deploying it on a massive scale.
macspoofing 7y ago
>Coal is being replaced Wherever coal is replaced it is replaced with natural gas (occasionally with hydro and nuclear). >As long as renewable + storage + gas is significantly cheaper than coal/nuclear ... This is a red-herring. It wouldn't matter if solar and wind were free. We can't use them without fossil-fuel back-up, which today means coal or natural gas. This is also why natural gas companies are one of the biggest lobby groups for solar deployments. >(and "wind ain't blowing" is much less of a problem than you probably think) It's actually a huge problem. If the wind speed is too high, you can't generate electricity (due to risk of damage to the turbine). If the wind speed is too low, you can't generate electricity. But the elephant in the room is storage. You can always dump more and more money to over-provision your generation capacity (meaning that in certain seasons you would have a ton of generation capacity sitting around doing nothing). The problem is that we don't have storage figured out at all. >which makes them very predictable Yes as much as weather can be predictable. >and storage technology costs are improving as fast as production costs. To be clear, we don't have storage technology that can store enough energy to power a reasonably sized city (pop:~1m) for a few minutes, much less a modern economy for weeks. There is no such storage technology on the horizon either. You need natural gas as back-up. Maybe in certain geographic region you can build a pumped-storage reservoir (at a great environmental cost). Take a step back and look at the big picture. No region with a reasonable population is currently being powered by solar and wind even though there is huge amount of pressure to do so - why is that?

by beat 7y ago

celeritascelery 7y ago

From your analysis sounds like natural gas is the way to go. Consistent, cheap power.

beat 7y ago
Except natural gas is still contributing to global warming, and someday we'll run out of it.

manfredo 7y ago

Your cost estimates are contradicted by a variety of sources. Almost everyone puts coal at a cheaper price than gas. That's why emerging economies like India are so heavily dependent on coal. Furthermore your estimates for nuclear are contradicted by real world performance. How is it that France's electricity is 20-25% cheaper than the EU average despite 70% of it coming from the purportedly more expensive nuclear power?

beat 7y ago
A variety of sources? Fine. Show your work. 2018-2019 vintage sources only, not something from twenty years ago. edit: Start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source Feel free to offer rebuttals of the numbers in there, with sources.
- manfredo 7y ago
  https://www.lazard.com/media/450784/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-version-120-vfinal.pdf https://www.lazard.com/media/450784/lazards-levelized-cost-o... https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/08/f25/LCOE.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/08/f25/LCOE.pdf https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.... <- Note that in this one, coal is only counted with carbon capture technology, which increases cost Coal is among the cheapest conventional source. Note that solar (other than solar thermal) and wind do not include cost of energy storage. Gas combined cycle (basically, a jet engine + a steam turbine heated by the jet exhaust) does beat coal in many of these estimates, but this is new technology that has only been deployed widely by first world countries. Generally, only countries with developed aerospace industries have that infrastructure to built thermally efficient gas turbines. Thermally efficient gas turbines need advanced materials and fabrication techniques like monocrystal casting. These figures are highly dependent on the kind of infrastructure available to a country. What's cheap for a country like the US with extensive gas turbine manufacturing is not going to be cheap for other countries. There's a reason why so many developing countries use coal: it's a much more low tech solution that does not require complex industry. If your claim about the lower cost of gas was limited in scope to the US and similarly developed countries, I'd agree, but I was talking in global terms. Many countries are sticking to coal because it's cheaper: https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/08/02/india-shows-how-hard-it-is-to-move-beyond-fossil-fuels https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/08/02/india-shows-ho... https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/08/22/asian-governments-are-the-biggest-backers-of-the-filthiest-fuel https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/08/22/asian-governmen... https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/natural-gas/100419-analysis-next-wave-of-asias-lng-demand-hinges-on-affordability-competing-fuels https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-ne... There are good reasons to move off of coal, regardless. Coal extraction is dirty, and it generates pollutants that are much worse than gas turbines. It'd probably be good policy to facilitate the export of gas turbines to developing countries.

beerandt 7y ago

Wind and solar are also killing millions of birds, and are likely affecting the local weather in unpredictable ways. Messing with turbulent boundary layer flow does not have predictable results. We just don't fully appreciate side effects of new technology until it's fully deployed. It took decades to realize that fish hatcheries weren't going to solve the salmon problem for hydro. If anything history should teach us to approach all new miracle tech with skepticism, especially when deploying it on a massive scale.

macspoofing 7y ago

>Coal is being replaced Wherever coal is replaced it is replaced with natural gas (occasionally with hydro and nuclear). >As long as renewable + storage + gas is significantly cheaper than coal/nuclear ... This is a red-herring. It wouldn't matter if solar and wind were free. We can't use them without fossil-fuel back-up, which today means coal or natural gas. This is also why natural gas companies are one of the biggest lobby groups for solar deployments. >(and "wind ain't blowing" is much less of a problem than you probably think) It's actually a huge problem. If the wind speed is too high, you can't generate electricity (due to risk of damage to the turbine). If the wind speed is too low, you can't generate electricity. But the elephant in the room is storage. You can always dump more and more money to over-provision your generation capacity (meaning that in certain seasons you would have a ton of generation capacity sitting around doing nothing). The problem is that we don't have storage figured out at all. >which makes them very predictable Yes as much as weather can be predictable. >and storage technology costs are improving as fast as production costs. To be clear, we don't have storage technology that can store enough energy to power a reasonably sized city (pop:~1m) for a few minutes, much less a modern economy for weeks. There is no such storage technology on the horizon either. You need natural gas as back-up. Maybe in certain geographic region you can build a pumped-storage reservoir (at a great environmental cost). Take a step back and look at the big picture. No region with a reasonable population is currently being powered by solar and wind even though there is huge amount of pressure to do so - why is that?