10 ms·

With solar and wind being so competitive on price (both per MW and MWh) I don't understand why there's not more of it. Wouldn't investors build massive amount

by ars 4y ago

With solar and wind being so competitive on price (both per MW and MWh) I don't understand why there's not more of it. Wouldn't investors build massive amount and undercut other plants? Is it simply because the capital costs are already sunk, and the running costs are still competitive? $100 for this is really bad, other energy sources are 1/3 of this. To me this spells the end of this project.

BuffaloBagel 4y ago
Dispatchable energy sir.
- kragen 4y ago
  conventional nuclear isn't dispatchable ramp times are measured not in hours but in days
  - wyaeld 4y ago
    Completely false Modern LWR reactors ramp at around 5% per minute. France & Germany use them for Load following https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load-following_power_plant#Nuclear_power_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load-following_power_plant#Nuc... Conventional nuclear is vastly more dispatchable than other fuel types
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      When capex costs more than other technologies plus storage, and it reduces your neutron economy and thus the life of your fuel it's just curtailment with extra steps.
    - pydry 4y ago
      Physically they can ramp down to 50% but generation is pretty much a sunk cost at that point so it makes the bad economics even worse. That would mean that you are paying of the order of $240/MWh instead of $120/MWh. For comparison solar/wind are about $30-40. Levelizing with pumped storage pushes that up to $60-$70. IIRC France and Germany almost exclusively use gas for load following. Even at current prices it's vastly cheaper than using a NPP to do it.
  - robocat 4y ago
    Incorrect. NuScale appears to be designed to be dispatchable - for example here is a simulated load-following curve during a day: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Example-of-NuScale-module-load-following-to-compensate-for-generation-from-the-Horse_fig4_295114246 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Example-of-NuScale-modul... From: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/295114246_Integrating_nuclear_and_renewables https://www.researchgate.net/publication/295114246_Integrati... The NuScale plant incorporates unique features that enhance its ability to load follow, either due to changes in electricity demand or variable generation by renewable sources on the grid. This is accomplished through a combination of the small unit capacity of a NuScale module (50 MWe gross) and a multi-module approach to the plant design. This design strategy provides a uniquely scalable plant and gives the plant owner considerable flexibility in both the build-out of the plant and also its operation, including for load-following. The key power management options of the NuScale plant for load-following operations, designated NuFollow™, include the following: • Taking one or more modules offline for extended periods of low grid demand or sustained wind output, • Maneuvering reactor power for one or more modules during intermediate periods to compensate for hourly changes in demand or wind generation, or • Bypassing the module’s steam turbine directly to the condenser for rapid responses to load or wind generation variations. One problem is that the US regulatory agency doesn’t like load-following - apparently only one nuclear reactor in the states does it. It is common in European countries to do some load-following on time periods of hours to 2 days (although like all generation technologies, there are limitations and constraints). A section about France on the topic: https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx#ECSArticleLink5 https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...
    - kragen 4y ago
      thank you for the update, this does seem to be a real difference between nuscale and conventional nuclear
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      If you're paying $80/MWh for captial and fixed O&M and $20/MWh for fuel and variable O&M, then you're still payiny 80% for the energy you don't produce. At that point it's effectively just curtailment.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    Not sure if nuscale is wanting to do it in the short term, but many of the SMR concepts include a thermal storage component. This helps build industry experience with molten salts and would allow it to be actually dispatchable (rather than paying for energy in the form of capex and fixed O&M and then just not producing it)
- epistasis 4y ago
  There are very few locations where renewables have high enough penetration for dispatchability to be the slightest concern for new additions. In locations with lots of renewables already, new projects are including storage, cost-effectively, which turns non-disparchable power into dispatchable. I think it's pretty clear that $58/MWh was never going to be achieved, and as with most nuclear projects, reality is 1.5x-3x of what the boosters promise. But even $58/MWh is not cheap enough to match the bids seen for dispatchable renewables+storage.
  - AtlasBarfed 4y ago
    And, consider that the new projects won't be online for 5-10 years, during which time year-on-year improvements to cost of solar and wind will likely continue to decline 5-15% per year. Nuclear projects are turtles chasing rabbits at this point, and the rabbit has head start.
    - midasuni 4y ago
      Nuclear was a great solution back in the 90s and early 00s. Not effective now - the cost in both time and money means it’s not worthwhile.
    - Manuel_D 4y ago
      Except where the part where the rabbit start saturating markets during peak production. Then further progress starts to crawl as less and less of the actual generation capacity is usable. At least not until a breakthrough makes energy storage feasible. The only countries that have successfully moved all or nearly-all of their electricity to decarbonized sources have done so primarily with dispatchable sources: hydroelectricity (E.g. Norway, Brazil, Albania, Uruguay) and with a mix of nuclear power filling in where hydro isn't enough (France, Sweden, Switzerland). All of those countries generate a single digit percentage of their electricity from fossil fuels. Nobody has decarbonized primarily through a source of decarboinzed energy source besides hydroelectricity or nuclear power.* Unless there's a storage breakthrough on the horizon, we'll still need to derive a significant chunk of our electricity generation from dispatchable sources. * One minor counterexample is geothermal power, but like hydro it's geographically dependent.
beefield 4y ago
> With solar and wind being so competitive on price (both per MW and MWh) I don't understand why there's not more of it. You need to be a bit more patient. solar / wind have been growing double digit percentages (from the top of my head something like 20-30%) p.a. now for some time. Just to compare, iPhone had never two consecutive full production years that would have had triple digit growth. And arguably increasing production capacity for energy infrastructure is more difficult than for a phone. So the 20-30% p.a. growth is likely the best we can have, and I'd argue even that is explosive. Given current growth rates, majority of electricity production should be solar/wind within the next decade or so.
- Gibbon1 4y ago
  California appears to building the solar equivalent of a 1GW nuke per year with no end in sight. Total electricity currently from solar is 26%. Likely to increase to 40% in five years. Lest one think that's just California being hippy dippy, Texas is on a similar trajectory.
- lostlogin 4y ago
  If we stopped buying all those phones, we might need less of those solar panels. It’s amazing to think how much power usage must be controlled by Apple. Any power saving they achieve on iOS has a hundreds of millions of units in the wild.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    ...there's a decent amount of embodied carbon, but a phone uses about the same amount of energy you get from a 30cm solar panel, or about two kg of fossil fuel over a very very optimistic lifetime. Nothing it does when it's on will really alter its total lifetime emissions in any meaningful way.
    - lostlogin 4y ago
      My point wasn’t that an individual phone will do make much of a difference, it’s that a saving made by Apple and pushed out to phones has a multiplier that approaches a billion.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
Renewables are limited in some areas by hostile legislation and in other areas by reaching saturation for non-dispatchable energy. There's also a paradoxical cost risk created by such rapid improvements because faster deployment and plummeting prices can mean projects started after yours could finish sooner and cheaper. In spite of this, PV is selling out as fast as it can be made, wind is being built as fast as it can be permitted, and demand is so high that prices decreases have slowed in spite of manufactuing continuing to get more efficient. Batteries are a bit of a bottleneck (flow batteries are lagging a bit, but getting there), but sodium ion is here next year and lithium capacity is increasing at record pace. Policy is kinda lacking in most areas for building out the necessary non-battery storage, but off river and blue field pumped hydro is picking up, and china is advancing the state of the art on concentrating solar (which is dispatchable over ~12-36 hours) and compressed air storage. Europe is also starting to build out thermal storage (which is dirt cheap in the most literal sense because it's made out of the sand that is worthless for other purposes).
- AtlasBarfed 4y ago
  That 150 wh/kg sodium ion going into mass production is going to be a revolution.

by ars 4y ago

BuffaloBagel 4y ago

Dispatchable energy sir.

kragen 4y ago
conventional nuclear isn't dispatchable ramp times are measured not in hours but in days
- wyaeld 4y ago
  Completely false Modern LWR reactors ramp at around 5% per minute. France & Germany use them for Load following https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load-following_power_plant#Nuclear_power_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load-following_power_plant#Nuc... Conventional nuclear is vastly more dispatchable than other fuel types
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    When capex costs more than other technologies plus storage, and it reduces your neutron economy and thus the life of your fuel it's just curtailment with extra steps.
  - pydry 4y ago
    Physically they can ramp down to 50% but generation is pretty much a sunk cost at that point so it makes the bad economics even worse. That would mean that you are paying of the order of $240/MWh instead of $120/MWh. For comparison solar/wind are about $30-40. Levelizing with pumped storage pushes that up to $60-$70. IIRC France and Germany almost exclusively use gas for load following. Even at current prices it's vastly cheaper than using a NPP to do it.
- robocat 4y ago
  Incorrect. NuScale appears to be designed to be dispatchable - for example here is a simulated load-following curve during a day: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Example-of-NuScale-module-load-following-to-compensate-for-generation-from-the-Horse_fig4_295114246 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Example-of-NuScale-modul... From: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/295114246_Integrating_nuclear_and_renewables https://www.researchgate.net/publication/295114246_Integrati... The NuScale plant incorporates unique features that enhance its ability to load follow, either due to changes in electricity demand or variable generation by renewable sources on the grid. This is accomplished through a combination of the small unit capacity of a NuScale module (50 MWe gross) and a multi-module approach to the plant design. This design strategy provides a uniquely scalable plant and gives the plant owner considerable flexibility in both the build-out of the plant and also its operation, including for load-following. The key power management options of the NuScale plant for load-following operations, designated NuFollow™, include the following: • Taking one or more modules offline for extended periods of low grid demand or sustained wind output, • Maneuvering reactor power for one or more modules during intermediate periods to compensate for hourly changes in demand or wind generation, or • Bypassing the module’s steam turbine directly to the condenser for rapid responses to load or wind generation variations. One problem is that the US regulatory agency doesn’t like load-following - apparently only one nuclear reactor in the states does it. It is common in European countries to do some load-following on time periods of hours to 2 days (although like all generation technologies, there are limitations and constraints). A section about France on the topic: https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx#ECSArticleLink5 https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...
  - kragen 4y ago
    thank you for the update, this does seem to be a real difference between nuscale and conventional nuclear
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    If you're paying $80/MWh for captial and fixed O&M and $20/MWh for fuel and variable O&M, then you're still payiny 80% for the energy you don't produce. At that point it's effectively just curtailment.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Not sure if nuscale is wanting to do it in the short term, but many of the SMR concepts include a thermal storage component. This helps build industry experience with molten salts and would allow it to be actually dispatchable (rather than paying for energy in the form of capex and fixed O&M and then just not producing it)
epistasis 4y ago
There are very few locations where renewables have high enough penetration for dispatchability to be the slightest concern for new additions. In locations with lots of renewables already, new projects are including storage, cost-effectively, which turns non-disparchable power into dispatchable. I think it's pretty clear that $58/MWh was never going to be achieved, and as with most nuclear projects, reality is 1.5x-3x of what the boosters promise. But even $58/MWh is not cheap enough to match the bids seen for dispatchable renewables+storage.
- AtlasBarfed 4y ago
  And, consider that the new projects won't be online for 5-10 years, during which time year-on-year improvements to cost of solar and wind will likely continue to decline 5-15% per year. Nuclear projects are turtles chasing rabbits at this point, and the rabbit has head start.
  - midasuni 4y ago
    Nuclear was a great solution back in the 90s and early 00s. Not effective now - the cost in both time and money means it’s not worthwhile.
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    Except where the part where the rabbit start saturating markets during peak production. Then further progress starts to crawl as less and less of the actual generation capacity is usable. At least not until a breakthrough makes energy storage feasible. The only countries that have successfully moved all or nearly-all of their electricity to decarbonized sources have done so primarily with dispatchable sources: hydroelectricity (E.g. Norway, Brazil, Albania, Uruguay) and with a mix of nuclear power filling in where hydro isn't enough (France, Sweden, Switzerland). All of those countries generate a single digit percentage of their electricity from fossil fuels. Nobody has decarbonized primarily through a source of decarboinzed energy source besides hydroelectricity or nuclear power.* Unless there's a storage breakthrough on the horizon, we'll still need to derive a significant chunk of our electricity generation from dispatchable sources. * One minor counterexample is geothermal power, but like hydro it's geographically dependent.

beefield 4y ago

> With solar and wind being so competitive on price (both per MW and MWh) I don't understand why there's not more of it. You need to be a bit more patient. solar / wind have been growing double digit percentages (from the top of my head something like 20-30%) p.a. now for some time. Just to compare, iPhone had never two consecutive full production years that would have had triple digit growth. And arguably increasing production capacity for energy infrastructure is more difficult than for a phone. So the 20-30% p.a. growth is likely the best we can have, and I'd argue even that is explosive. Given current growth rates, majority of electricity production should be solar/wind within the next decade or so.

Gibbon1 4y ago
California appears to building the solar equivalent of a 1GW nuke per year with no end in sight. Total electricity currently from solar is 26%. Likely to increase to 40% in five years. Lest one think that's just California being hippy dippy, Texas is on a similar trajectory.
lostlogin 4y ago
If we stopped buying all those phones, we might need less of those solar panels. It’s amazing to think how much power usage must be controlled by Apple. Any power saving they achieve on iOS has a hundreds of millions of units in the wild.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  ...there's a decent amount of embodied carbon, but a phone uses about the same amount of energy you get from a 30cm solar panel, or about two kg of fossil fuel over a very very optimistic lifetime. Nothing it does when it's on will really alter its total lifetime emissions in any meaningful way.
  - lostlogin 4y ago
    My point wasn’t that an individual phone will do make much of a difference, it’s that a saving made by Apple and pushed out to phones has a multiplier that approaches a billion.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

Renewables are limited in some areas by hostile legislation and in other areas by reaching saturation for non-dispatchable energy. There's also a paradoxical cost risk created by such rapid improvements because faster deployment and plummeting prices can mean projects started after yours could finish sooner and cheaper. In spite of this, PV is selling out as fast as it can be made, wind is being built as fast as it can be permitted, and demand is so high that prices decreases have slowed in spite of manufactuing continuing to get more efficient. Batteries are a bit of a bottleneck (flow batteries are lagging a bit, but getting there), but sodium ion is here next year and lithium capacity is increasing at record pace. Policy is kinda lacking in most areas for building out the necessary non-battery storage, but off river and blue field pumped hydro is picking up, and china is advancing the state of the art on concentrating solar (which is dispatchable over ~12-36 hours) and compressed air storage. Europe is also starting to build out thermal storage (which is dirt cheap in the most literal sense because it's made out of the sand that is worthless for other purposes).

AtlasBarfed 4y ago
That 150 wh/kg sodium ion going into mass production is going to be a revolution.