Counting the hidden costs of energy

Sorry, this report was done by the Nuclear energy agency.

www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/reports/2012/system-effects-exec-sum.pdf

And it comes to the conclusion, that nuclear is better for the grid than solar?

surprise surprise!

Does anybody have a link to the whole study? the executive summary does a lousy job in describing the methodology.

i also have a problem with their definition:

"The report defines grid-level system costs as the total costs (on top of plant-level costs) to supply electricity at a given load and given level of security of supply. These additional costs include the extra investment to extend and reinforce the grid, plus the costs for increased short-term balancing and for maintaining the long-term adequacy of electricity supply in the face of intermittent variable renewables."

I also wonder, how a Fukushima type accident and the following loss of all nuclear power is factored into their calculations?!?

The Fukushima accident only destroyed 60% of the generating capacity of the plant. Reactors 5 and 6 could be expected to be returned to service if not for political interference and these make up about 40% of the plants nameplate capacity.

If you mean "on the day" losses... how will your magical fields of wind turbines and photovoltaic panels survive the huge wall of water that did in the cooling pumps at the reactors?

the problem is neither length nor difficulty.

The executive summary does simply not contain a good explanation of how they calculate costs. It is simply pulling numbers out of nowhere.

and the definition is highly problematic:

"The report defines grid-level system costs as the total costs (on top of plant-level costs) to supply electricity at a given load and given level of security of supply. These additional costs include the extra investment to extend and reinforce the grid, plus the costs for increased short-term balancing and for maintaining the long-term adequacy of electricity supply in the face of intermittent variable renewables."

The definition already declares extra costs for renewables. It does not do the same for nuclear.

I also wonder, how positive effects of a stronger grid are factored in.

I could not find the original study. does anyone have a link?

Per unit of energy produced renewables have received much more in the way of subsidies than fossil fuels.

Of course, it's a summary.

Because those extra costs don't apply to nuclear and any others you think do are more likely to only exist in your imagination.

Higher prices (i.e. a grid which could handle majority unreliable renewables will cost more than one tailored for majority nuclear, hydro or fossil fuels).

But it is not beginning time for renewable energy, wind power has been used for thousands of years and photovoltaics is older than nuclear power.

Yes it does and it shouldn't, but that doesn't mean that renewable energy should also get massive support.

Yes, I'm aware of the cost to them of unnecessarily shutting down nuclear power plants, I'm aware that they paid a lot more than they should have for their electricity, that they didn't have as much as they should have had, that their CO₂ emissions went up despite electricity demand being down and the extra air pollution has also killed more people than any nuclear accident.

Most of the cost of a nuclear accident is not from the accident itself, but from the fearmongering by the anti-nuclear movement.

If a grid can handle nuclear or fossil fuels just fine then I wouldn't call it bad.

Not that we couldn't benefit from a few HVDC upgrades, just that the option not to do it if the money could be better spent would exist if you use nuclear (I'm also sceptical as to whether grid upgrades could make renewables workable, as opposed to merely a smokescreen for fossil fuels).

If localised power production involved putting an SMR in everyones' basement then yes, it would reduce strain on the grid.

OTOH if it instead results in spreading out unreliable sources that can't be counted on then what you will find is that whenever a cloud comes in or the wind dies down that the places that used to be generating their own electricity will now need to be supplied electricity from wherever it is being generated.

A common fantasy of renewable energy advocates is continent wide power grids based on the conjecture (since disproven) that if you make your grid that size than there will always be somewhere windy that can export power when the other areas are not windy.

you are totally wrong. and to give you just a single example, here is a post by Anthony Watts who decided to get soalr PV just to save money.

wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/23/an-update-on-my-solar-power-project-results-show-why-i-got-solar-power-for-my-home-hint-climate-change-is-not-a-reason/

In short, solar pays out, if you have high demand during high sun output times. This is true in many parts of the world.

It is also obviously true, that a small addition of solar and wind will not harm the grid, so such an addition makes sense. (as both are cheaper than all other sources by now)

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But let us get back on topic: Does anyone have a link to the full report?

Her is my definition of a bad grid: It is a grid, that depends on a few power stations at few locations, which can be easily knocked out by a single catastrophic event.

The full results of my investigation will be in my full report, but so far i can already tell you, that nuclear is doing at least 10 times worse than solar is, under that definition...

Note that the article specifically states that this is only viable because of absurd subsidies for renewable power inflating that the entire cost of electricity in California.....

And because of smart metering, it says more about the evils of smart metering and renewable power subsidies than anything else.



Then why are people demanding enormous subsidies that are often several times the net value of the electricity generated to install such systems?
If they really are so cheap then everyone would be installing them.

There would be solar power systems appearing all over the place.



Any reasonable grid will not be disabled by a single "catastrophic" event, unless this is something capable of disabling multiple turbine sets at multiple sites.

Spinning Reserve in the form of pumped storage or quickly tripping industrial loads can make up for any reasonable fault condition.

Meanwhile you don't have to pay enormous amounts of money for this benefit, unlike with solar power.

That's a rather bad definition since it does not take into account waste that is not nuclear and the fact that non-nuclear waste is often (I'd go with usually) worse.

If you take all waste into account then nuclear does quite a bit better than solar.

BNC MODERATOR
To obtain the PDF of the full report, go back to the BNC Blog post and click on the blue "report" link (Now a new report from the OECD)at the beginning of the third paragraph.[/quote]

sorry, but this one is only the executive summary.

It doesn t really say anything about methodology.

www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/reports/2012/system-effects-exec-sum.pdf

The OECD report looks as though it could be pretty significant, but as sod says, more details are needed.
Among things it would be good to know, are how the storage and back-up questions are factored in.
Another is, whether any of the scenarios includes a total penetration of renewables (wind and solar combined) beyond 30%. On this, I've heard it argued that the real problems with renewables start to kick in strongly when the penetration exceeds 25%, and the table in Barry's post seems to bear this out. They don't go beyond 30%, and I'd guess there's a good reason for that.

sod : not so long ago you pointed to Germany's 5% solar electricity output last year as a triumph for renewables. Here you can see the result of that:
www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/klimawandel-deutschland-steigert-co-ausstoss-1.1609316
....an increase in Germany's CO2 output for the year.

...and while we're at it:

"i would argue the other way round: localised power production will reduce strain on the grid. this has to be factored in."

It would also have to be factored in that localised power production will involve lower efficiency and higher losses, which translates into more C02 per kwh.

The four grids in the USA and Canada are far from tree-like at the transmission level. At the distribution level ordinarily tree-like but there are exceptions.

Wouldn't want to plug something expecting 230 V into 1000 V so I'd assume this would involve having transformers or whatever at every home.

A solid-state cycloconverter could do that (it'd probably be implemented as a rectifier, then a DC to DC converter, then an inverter, unless the input in HVDC) though how much point there'd be is another matter.

Mains supply frequency as I understand (mostly from here) is a compromise between transmission losses (higher frequencies mean more loss), equipment size (higher frequencies mean smaller equipment) and light flicker (sets a minimum frequency if you run lights straight off it, these days better fluorescent light ballasts have their own higher frequency power supply and LEDs have rectifiers).

European grids don't tend to have that many pole mounted transformers, as our higher end voltage permits greater distance between the house's main breaker and the transformer, allowing them to be fitted in actual substations for the most part. (In the countryside you see pole mounted transformers but nowhere near as many as apparently exist in the US).

Either way.... it would probably become necessary to give houses three phase supplies as standard, even if no increase in delivered voltage is feasible.
Otherwise there will be too many large unbalanced loads from staggered car charging.