Post by peterdavies on Apr 30, 2016 5:21:07 GMT 9.5
WyomingWindProjectVsNuscaleLCOE v1.0.xlsx (24.09 KB)
This spreadsheet costs Carbon County, Wyoming wind power, delivered to California via a costed 730 mile HVDC line, plus backup. Backup includes solar (including allowance for overlap with wind) and CCGT.
Solar, CCGT and nuclear are assumed to be located somewhere relatively convenient in California and do not need long HVDC transmission lines.
It's not quite the Bonneville Power Administration David Benson would like to see, because it assumes a flat load. It also does not include redundancy for the nuclear plants (only for the renewables backup CCGT generation).
Columns have notes on the right which gives the source of the key numbers in each column.
The numbers in blue cells can be changed manually. Some have notes on the right to tell you the range of values the spreadsheet will cope with. If you start changing formula cells with white backgrounds you may mess things up but can always reload the spreadsheet from here.
Any arithmetic errors you find please leave a comment below and there will be a correction in a new version.
In summary, California can get the equivalent of baseload capacity in chunks consisting of around 60% from wind and solar, and the rest from CCGT, at a price comparable to the price of NuScale nuclear. The carbon emissions (excluding those from construction and installation) are around 70kg/MWh from this solution, compared with a nominal zero for NuScale and 320 kg/MWh for 2014 California electricity.
Lack of sensitivity to renewables plus backup LCOE to various tweaks
The majority of the cost of the renewables plus backup solution is capital costs and CCGT fixed O&M costs, and these are the same no matter how much is renewables generation. The only component depending on the fraction of renewables generation is the CCGT variable O&M costs including fuel, which are $53.6 / MWh (long-term averaged). So a reduction of 10% in the renewables generation will change the LCOE for the total solution by only $53.6 x 10% = $5.35 / MWh. For that reason the renewables solution LCOE is not very dependent on the tweaks to the level of renewables generation.
You could argue that the CCGT variable O&M costs (mainly fuel) are a bit on the high side, but the figures are from the US DoE and are an expected long-term average, not just based on this year's prices.
The only thing that makes much difference is dropping solar completely, which would cut out 10-20% of generation from renewables. But if you do that the solution would not get to the new California 50% by 2030 renewable portfolio standard agreed last year (before which it was 33% by 2020)
Comparison of costs between renewables plus backup and NuScale
The capital costs of both solutions are comparable. NuScale has higher O&M costs which more than offset the CCGT fixed cost plus the CCGT variable O&M costs added by the fraction of generation required after subtracting the renewables generation.
Other comments
A natural extension to this solution would be to cost in renewable hydrogen generation from solar PV around the 2030 timescale to eliminate the CO2 emissions from CCGT generation.
If there are any problems with the spreadsheet here is an image of the key cells (without notes, links, and discount table).
This spreadsheet costs Carbon County, Wyoming wind power, delivered to California via a costed 730 mile HVDC line, plus backup. Backup includes solar (including allowance for overlap with wind) and CCGT.
Solar, CCGT and nuclear are assumed to be located somewhere relatively convenient in California and do not need long HVDC transmission lines.
It's not quite the Bonneville Power Administration David Benson would like to see, because it assumes a flat load. It also does not include redundancy for the nuclear plants (only for the renewables backup CCGT generation).
Columns have notes on the right which gives the source of the key numbers in each column.
The numbers in blue cells can be changed manually. Some have notes on the right to tell you the range of values the spreadsheet will cope with. If you start changing formula cells with white backgrounds you may mess things up but can always reload the spreadsheet from here.
Any arithmetic errors you find please leave a comment below and there will be a correction in a new version.
In summary, California can get the equivalent of baseload capacity in chunks consisting of around 60% from wind and solar, and the rest from CCGT, at a price comparable to the price of NuScale nuclear. The carbon emissions (excluding those from construction and installation) are around 70kg/MWh from this solution, compared with a nominal zero for NuScale and 320 kg/MWh for 2014 California electricity.
Lack of sensitivity to renewables plus backup LCOE to various tweaks
The majority of the cost of the renewables plus backup solution is capital costs and CCGT fixed O&M costs, and these are the same no matter how much is renewables generation. The only component depending on the fraction of renewables generation is the CCGT variable O&M costs including fuel, which are $53.6 / MWh (long-term averaged). So a reduction of 10% in the renewables generation will change the LCOE for the total solution by only $53.6 x 10% = $5.35 / MWh. For that reason the renewables solution LCOE is not very dependent on the tweaks to the level of renewables generation.
You could argue that the CCGT variable O&M costs (mainly fuel) are a bit on the high side, but the figures are from the US DoE and are an expected long-term average, not just based on this year's prices.
The only thing that makes much difference is dropping solar completely, which would cut out 10-20% of generation from renewables. But if you do that the solution would not get to the new California 50% by 2030 renewable portfolio standard agreed last year (before which it was 33% by 2020)
Comparison of costs between renewables plus backup and NuScale
The capital costs of both solutions are comparable. NuScale has higher O&M costs which more than offset the CCGT fixed cost plus the CCGT variable O&M costs added by the fraction of generation required after subtracting the renewables generation.
Other comments
A natural extension to this solution would be to cost in renewable hydrogen generation from solar PV around the 2030 timescale to eliminate the CO2 emissions from CCGT generation.
If there are any problems with the spreadsheet here is an image of the key cells (without notes, links, and discount table).
