22 ms·

It can make more sense to build new renewable capacity than run old coal plants

99 points by backtobecks 7y ago

mikece 7y ago
"[Wind and solar are] even close to being competitive with the marginal costs of running the coal and nuclear plants we already have." Is that still true without incentives, green grants, rebates, and tax credits? Because without all of that and with mountains of red tape nuclear still produces energy at the lowest cost, and without emitting any CO2.
- trianglem 7y ago
  Yes, the dream team would be a combination of renewable and nuclear.
  - hannasanarion 7y ago
    No it wouldn't, because nuclear isn't reactive enough to produce energy to match the extreme afternoon demand curves when solar capacity drops and demand jumps. To account for those rapid jumps in non-renewable demand, you need an energy source that can ramp up really fast on short notice, like hydrocarbon fire.
    - lostapathy 7y ago
      Apparently this is less true for newer reactors, or older reactors with upgrades. I'm not an expert, but https://www.powermag.com/flexible-operation-of-nuclear-power-plants-ramps-up/ https://www.powermag.com/flexible-operation-of-nuclear-power... Even if reactors aren't as fast to react as a gas peaking plant is, perhaps batteries will soon be able to bridge that gap. The economics of batteries change greatly if you only need them to carry the load for tens of minutes for reactors to ramp up, vs needing to carry the load until the sun shines again.
    - ianai 7y ago
      So make a big enough nuclear plant for those peaks.
      - namibj 7y ago
        AFAIK it's about Xenon poisoning.
        NullPrefix 7y ago
        Xenon
      - NullPrefix 7y ago
        Too expensive. Bigger capacity means bigger costs up front and runtime.
        ianai 7y ago
        How much more expensive? How much more capacity? I’d rather have way too much nuclear power than rely on any fossil fuels. If anything, energy demand seems posed to always increase.
    - FullyFunctional 7y ago
      Or deploy storage to make the curve smoother
      - Scoundreller 7y ago
        You mean I can “bank” A/C in the form of ice???
        namibj 7y ago
        Well, ammonia coolers offer cheap storage in the form of liquid ammonia. This applies to both absorption and compressor coolers.
    - mprovost 7y ago
      ...or hydro.
    - The_rationalist 7y ago
      Source for the latency of nuclear concerning spikes in electrical demand? > 70% of France electricity is made from nuclear and they don't seem to have the issue you claim.
      - bryanlarsen 7y ago
        Half of that 30% are natural gas peaker plants.
    - audunw 7y ago
      > like hydrocarbon fire. Or batteries and other storage methods. It looks like battery solutions could get cheap enough in the next 10-20 years to smooth things out and take care of storage for a few hours (see for instance http://news.mit.edu/2018/metal-mesh-membrane-rechargeable-batteries-renewable-energy-0122 http://news.mit.edu/2018/metal-mesh-membrane-rechargeable-ba... .. Donald Sadoway has some good talks on YouTube) But yeah, for days that happen to have less wind/solar, I think the best thing is just keep gas power plants around. The CO2 impact for that will be minimal, the power plants are already built, and over time you could replace the fuel with synthetic gas made from renewables, which would basically be another energy storage mechanism. Cheaper renewable gas is something we need to make the world sustainable anyway. The only unsolved problem is seasonal variations in colder climates. But those areas could import more trash and burn it (for both electricity and heat), like Sweden does. Norway has a ton of hydroelectric power, and is building more HVDC power lines to other areas of Northern Europe which will help with that area. Not sure what the solution for North America is though. But it's not nuclear. Having a nuclear power plant idle for half a year is the exact opposite of what you want. The plant is expensive and the fuel is cheap - if you build it you want it to run 24/7.
      - femto 7y ago
        AGL in Australia is looking to turn disused coal mines into pumped storage. https://www.agl.com.au/about-agl/media-centre/asx-and-media-releases/2019/july/mou-signals-next-step-in-proposed-bells-mountain-pumped-hydro-project https://www.agl.com.au/about-agl/media-centre/asx-and-media-...
      - akvadrako 7y ago
        No, the battery solution is currently about 10000x too expensive. Even building a 1 day battery for each geographical region would be thousands of trillions of dollars. Only some unexpected breakthrough could make it feasible.
    - NullPrefix 7y ago
      > the extreme afternoon demand curves when solar capacity drops and demand jumps Does the hourly schedule variate day by day or can it be predicted? If you can predict when and how much power you will need to produce then it can be ramped up slowly, I assume.
      - tofflos 7y ago
        The Nordic system operators are in the early stages of transitioning from a reactive to a predictive process. The schedule does vary from day to day but there isn't anyone there that doesn't believe it can't be predicted with an accuracy that is more safe, and economical, than the current reactive process. You can read more about it at http://nordicbalancingmodel.net http://nordicbalancingmodel.net.
      - hannasanarion 7y ago
        "ramping up slowly" isn't an option when the demand curve is changing quickly, because there's nowhere for that extra energy to go. Energy storage isn't really feasible, so all the electrical grids in the world need to match supply to demand 1:1 in real time. There are electrical dispatchers who are monitoring grid supply 24/7 and instruct plants on how much they are responsible for generating on a minute-by-minute basis.
        nerpderp82 7y ago
        > Energy storage isn't really feasible You couldn't be more Dam wrong.
        dredmorbius 7y ago
        Doesn't scale. Not enough sites. Mind, where it does work, it's phenomenally effective, efficient, and responsive. There are a few sites at which seawater-based systems might be possible, in which the ocean forms the "lower reservoir". These are dependent on suitable terrain. Matching terrain to consumption patterns is difficult: the Netherlands and much of Britain are sorely lacking. Some of the best potential sites are along the Balkan coast in Serbia and Croatia. Chile's Atacama Desert, along the Pacific coastline, is nearly ideal geographically, but is far from most use (North America, Europe, Asia). Portions of the US West Coast might be suitable, though would all but certainly face major political resistance for environmental impacts. And: working with seawater is complex from an engineering standpoint: it's corrosive and sea life has a pronounced tendency to foul large-scale water-handling systems, though this may be tractable. There've been several pilot projects, though those have since been decomissioned, excepting Rance in France, designed as a tidal power plant, though capable of working as a pumped-hydro facility.
    - nerpderp82 7y ago
      The power supply and the energy supply will not have a single solution. It is analogous to the levels of caching in a Von Neumann cpu. L1 will capacitors, L2 batteries, bulk storage is pumped hydro and other GWh energy stores. The duck curve is a smoke screen and should only exist for a region that doesn't have solar to the west of it. Those solar farms in CA should be feeding users a timezone over to the east. Any source can then feed into those stores, wind, solar, hydro. If your power solution is involves hydrocarbons, it should be a closed cycle.
    - 08-15 7y ago
      You're a victim of a common misconception. Nuclear reactors can ramp up and down as quickly as the control rods move. Check out the Borax experiments (from shutdown to full power in seconds) and the TRIGA reactor (from shutdown to gigawatts and back to shutdown in milliseconds). What can't ramp quickly is the steam turbine connected to the reactor, but that's more of a design decision than a technical limitation. The German nuclear plants ("Konvoi" series) can in fact ramp faster than the German gas turbine plants, because that was a design requirement.
  - grecy 7y ago
    > Yes, the dream team would be a combination of renewable and nuclear So long as you don't care how to dispose of the nuclear waste. But we'll be dead by then anyway, so who cares right.
- throwaway5752 7y ago
  Are you sure about that? You should look at the fortunes of the engineering groups McDermott, CB&I, and Shaw and how the cost overruns associated with the Westinghouse contributed to so much trouble for those EPC companies and Toshiba. Nuclear has two big problems: difficulty with costs of constructing new plants and currently completely externalized storage of spent fuel. The latter is poorly defined and understood, even though some people would like to give the appearance otherwise.
  - tefferon 7y ago
    is there any reason why we can't conceivably jettison nuclear waste out of orbit?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - tlb 7y ago
      Yes. Launch vehicles sometimes fail. They may explode, or they may not make it all the way to orbit and have to re-enter. Either way, this would scatter the radioactive material over a wide area.
      - wainstead 7y ago
        Indeed, to your point: https://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/10/science/groups-protest-use-of-plutonium-on-galileo.html https://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/10/science/groups-protest-us...
    - imtringued 7y ago
      Because there is no need to. The radioactive material wasn't a problem before it was dug out of the soil. It's not a problem if it returns to where it came from. The problem is that most government try to find an idiotic central storage location instead of simply distributing the spent fuel over many locations.
      - 7y ago
- reallydontask 7y ago
  Is nuclear completely without subsidies? Also some of the red tape, for nuclear, is there for a reason.
  - sunstone 7y ago
    All of the externalities of nuclear power are subsidized.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- tofflos 7y ago
  Not according to the article. Unsubsidized solar and wind are both listed as $40 while coal and nuclear are listed as $34 and $29 respectively. The article also mentions that increased solar and wind necessitates batteries but doesn't list a price for those. > "In the case of both utility-scale solar and onshore wind power, this rate has dropped to about $40 per megawatt hour..." > "With government subsidies, the average costs of onshore wind ($28 per megawatt hour) and utility-scale solar ($36/MWh) are roughly equivalent to those of coal and nuclear generation ($34/MWh and $29/MWh, respectively)" > "Third, in order to be able to use more wind and solar power, we’ll need to improve our ability to store that power"
  - bjourne 7y ago
    For nuclear and coal, the costs are for continuing to operate existing plants - not building new ones. Plants from the 70's and 80's will require extensive repairs and upgrades and if you factor in those costs, wind and solar becomes cheaper.
- keanzu 7y ago
  Mountains of red tape don't exist in the communist dictatorship of China yet they haven't broken ground on a new plant since 2016 [1]. There are fundamental economic problems with nuclear that prevent it from being the power solution we all hoped it would be. [1] https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612564/chinas-losing-its-taste-for-nuclear-power-thats-bad-news/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612564/chinas-losing-its-...
  - akvadrako 7y ago
    Then why does France have cheaper electricity than most of its neighbors?
    - pjc50 7y ago
      Because they built a huge number of reactors with state subsidy and then stopped? France is also having trouble with life extension due to cracked reactor vessels, and is unable to build new capacity cheaply - Flamanville is in project management trouble, like Hinkley Point C, and is projected to have higher energy costs than the existing reactors. And nuclear power is ironically suffering its own climate change effects, it's dependent on cool water: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-electricity-heatwave/hot-weather-cuts-french-german-nuclear-power-output-idUSKCN1UK0HR https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-electricity-heatwa...
- cma 7y ago
  >Is that still true without incentives Are you sure you are accounting for Nuclear's extreme incentives? Nuclear as an industry gets its liability capped to around $12.6 billion, whereas there are plausible trillion dollar accident scenarios. It is as if you got free insurance and only had to pay insurance on paying the deductible. The law was passed in 1957 partly because we wanted to subsidize nuclear proliferation and used byproducts from plants for weapons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear...
- bjourne 7y ago
  Almost all recent cost studies put the cost of wind and solar far below the cost of new nuclear power. See f.e: "The cost of generating solar power ranges from $36 to $44 per megawatt hour (MWh), the WNISR said, while onshore wind power comes in at $29–$56 per MWh. Nuclear energy costs between $112 and $189." https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower/nuclear-energy-too-slow-too-expensive-to-save-climate-report-idUSKBN1W909J https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower/nucle... "Onshore generation costs, at the upper bound installed cost of $2,000/kW, vary from $101/MWh at 6m/s, down to $55/MWh at 9m/s. At the median cost of $1,600/kW, the corresponding figures are $80/MWh and $44/MWh. At the lower-bound installed cost of $1,200/kW and a wind speed of 6m/s, the generation cost is $59/MWh, falling to $38/MWh at 8m/s. ... Apart from gas, wind now has no other competitor among fossil-fuel sources. There have been no new nuclear developments, leaving the UK price for its Hinkley Point C power station as a benchmark, at around $130/MWh in 2017 money." https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1455361/tipping-point-2017-wind-cost-analysis https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1455361/tipping-poi... "According to the US Energy Information Agency, the average nuclear power generating cost is about $100 per megawatt-hour. Compare this with $50 per megawatt-hour for solar and $30 to $40 per megawatt-hour for onshore wind." https://thebulletin.org/2019/08/the-false-promise-of-nuclear-power-in-an-age-of-climate-change/ https://thebulletin.org/2019/08/the-false-promise-of-nuclear... See also: 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... and https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation..... In the last report the cost for advanced nuclear is estimated to between $75.1 - $81.2/mWh and to $38.9 - $72.9/mwH for onshore wind.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    It's typical HN that the top comment is both wildly incorrect and completely uncited. So thanks for providing some necessary context. Worth adding that after this year's round of UK offshore auctions, wind power comes in cheaper than new gas and under a quarter of heavily subsidised nuclear. Despite subsidy and six proposed plants, the only certain remaining nuclear is Hinkley C. Five of the others have had participants withdraw, go bankrupt in one case (Moorside under Westinghouse-Toshiba), and the final remaining UK proposed nuclear - Sizewell C looks increasingly unlikely. Depends on the package and strike prices I suspect as it's an exact copy of Hinkley. EDF (behind Bradwell B, Hinkley and Sizewell using a Chinese reactor design) are busy accumulating a Shenzen style reputation for worker conditions and suicides at Hinkley. Even the majority right wing UK media has noticed enough to report conditions. The next auction round of offshore wind licences should see it easily come in under existing gas.
- lostlogin 7y ago
  If you’re factoring in subsidies for wind and solar, those for nuclear and coal need to be considered too. Also, nuclear might be low CO2, but getting the fuel and disposing of it is part of the equation too.
- mantoto 7y ago
  We still have areas in Germany where you have to test your deer meat. Who is paying for that? Guess who is not paying for
ctdonath 7y ago
My experience with utility solar is it’s getting competitive but not reliably so yet: https://twitter.com/ctdonath/status/1184138472988315648?s=20 https://twitter.com/ctdonath/status/1184138472988315648?s=20
thisisnico 7y ago
Oh, can I not wait to ditch Ontario's Power for my own Renewables. The costs are reaching extremes now. We have some of the most expensive power in the world.
- kbutler 7y ago
  Looks like Ontario's electricity cost is because of government interference, primarily overbuilding of renewables with fixed revenue contracts: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/why-does-electricity-cost-so-much-in-ontario/article33453270/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/why-does-elect...
- tekstar 7y ago
  Ontario power is mostly from renewable sources already, but yes it is highly mismanaged. You can see the hourly Ontario energy use by source here: http://www.ieso.ca/power-data http://www.ieso.ca/power-data One of the worst inefficiencies of the Ontario grid is that we run an abundance of energy during parts of the day, during which we dump electricity to the US at extremely cheap rates. If that electricity were offered at the same rate to Ontario residents (who are paying for it!) you would see residents retrofit homes with dual-fire gas/electric heating and other utilities. Or if we had a means to store that electricity it would cover the highest-use parts of the day (approximately 3 hours later) where we still fire natural gas to cover demand.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    Totally. Why am I burning natural gas when I could have an rPi connected space heater dial it up? Or push my freezer into deep-freeze mode. Or my water heater tank into super-heat mode? I already have a thermostatic valve anyway. Or have my dishwasher start whenever it wants between midnight and 6AM? All I can do is start now or in 4 hours, meanwhile these might be terrible times.
  - VintageCool 7y ago
    Is there a minimum rate at which they produce hydro power? That seems like a great option to spin down hydro power during those parts of the day, store the water, and then spin the hydro plants back up at peak load.
ericvanular 7y ago
Love reading this kind of news. As an aside, this is the exact type of content that is super welcome on the platform we launched in a Show HN on the front page today (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21472817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21472817). The url is https://collective.energy https://collective.energy if you're interested in growing your impact further!
zwieback 7y ago
Sounds great until you read the caveats, I think the general agreement is that choosing the best of the dirtiest sources is going to be the important decision facing my kids' generation.
Causality1 7y ago
I wish small scale solar was falling as fast, especially very small scale. It would be nice to be able to purchase a blanket-sized solar panel for twenty bucks.
0000011111 7y ago
I learned from Professor Vaclav Smil that while Wind and Solar are practical energy solutions in the United States population ~340mil. It is not practical in all regions in more populous countries such as China (population ~1.4 Billion). There are large regions in the country where Solar is not a good solution due to fog. And Wind is not a good solution due to lack of wind. We have a global climate system. As is such if the goal is to reduce carbon emissions in some areas Nuclear power is the most effective method to achieve this goal. Furthermore, moving China to non-carbon energy sources would have the largest impact globally. They use ~ 22 GigaWatts of electricity per year. Which is 3.6 times as much as the US which is the 2ed largest consumer of energy by country. http://vaclavsmil.com/ http://vaclavsmil.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici...
- ReptileMan 7y ago
  You could cover the arabian peninsula and sahara with panels and use UHV lines to connect to china.
  - 0000011111 7y ago
    I am all for that. I just think it is more realistic to first build nuclear power plants within 50km of every city with a population greater than 1mil people in China. I am not sure a there has ever been a UHV line longer than 3,000km? Efficiency loss only increases the longer a UHV line is.
- henryfjordan 7y ago
  This is surprising to hear. Here's some back of the napkin math that seems to contradict the assertion that there's not enough sunlight to power humanity: https://ag.tennessee.edu/solar/Pages/What%20Is%20Solar%20Energy/Sun's%20Energy.aspx https://ag.tennessee.edu/solar/Pages/What%20Is%20Solar%20Ene... They claim texas recieves >300x the amount of power consumed in the form of sunlight. Another source claims that the Sun delivers enough power in a single hour to power the earth for a year: https://www.businessinsider.com/this-is-the-potential-of-solar-power-2015-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/this-is-the-potential-of-sol... I can respect the fact that we cannot capture 100% of that power, but even a fraction should power the earth, no?
air7 7y ago
I don't understand the hype around wind and solar. Or rather I don't see how these technologies can ever be anything more than a minor player in the energy market: These technologies are extremely sensitive to weather conditions which means that other, more stable sources must exist and have "stand by" production cap to produce all the energy these tech won't under bad conditions. If so, what's the point? (I mean in the grand, climate crisis, scheme of things) what am I missing? Even in "green" countries, most of the green energy comes from bio fuel which is just burning young "soon to be coal".
- ryan_j_naughton 7y ago
  Energy storage will enable us to use only clean renewables. While the costs for energy storage aren't falling nearly as fast, they are still decreasing. I anticipate that rate to accelerate
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    > I anticipate that rate to accelerate Historical cost declines would agree with that thesis. Renewables will approach a price so close to 0 that the battery storage will be the dominate cost in supplying dispatchable energy (but still a lower cost than fossil fuels). Utility lithium battery storage is already cheaper than the most expensive peaking plants, and the cost model improves as costs continue to decline. https://data.bloomberglp.com/professional/sites/24/Capture2.jpg https://data.bloomberglp.com/professional/sites/24/Capture2.... https://about.bnef.com/blog/behind-scenes-take-lithium-ion-battery-prices/ https://about.bnef.com/blog/behind-scenes-take-lithium-ion-b... (A Behind the Scenes Take on Lithium-ion Battery Prices) https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy19osti/73222.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy19osti/73222.pdf (PDF: NREL Cost Projections for Utility-Scale Battery Storage)
  - bluGill 7y ago
    The amount of storage needed is massive. 1000s of hoover dams (including the lakes on both sides) for example. Batteries might work, but so far they haven't scaled that large.

99 points by backtobecks 7y ago

"[Wind and solar are] even close to being competitive with the marginal costs of running the coal and nuclear plants we already have." Is that still true without incentives, green grants, rebates, and tax credits? Because without all of that and with mountains of red tape nuclear still produces energy at the lowest cost, and without emitting any CO2.

trianglem 7y ago
Yes, the dream team would be a combination of renewable and nuclear.
- hannasanarion 7y ago
  No it wouldn't, because nuclear isn't reactive enough to produce energy to match the extreme afternoon demand curves when solar capacity drops and demand jumps. To account for those rapid jumps in non-renewable demand, you need an energy source that can ramp up really fast on short notice, like hydrocarbon fire.
  - lostapathy 7y ago
    Apparently this is less true for newer reactors, or older reactors with upgrades. I'm not an expert, but https://www.powermag.com/flexible-operation-of-nuclear-power-plants-ramps-up/ https://www.powermag.com/flexible-operation-of-nuclear-power... Even if reactors aren't as fast to react as a gas peaking plant is, perhaps batteries will soon be able to bridge that gap. The economics of batteries change greatly if you only need them to carry the load for tens of minutes for reactors to ramp up, vs needing to carry the load until the sun shines again.
  - ianai 7y ago
    So make a big enough nuclear plant for those peaks.
    - namibj 7y ago
      AFAIK it's about Xenon poisoning.
      - NullPrefix 7y ago
        Xenon
    - NullPrefix 7y ago
      Too expensive. Bigger capacity means bigger costs up front and runtime.
      - ianai 7y ago
        How much more expensive? How much more capacity? I’d rather have way too much nuclear power than rely on any fossil fuels. If anything, energy demand seems posed to always increase.
  - FullyFunctional 7y ago
    Or deploy storage to make the curve smoother
    - Scoundreller 7y ago
      You mean I can “bank” A/C in the form of ice???
      - namibj 7y ago
        Well, ammonia coolers offer cheap storage in the form of liquid ammonia. This applies to both absorption and compressor coolers.
  - mprovost 7y ago
    ...or hydro.
  - The_rationalist 7y ago
    Source for the latency of nuclear concerning spikes in electrical demand? > 70% of France electricity is made from nuclear and they don't seem to have the issue you claim.
    - bryanlarsen 7y ago
      Half of that 30% are natural gas peaker plants.
  - audunw 7y ago
    > like hydrocarbon fire. Or batteries and other storage methods. It looks like battery solutions could get cheap enough in the next 10-20 years to smooth things out and take care of storage for a few hours (see for instance http://news.mit.edu/2018/metal-mesh-membrane-rechargeable-batteries-renewable-energy-0122 http://news.mit.edu/2018/metal-mesh-membrane-rechargeable-ba... .. Donald Sadoway has some good talks on YouTube) But yeah, for days that happen to have less wind/solar, I think the best thing is just keep gas power plants around. The CO2 impact for that will be minimal, the power plants are already built, and over time you could replace the fuel with synthetic gas made from renewables, which would basically be another energy storage mechanism. Cheaper renewable gas is something we need to make the world sustainable anyway. The only unsolved problem is seasonal variations in colder climates. But those areas could import more trash and burn it (for both electricity and heat), like Sweden does. Norway has a ton of hydroelectric power, and is building more HVDC power lines to other areas of Northern Europe which will help with that area. Not sure what the solution for North America is though. But it's not nuclear. Having a nuclear power plant idle for half a year is the exact opposite of what you want. The plant is expensive and the fuel is cheap - if you build it you want it to run 24/7.
    - femto 7y ago
      AGL in Australia is looking to turn disused coal mines into pumped storage. https://www.agl.com.au/about-agl/media-centre/asx-and-media-releases/2019/july/mou-signals-next-step-in-proposed-bells-mountain-pumped-hydro-project https://www.agl.com.au/about-agl/media-centre/asx-and-media-...
    - akvadrako 7y ago
      No, the battery solution is currently about 10000x too expensive. Even building a 1 day battery for each geographical region would be thousands of trillions of dollars. Only some unexpected breakthrough could make it feasible.
  - NullPrefix 7y ago
    > the extreme afternoon demand curves when solar capacity drops and demand jumps Does the hourly schedule variate day by day or can it be predicted? If you can predict when and how much power you will need to produce then it can be ramped up slowly, I assume.
    - tofflos 7y ago
      The Nordic system operators are in the early stages of transitioning from a reactive to a predictive process. The schedule does vary from day to day but there isn't anyone there that doesn't believe it can't be predicted with an accuracy that is more safe, and economical, than the current reactive process. You can read more about it at http://nordicbalancingmodel.net http://nordicbalancingmodel.net.
    - hannasanarion 7y ago
      "ramping up slowly" isn't an option when the demand curve is changing quickly, because there's nowhere for that extra energy to go. Energy storage isn't really feasible, so all the electrical grids in the world need to match supply to demand 1:1 in real time. There are electrical dispatchers who are monitoring grid supply 24/7 and instruct plants on how much they are responsible for generating on a minute-by-minute basis.
      - nerpderp82 7y ago
        > Energy storage isn't really feasible You couldn't be more Dam wrong.
        dredmorbius 7y ago
        Doesn't scale. Not enough sites. Mind, where it does work, it's phenomenally effective, efficient, and responsive. There are a few sites at which seawater-based systems might be possible, in which the ocean forms the "lower reservoir". These are dependent on suitable terrain. Matching terrain to consumption patterns is difficult: the Netherlands and much of Britain are sorely lacking. Some of the best potential sites are along the Balkan coast in Serbia and Croatia. Chile's Atacama Desert, along the Pacific coastline, is nearly ideal geographically, but is far from most use (North America, Europe, Asia). Portions of the US West Coast might be suitable, though would all but certainly face major political resistance for environmental impacts. And: working with seawater is complex from an engineering standpoint: it's corrosive and sea life has a pronounced tendency to foul large-scale water-handling systems, though this may be tractable. There've been several pilot projects, though those have since been decomissioned, excepting Rance in France, designed as a tidal power plant, though capable of working as a pumped-hydro facility.
  - nerpderp82 7y ago
    The power supply and the energy supply will not have a single solution. It is analogous to the levels of caching in a Von Neumann cpu. L1 will capacitors, L2 batteries, bulk storage is pumped hydro and other GWh energy stores. The duck curve is a smoke screen and should only exist for a region that doesn't have solar to the west of it. Those solar farms in CA should be feeding users a timezone over to the east. Any source can then feed into those stores, wind, solar, hydro. If your power solution is involves hydrocarbons, it should be a closed cycle.
  - 08-15 7y ago
    You're a victim of a common misconception. Nuclear reactors can ramp up and down as quickly as the control rods move. Check out the Borax experiments (from shutdown to full power in seconds) and the TRIGA reactor (from shutdown to gigawatts and back to shutdown in milliseconds). What can't ramp quickly is the steam turbine connected to the reactor, but that's more of a design decision than a technical limitation. The German nuclear plants ("Konvoi" series) can in fact ramp faster than the German gas turbine plants, because that was a design requirement.
- grecy 7y ago
  > Yes, the dream team would be a combination of renewable and nuclear So long as you don't care how to dispose of the nuclear waste. But we'll be dead by then anyway, so who cares right.
throwaway5752 7y ago
Are you sure about that? You should look at the fortunes of the engineering groups McDermott, CB&I, and Shaw and how the cost overruns associated with the Westinghouse contributed to so much trouble for those EPC companies and Toshiba. Nuclear has two big problems: difficulty with costs of constructing new plants and currently completely externalized storage of spent fuel. The latter is poorly defined and understood, even though some people would like to give the appearance otherwise.
- tefferon 7y ago
  is there any reason why we can't conceivably jettison nuclear waste out of orbit?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - tlb 7y ago
    Yes. Launch vehicles sometimes fail. They may explode, or they may not make it all the way to orbit and have to re-enter. Either way, this would scatter the radioactive material over a wide area.
    - wainstead 7y ago
      Indeed, to your point: https://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/10/science/groups-protest-use-of-plutonium-on-galileo.html https://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/10/science/groups-protest-us...
  - imtringued 7y ago
    Because there is no need to. The radioactive material wasn't a problem before it was dug out of the soil. It's not a problem if it returns to where it came from. The problem is that most government try to find an idiotic central storage location instead of simply distributing the spent fuel over many locations.
    - 7y ago
reallydontask 7y ago
Is nuclear completely without subsidies? Also some of the red tape, for nuclear, is there for a reason.
- sunstone 7y ago
  All of the externalities of nuclear power are subsidized.
deleted 7y ago
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tofflos 7y ago
Not according to the article. Unsubsidized solar and wind are both listed as $40 while coal and nuclear are listed as $34 and $29 respectively. The article also mentions that increased solar and wind necessitates batteries but doesn't list a price for those. > "In the case of both utility-scale solar and onshore wind power, this rate has dropped to about $40 per megawatt hour..." > "With government subsidies, the average costs of onshore wind ($28 per megawatt hour) and utility-scale solar ($36/MWh) are roughly equivalent to those of coal and nuclear generation ($34/MWh and $29/MWh, respectively)" > "Third, in order to be able to use more wind and solar power, we’ll need to improve our ability to store that power"
- bjourne 7y ago
  For nuclear and coal, the costs are for continuing to operate existing plants - not building new ones. Plants from the 70's and 80's will require extensive repairs and upgrades and if you factor in those costs, wind and solar becomes cheaper.
keanzu 7y ago
Mountains of red tape don't exist in the communist dictatorship of China yet they haven't broken ground on a new plant since 2016 [1]. There are fundamental economic problems with nuclear that prevent it from being the power solution we all hoped it would be. [1] https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612564/chinas-losing-its-taste-for-nuclear-power-thats-bad-news/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612564/chinas-losing-its-...
- akvadrako 7y ago
  Then why does France have cheaper electricity than most of its neighbors?
  - pjc50 7y ago
    Because they built a huge number of reactors with state subsidy and then stopped? France is also having trouble with life extension due to cracked reactor vessels, and is unable to build new capacity cheaply - Flamanville is in project management trouble, like Hinkley Point C, and is projected to have higher energy costs than the existing reactors. And nuclear power is ironically suffering its own climate change effects, it's dependent on cool water: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-electricity-heatwave/hot-weather-cuts-french-german-nuclear-power-output-idUSKCN1UK0HR https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-electricity-heatwa...
cma 7y ago
>Is that still true without incentives Are you sure you are accounting for Nuclear's extreme incentives? Nuclear as an industry gets its liability capped to around $12.6 billion, whereas there are plausible trillion dollar accident scenarios. It is as if you got free insurance and only had to pay insurance on paying the deductible. The law was passed in 1957 partly because we wanted to subsidize nuclear proliferation and used byproducts from plants for weapons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear...
bjourne 7y ago
Almost all recent cost studies put the cost of wind and solar far below the cost of new nuclear power. See f.e: "The cost of generating solar power ranges from $36 to $44 per megawatt hour (MWh), the WNISR said, while onshore wind power comes in at $29–$56 per MWh. Nuclear energy costs between $112 and $189." https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower/nuclear-energy-too-slow-too-expensive-to-save-climate-report-idUSKBN1W909J https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower/nucle... "Onshore generation costs, at the upper bound installed cost of $2,000/kW, vary from $101/MWh at 6m/s, down to $55/MWh at 9m/s. At the median cost of $1,600/kW, the corresponding figures are $80/MWh and $44/MWh. At the lower-bound installed cost of $1,200/kW and a wind speed of 6m/s, the generation cost is $59/MWh, falling to $38/MWh at 8m/s. ... Apart from gas, wind now has no other competitor among fossil-fuel sources. There have been no new nuclear developments, leaving the UK price for its Hinkley Point C power station as a benchmark, at around $130/MWh in 2017 money." https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1455361/tipping-point-2017-wind-cost-analysis https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1455361/tipping-poi... "According to the US Energy Information Agency, the average nuclear power generating cost is about $100 per megawatt-hour. Compare this with $50 per megawatt-hour for solar and $30 to $40 per megawatt-hour for onshore wind." https://thebulletin.org/2019/08/the-false-promise-of-nuclear-power-in-an-age-of-climate-change/ https://thebulletin.org/2019/08/the-false-promise-of-nuclear... See also: 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... and https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation..... In the last report the cost for advanced nuclear is estimated to between $75.1 - $81.2/mWh and to $38.9 - $72.9/mwH for onshore wind.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  It's typical HN that the top comment is both wildly incorrect and completely uncited. So thanks for providing some necessary context. Worth adding that after this year's round of UK offshore auctions, wind power comes in cheaper than new gas and under a quarter of heavily subsidised nuclear. Despite subsidy and six proposed plants, the only certain remaining nuclear is Hinkley C. Five of the others have had participants withdraw, go bankrupt in one case (Moorside under Westinghouse-Toshiba), and the final remaining UK proposed nuclear - Sizewell C looks increasingly unlikely. Depends on the package and strike prices I suspect as it's an exact copy of Hinkley. EDF (behind Bradwell B, Hinkley and Sizewell using a Chinese reactor design) are busy accumulating a Shenzen style reputation for worker conditions and suicides at Hinkley. Even the majority right wing UK media has noticed enough to report conditions. The next auction round of offshore wind licences should see it easily come in under existing gas.
lostlogin 7y ago
If you’re factoring in subsidies for wind and solar, those for nuclear and coal need to be considered too. Also, nuclear might be low CO2, but getting the fuel and disposing of it is part of the equation too.
mantoto 7y ago
We still have areas in Germany where you have to test your deer meat. Who is paying for that? Guess who is not paying for

ctdonath 7y ago

My experience with utility solar is it’s getting competitive but not reliably so yet: https://twitter.com/ctdonath/status/1184138472988315648?s=20 https://twitter.com/ctdonath/status/1184138472988315648?s=20

thisisnico 7y ago

Oh, can I not wait to ditch Ontario's Power for my own Renewables. The costs are reaching extremes now. We have some of the most expensive power in the world.

kbutler 7y ago
Looks like Ontario's electricity cost is because of government interference, primarily overbuilding of renewables with fixed revenue contracts: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/why-does-electricity-cost-so-much-in-ontario/article33453270/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/why-does-elect...
tekstar 7y ago
Ontario power is mostly from renewable sources already, but yes it is highly mismanaged. You can see the hourly Ontario energy use by source here: http://www.ieso.ca/power-data http://www.ieso.ca/power-data One of the worst inefficiencies of the Ontario grid is that we run an abundance of energy during parts of the day, during which we dump electricity to the US at extremely cheap rates. If that electricity were offered at the same rate to Ontario residents (who are paying for it!) you would see residents retrofit homes with dual-fire gas/electric heating and other utilities. Or if we had a means to store that electricity it would cover the highest-use parts of the day (approximately 3 hours later) where we still fire natural gas to cover demand.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  Totally. Why am I burning natural gas when I could have an rPi connected space heater dial it up? Or push my freezer into deep-freeze mode. Or my water heater tank into super-heat mode? I already have a thermostatic valve anyway. Or have my dishwasher start whenever it wants between midnight and 6AM? All I can do is start now or in 4 hours, meanwhile these might be terrible times.
- VintageCool 7y ago
  Is there a minimum rate at which they produce hydro power? That seems like a great option to spin down hydro power during those parts of the day, store the water, and then spin the hydro plants back up at peak load.

ericvanular 7y ago

Love reading this kind of news. As an aside, this is the exact type of content that is super welcome on the platform we launched in a Show HN on the front page today (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21472817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21472817). The url is https://collective.energy https://collective.energy if you're interested in growing your impact further!

zwieback 7y ago

Sounds great until you read the caveats, I think the general agreement is that choosing the best of the dirtiest sources is going to be the important decision facing my kids' generation.

Causality1 7y ago

I wish small scale solar was falling as fast, especially very small scale. It would be nice to be able to purchase a blanket-sized solar panel for twenty bucks.

0000011111 7y ago

I learned from Professor Vaclav Smil that while Wind and Solar are practical energy solutions in the United States population ~340mil. It is not practical in all regions in more populous countries such as China (population ~1.4 Billion). There are large regions in the country where Solar is not a good solution due to fog. And Wind is not a good solution due to lack of wind. We have a global climate system. As is such if the goal is to reduce carbon emissions in some areas Nuclear power is the most effective method to achieve this goal. Furthermore, moving China to non-carbon energy sources would have the largest impact globally. They use ~ 22 GigaWatts of electricity per year. Which is 3.6 times as much as the US which is the 2ed largest consumer of energy by country. http://vaclavsmil.com/ http://vaclavsmil.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici...

ReptileMan 7y ago
You could cover the arabian peninsula and sahara with panels and use UHV lines to connect to china.
- 0000011111 7y ago
  I am all for that. I just think it is more realistic to first build nuclear power plants within 50km of every city with a population greater than 1mil people in China. I am not sure a there has ever been a UHV line longer than 3,000km? Efficiency loss only increases the longer a UHV line is.
henryfjordan 7y ago
This is surprising to hear. Here's some back of the napkin math that seems to contradict the assertion that there's not enough sunlight to power humanity: https://ag.tennessee.edu/solar/Pages/What%20Is%20Solar%20Energy/Sun's%20Energy.aspx https://ag.tennessee.edu/solar/Pages/What%20Is%20Solar%20Ene... They claim texas recieves >300x the amount of power consumed in the form of sunlight. Another source claims that the Sun delivers enough power in a single hour to power the earth for a year: https://www.businessinsider.com/this-is-the-potential-of-solar-power-2015-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/this-is-the-potential-of-sol... I can respect the fact that we cannot capture 100% of that power, but even a fraction should power the earth, no?

air7 7y ago

I don't understand the hype around wind and solar. Or rather I don't see how these technologies can ever be anything more than a minor player in the energy market: These technologies are extremely sensitive to weather conditions which means that other, more stable sources must exist and have "stand by" production cap to produce all the energy these tech won't under bad conditions. If so, what's the point? (I mean in the grand, climate crisis, scheme of things) what am I missing? Even in "green" countries, most of the green energy comes from bio fuel which is just burning young "soon to be coal".

ryan_j_naughton 7y ago
Energy storage will enable us to use only clean renewables. While the costs for energy storage aren't falling nearly as fast, they are still decreasing. I anticipate that rate to accelerate
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  > I anticipate that rate to accelerate Historical cost declines would agree with that thesis. Renewables will approach a price so close to 0 that the battery storage will be the dominate cost in supplying dispatchable energy (but still a lower cost than fossil fuels). Utility lithium battery storage is already cheaper than the most expensive peaking plants, and the cost model improves as costs continue to decline. https://data.bloomberglp.com/professional/sites/24/Capture2.jpg https://data.bloomberglp.com/professional/sites/24/Capture2.... https://about.bnef.com/blog/behind-scenes-take-lithium-ion-battery-prices/ https://about.bnef.com/blog/behind-scenes-take-lithium-ion-b... (A Behind the Scenes Take on Lithium-ion Battery Prices) https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy19osti/73222.pdf https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy19osti/73222.pdf (PDF: NREL Cost Projections for Utility-Scale Battery Storage)
- bluGill 7y ago
  The amount of storage needed is massive. 1000s of hoover dams (including the lakes on both sides) for example. Batteries might work, but so far they haven't scaled that large.