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That's great until there's cloudy weather (and/or a snowstorm) for an extended period of time. Suddenly, everyone has a much larger bill for that month. Also, w

That's great until there's cloudy weather (and/or a snowstorm) for an extended period of time. Suddenly, everyone has a much larger bill for that month. Also, what about all the people living in apartments?

acidburnNSA 7y ago
You're getting downvoted but you're right. Getting cheap energy when the sun is shining or wind is blowing is great, but we can't ignore the value of reliability, which skyrockets when it's in short supply. This is why all NREL and OECD studies into deep decarbonization with intermittent resources show grid integration costs skyrocketing above 50-80% variable penetration in electricity markets. E.g.: https://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/pubs/2019/7299-system-costs.pdf https://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/pubs/2019/7299-system-costs.pdf
- philipkglass 7y ago
  Whole-system costs should be modeled. Better modelers than these should do the job. Look at their Table 2 of cost assumptions. They show overnight costs for onshore wind farms at $2000/kW, 30% capacity factor and nuclear at $4700/kW overnight, 100% capacity factor. If those numbers were valid for the US, we'd already have a nuclear renaissance here and wind would have remained a small niche source. Texas and Oklahoma didn't build all those wind farms because of pressure from Greenpeace. New wind gets a Federal production tax credit, of course. Nuclear also qualifies for a smaller production tax credit. I think that the nuclear PTC and wind PTC should have been equal all along, but I don't actually think that would have changed much about the growth curves in the US. The main problem with new nuclear projects is that they are badly estimated and take a very long time to build, so they don't even reach the part where they can collect those tax credits. Nuclear needs more frequent builds if it's ever going to get costs and project estimation uncertainty back down to reasonable levels. The US doesn't have a political system that can really commit to a plan longer than 8 years. We couldn't commit to an American Messmer Plan even if a really pro-nuclear President and Congress were in office this year. It looks to me like small modular reactors, executed well, are the last good path forward for nuclear reactors. I'd like to see some built soon. I've been reading proposals for them my whole adult life.

acidburnNSA 7y ago

You're getting downvoted but you're right. Getting cheap energy when the sun is shining or wind is blowing is great, but we can't ignore the value of reliability, which skyrockets when it's in short supply. This is why all NREL and OECD studies into deep decarbonization with intermittent resources show grid integration costs skyrocketing above 50-80% variable penetration in electricity markets. E.g.: https://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/pubs/2019/7299-system-costs.pdf https://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/pubs/2019/7299-system-costs.pdf

philipkglass 7y ago
Whole-system costs should be modeled. Better modelers than these should do the job. Look at their Table 2 of cost assumptions. They show overnight costs for onshore wind farms at $2000/kW, 30% capacity factor and nuclear at $4700/kW overnight, 100% capacity factor. If those numbers were valid for the US, we'd already have a nuclear renaissance here and wind would have remained a small niche source. Texas and Oklahoma didn't build all those wind farms because of pressure from Greenpeace. New wind gets a Federal production tax credit, of course. Nuclear also qualifies for a smaller production tax credit. I think that the nuclear PTC and wind PTC should have been equal all along, but I don't actually think that would have changed much about the growth curves in the US. The main problem with new nuclear projects is that they are badly estimated and take a very long time to build, so they don't even reach the part where they can collect those tax credits. Nuclear needs more frequent builds if it's ever going to get costs and project estimation uncertainty back down to reasonable levels. The US doesn't have a political system that can really commit to a plan longer than 8 years. We couldn't commit to an American Messmer Plan even if a really pro-nuclear President and Congress were in office this year. It looks to me like small modular reactors, executed well, are the last good path forward for nuclear reactors. I'd like to see some built soon. I've been reading proposals for them my whole adult life.