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Post by anonposter on Aug 4, 2012 16:49:40 GMT 9.5
It only says that PV will be cheaper if you ignore the negative effects PV causes on the grid and the cost to deal with those problems.
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Post by sod on Aug 6, 2012 6:08:52 GMT 9.5
again: you cannot factor something into the cost of PV, which possibly is not causing any cost at all. or if you can t clearly demonstrate, that PV are causing that cost. Or if it is extremely unlikely, that the users of PV will pay that cost.
How about their coal numbers. does it include a CO2 price, which covers all costs caused by the CO2? and how about nuclear?
again: people who support nuclear power have to accept, that there will be a significant amount of wind and PV solar power produced, when "lots" of reactors go online between 2020 and 2030.
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Post by anonposter on Aug 6, 2012 8:06:54 GMT 9.5
again: you cannot factor something into the cost of PV, which possibly is not causing any cost at all. or if you can t clearly demonstrate, that PV are causing that cost. Or if it is extremely unlikely, that the users of PV will pay that cost. If the power from renewable sources can't be relied upon then the electricity company isn't going to want to buy it. How about their coal numbers. does it include a CO2 price, which covers all costs caused by the CO2? and how about nuclear? Nuclear does include the cost of everything, decommissioning and disposal of the slightly used fuel is included in the cost of electricity (at present nuclear is the only power source to do that). Coal should be charged a carbon tax though figuring out what to set it to is another matter (though global warming isn't even the worst thing coal does). again: people who support nuclear power have to accept, that there will be a significant amount of wind and PV solar power produced, when "lots" of reactors go online between 2020 and 2030. The renewable energy bubble will probably burst around then, once that happens there won't be much new wind and PV being built. Of course the fact that subsidies for already operating renewable energy plants aren't likely to be taken away means that we'll probably have to put up with the damn things for a decade or so but as long as their numbers don't grow they shouldn't pose too much of a problem.
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Post by QuarkingMad on Aug 6, 2012 10:00:40 GMT 9.5
again: you cannot factor something into the cost of PV, which possibly is not causing any cost at all. or if you can t clearly demonstrate, that PV are causing that cost. Or if it is extremely unlikely, that the users of PV will pay that cost. If the power from renewable sources can't be relied upon then the electricity company isn't going to want to buy it. Nuclear does include the cost of everything, decommissioning and disposal of the slightly used fuel is included in the cost of electricity (at present nuclear is the only power source to do that). Coal should be charged a carbon tax though figuring out what to set it to is another matter (though global warming isn't even the worst thing coal does). The AETA report does not include decommissioning or waste disposal into the LCOE, whereas the US LCOE reports tend to. However the authors did note that this would increase the LCOE by $1/MWh. This is detailed in the Nuclear section of the AETA report. Sod: The current electricity price rise does account for the FiT schemes. The 18% increase in the electricity contract price in SA includes a 6.8% increase due to the FiT schemes for solar and wind. IIRC it's detailed in ESCOSA's fact sheet on this, there is a comment on DSA with the link in it I cannot find at the moment. I can recall it is there, somewhere.
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Post by David B. Benson on Aug 6, 2012 10:56:00 GMT 9.5
sod --- Existing PWRs can run as low as 20--30% of capacity. That is sufficient for grid flexibility.
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Post by Scott on Aug 7, 2012 2:28:35 GMT 9.5
Reactors are extremely expensive per unit of installed capacity, they make this up by running at a very high capacity factor. Running them at a low capacity factor destroys any economic case for them. This is true to a lesser extent for CCS, Biomas, Combined Cycle, and Coal.
I don't even know where to begin to start pointing out the fallacies in this argument.
Just because there will be a significant amount of wind and PV solar power installed between 2020 and 2030, doesn't mean that there will be enough to cut the capacity factors of nukes down significantly given that on our current path there will be a significant amount of coal and gas still running during these years.
And even if what you were implying were true, by using this argument I presume you're arguing that something flexible, with low cost per installed unit of capacity, will be required to firm wind and solar. Gas? Biomass? Factor in CO2 emissions in to that. Figure out how far Biomass can scale. And prove how is this preferable to a solution that's primarily nuclear.
One second you say that the effects on the grid cannot be proven to add to the cost of solar, the next you say that nuclear has a problem because it cannot firm wind and solar? Erm. It's either one or the other. Have you been paying attention at all?
What's needed is a model of the entire grid to model the entire thing.
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Post by davidm on Aug 7, 2012 4:52:00 GMT 9.5
Just so folks don't forget the elephant in the room, all the various solutions to the ghg accumulation problem, not even mentioning other serious problems, have to cover additional energy for an 80 million a year population increase PLUS massively substitute for fossil fuel production already here and we don't have a lot of time to do it.
Then again maybe there is some major carbon sequestration time buyer that will allow us to merrily be on our way as we slowly substitute for a coal plant here and there over the long term.
Incidentally I haven't come across one long term projection yet that has us using less fossil fuel than now by 2035, certainly not from the cutting edge Chinese. If what I'm hearing from climate scientists is right, short of a geo-engineering miracle, that is pretty much game over for anything resembling civilization, or am I hearing wrong?
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Post by sod on Aug 7, 2012 5:30:44 GMT 9.5
Reactors are extremely expensive per unit of installed capacity, they make this up by running at a very high capacity factor. Running them at a low capacity factor destroys any economic case for them. This is true to a lesser extent for CCS, Biomas, Combined Cycle, and Coal. thanks for this reply. I actually think that the economic aspect is the real problem. I have doubts that current PWRs can load follow at 20% capacity for a long time. (the french do it, but only with reactors at the beginning of a fuel cycle) Being able to follow the load will be crucial, if we see negative prices. Burning coal 8and that for money) would be even worse over such time, but running a nuclear power plant at high capacity also is not a clever idea. But the main problem is exactly what you pointed out. It puts financial pressure on a nuclear power plant, if it can not sell at peak prices (due to solar power) or not at all over prolonged times, because cheap wind power is flooding the grid. again: we should base our discussion on the paper in the original post. It says that nuclear will be one of the cheapest power sources in the time range discussed. we have to assume a scenario with sort of maxed out deployment of the two sources which are cheaper: PV solar and landbased wind. PV solar will produce 100% (or more!9 of demand during summer afternoons. nuclear power will not earn a singe cent at those times. and wind power will block some other times. so my question still is: do you folks think that nuclear power plants will be cheap enough to be viable under such conditions.?
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Post by anonposter on Aug 7, 2012 6:50:49 GMT 9.5
Just so folks don't forget the elephant in the room, all the various solutions to the ghg accumulation problem, not even mentioning other serious problems, have to cover additional energy for an 80 million a year population increase PLUS massively substitute for fossil fuel production already here and we don't have a lot of time to do it. Which means we'll need to build reactors at the rate of one a day, that should be doable provided we actually want to do it. Incidentally I haven't come across one long term projection yet that has us using less fossil fuel than now by 2035, certainly not from the cutting edge Chinese. If what I'm hearing from climate scientists is right, short of a geo-engineering miracle, that is pretty much game over for anything resembling civilization, or am I hearing wrong? Geoengineering probably will end up being required though as for civilisation, we'll probably manage (though the third world is going to have a harder time adapting). I suspect if we want to use less fossil fuels by 2035 we could do it without negatively impacting on our standard of living or holding the third world in poverty, but on the whole enough powerful people don't want that happen. I have doubts that current PWRs can load follow at 20% capacity for a long time. (the french do it, but only with reactors at the beginning of a fuel cycle) What about the US Navy? Being able to follow the load will be crucial, if we see negative prices. Get rid of renewable energy subsidies and you won't have to worry about them (the main reason for negative prices when a grid has excessive renewable capacity is subsidies paid for generating power without regard for whether it is useful, thus the owner of the renewable toy pays to have their power accepted (but less than what they get out of the subsidy for generating it)). But the main problem is exactly what you pointed out. It puts financial pressure on a nuclear power plant, if it can not sell at peak prices (due to solar power) or not at all over prolonged times, because cheap wind power is flooding the grid. The power company would be worried about the wind farm losing output or the solar panels getting covered by clouds so they'll still need backup, if a power company thinks that intermittent renewable sources are more trouble than they're worth then without FiTs they may just decide not to buy them even if the power is offered for free. Oh and the fact that the wind farm and solar panels don't always produce power (or even correlate all that well with demand peaks) means that they'll still be a decent amount of high-priced peak power for the nuclear power plant to make money off (and realistically many grids with high penetrations of wind and solar are going to be burning a lot of methane which is great at pushing prices up). Really, you're not actually getting rid of the peak with unreliable renewable energy, just moving it to different times (and less predictable times too). again: we should base our discussion on the paper in the original post. It says that nuclear will be one of the cheapest power sources in the time range discussed. we have to assume a scenario with sort of maxed out deployment of the two sources which are cheaper: PV solar and landbased wind. No we don't, not all countries will make that mistake and even in the ones which do it'll only be a temporary problem as the subsidies will eventually run out (to the point at which there may not be many left once nuclear construction gets into gear). so my question still is: do you folks think that nuclear power plants will be cheap enough to be viable under such conditions.? Get rid of renewable energy subsidies and they'll be viable (largely because then renewable energy wouldn't be viable enough to cause problems).
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Post by quokka on Aug 7, 2012 11:00:50 GMT 9.5
Sod's claims of problems for nuclear not being viable in a hypothetical scenario of max'ed out PV are riddled with assumptions. One of them is that there will be no storage at scale. This could be rather embarrassing for all-renewables scenarios and has the inescapable conclusion that lots of fossil fuels would be required to make the grid hang together in some fashion.
As for the economics of not running at maximum possible load factor, sensitivity analysis in the IEA's 2010 Projected Costs showed that the economics of solar and wind are even more subject to this problem than nuclear. While there is a free ride from fossil fueled grids this is not so serious, but it certainly would be with very large amounts of solar and wind and no storage.
Yet another assumption is that generators derive revenue solely in the market for kWh. This is unlikely as any sensible electricity market design will also include capacity payments of some sort if the lights are to stay on.
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Post by sod on Aug 8, 2012 15:56:53 GMT 9.5
Anon, just a few short replies. Could we please have a discussion based on the data in the paper at hand?
1. subsidies are irrelevant, if solar and wind are simply cheaper than other power sources (and that is what the paper says!). Killing subsidies could help slowing down the price decrease of alternatives, if all countries do it. many will not, and they will profit massively from the countries that do.
2. PV solar will not be deployed by a power company. People will put it on their roofs. land based wind power is also often deployed by communities or smaller companies. you have to factor these structures into your analysis. They will (in general) NOT provide back up for their power sources!
3. i am willing to bet that you will struggle to find a country with less than 20% alternatives in 2030.
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Post by QuarkingMad on Aug 8, 2012 16:21:39 GMT 9.5
Anon, just a few short replies. Could we please have a discussion based on the data in the paper at hand? 1. subsidies are irrelevant, if solar and wind are simply cheaper than other power sources (and that is what the paper says!). Killing subsidies could help slowing down the price decrease of alternatives, if all countries do it. many will not, and they will profit massively from the countries that do. 2. PV solar will not be deployed by a power company. People will put it on their roofs. land based wind power is also often deployed by communities or smaller companies. you have to factor these structures into your analysis. They will (in general) NOT provide back up for their power sources! 3. i am willing to bet that you will struggle to find a country with less than 20% alternatives in 2030. 1. Subsidies are a perk to invest in a particular energy asset. Look at what the reduction in the FiT on Solar has done to the procurement of panels in that industry on a localised level where the FiT exists within. I agree with the point in principle but in it's current argument it's not necessary. 2. Wind power in one of the most distributed patterns in Australia (S-SE sector) is owned by a select few energy companies; AGL, Infigen Power, and Banking trusts as an asset. AS has been shown on this blog and BNC site the Solar and Wind peak outputs do not match the morning and evening peaks. Solar misses the morning and evening peaks completely (8-9am, 5-6pm) and wind just misses these by a mere hours. That is the experience from SA. All the distributed solar grid does is smooth out the midday hump, but once the sun starts setting the evening peak is going to hit harder (steeper demand slope). 3. Probably look like (ideally) 30% renew, 20% gas w/ CCS, 50% Nuclear (Hydro if applicable; reduce renew and gas proportions). No argument there. Canada thinks they have the ideal penetration of Nuclear ~50% and we've seen once you start going beyond 30% with Solar and Wind (see SA and Denmark) you run into grid issues. AEMO note this in their Supply and Demand outlooks, and I believe they have a stand alone report on wind penetration and grid stability from 2011 too.
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Post by sod on Aug 8, 2012 16:27:32 GMT 9.5
thanks for your reply quokka. I do understand that the scenario which the report proposes, forces me to make many assumptions.
Assumptions about storage technologies are extremely difficult. By assuming very little storage, I am trying to err on the pro-nuclear side. If cheap storage becomes available, renewables should do even better.
i also think that there will be a compensation for providing reliable power in a 30+% renewable system. This brings us back to the load following ability of new nuclear reactors. can they compete with gas under such conditions? including the price drop at former peak times?
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Post by QuarkingMad on Aug 8, 2012 16:59:48 GMT 9.5
thanks for your reply quokka. I do understand that the scenario which the report proposes, forces me to make many assumptions. Assumptions about storage technologies are extremely difficult. By assuming very little storage, I am trying to err on the pro-nuclear side. If cheap storage becomes available, renewables should do even better. i also think that there will be a compensation for providing reliable power in a 30+% renewable system. This brings us back to the load following ability of new nuclear reactors. can they compete with gas under such conditions? including the price drop at former peak times? What is the base load of the system you are talking about? There will be a constant (there about) level of demand which can be filled by Nuclear, the French can load follow with Generation 2 reactors. It would be illogical to assume that a Gen 3 reactor has been designed with a worse load following ability. IIRC you can insert control rods to alter the rate of reaction and thus the thermal output of the reactor, isn't that nuclear science 101? I'm not sure intermittent wind and solar with peaking gas turbines will level out the variability in the market price. You can get wind over supply sending the market price into the floor, then swinging back up again when the peakers are ramped up. Any market experts out there? At the end of the day the only thing that will replace the 24/7 dispatachable output Coal has provided the Eastern grid with is Nuclear. Or if we don't care about decarbonising our electricity network Gas is a stop gap, but taking what has happened to the domestic WA gas price when exposed to the LNG market Gas becomes pricey over the long term. O&M will increase. Whereas Nuclear fuel has remained relatively steady in cost to Gas exposed to export markets. Which will happen to the Eastern grid once Gladstone LNG goes into full operation. Think about it, increased domestic demand due to coal to gas conversions, and exposure to the LNG market to Asia. Gas prices will increase, highly.
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Post by proteos on Aug 12, 2012 20:34:33 GMT 9.5
Anon, just a few short replies. Could we please have a discussion based on the data in the paper at hand? 1. subsidies are irrelevant, if solar and wind are simply cheaper than other power sources (and that is what the paper says!). Killing subsidies could help slowing down the price decrease of alternatives, if all countries do it. many will not, and they will profit massively from the countries that do. Subsidies may be irrelevant, but market structure is certainly not. All depends on how the producers charge the consumers. Feed in tariffs are also interesting from that point of view: they ensure producers get a firm price for the produced power for some time after commissioning. In effect, they are exempted from the sale on the spot market. Then there are two options: - everyone can be exempted from the spot market for some time after commissioning. The length of the exemption should depend on the life expectancy of the facility, to avoid free-riding and abuse of the system.
- no one can be exempted from the sale on the spot market
My point is this: you can not say at the same time that some form of production must comply with the realities of the spot market and that some other may not. That can only hold in the medium term. The subject of the report is also the long term price. After some time, the "new" forms of production can not be regarded as "new" any more and must be placed on an equal footing with the others. Two other points on the cheaper prices: - The reports gives ranges of values. Which means that when ranges broadly overlap, prices can be considered as similar.
- Some forms of production become cheaper in the long term, yet we can not wait until then to decarbonize power generation. It is all good that by 2050 solar PV is the cheapest form of production. But decarbonization should already be complete (or close to it) by then.
2. PV solar will not be deployed by a power company. People will put it on their roofs. land based wind power is also often deployed by communities or smaller companies. you have to factor these structures into your analysis. They will (in general) NOT provide back up for their power sources! After reading the report, it is only considering "utility scale" facilities. That means not roof top solar PV installed by laymen. Roof top solar PV is more expansive than utility scale farms. Feed in tariffs take this into account (see for example the french tariffs). That small scale generators will not provide any guaranteed power capacity is not certain. In the future, any generator may have to provide such a guarantee (hence the discussion about capacity markets). And by the way, it would incentivize people to develop storage or "managed consumption" schemes which are necessary for a grid dominated by intermittent sources (and by those dominated by nuclear, but to a lesser extent).
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Post by David B. Benson on Aug 13, 2012 7:51:07 GMT 9.5
sod --- I already answered your question (perhaps on a different thread).
To repeat, all Gen 2 and Gen 3 LWRs can operate down to as low as 20--30% of maximum rating. This is adequate for even the more extreme cases of the embarrassment of excess generation.
[Oops. It was this thread but not right at the end anymore. I'll leave this comment as I opine that the point is worth repeating.]
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