Wind and Solar vs Coal, Gasoline, Nuclear

[Hillhater]

Batteries + solar for homes and businesses - this will happen regardless of initiatives or subsidies. There's 30% of the demand taken care of in ~30 years.

..really, ? That 30% means 100% domestic uptake ...Everybody investing in in solar and batteries for their home ?
Even though 60% of homes are rented ?...so landlords are going to put another $20k or so into each property ?
Must be a different breed of landlord in the pipeline !
And those 40% of home owners,...how many are prepared to cash up or remortgage for something they dont HAVE to do ?
And even those that are willing to, how many have a suitable roof space, or yard space, that is not shade affected to render the solar totally non viable ?

....Large scale wind and solar + batteries for output levelling and peak response. This will cover about 30% to 50% of industrial demand, leaving about another 40% or power from other sources.
Pumped storage for peak response and creation of inertia. This pushes the intermittent sources well into the evening.....

Even ignoring the peaks, you still need an 18-20 GW minimum base load to keep industry, hospitals, infrastructure etc operating continuously through the night....thats going to take a lot of batteries , pumped hydro, and luck .
The scale of this is enormous, and you seem to ignor or simply accept that the hundreds of billions of dollars will just be available !

.....(Eventually) nuclear reactors for base load. These will take at least 15 years to become acceptable, and another 15 years to be built. So the power is switched on in 30 years time.....
......Gas and coal plants will continue operating in Australia for another 35 years, so we will have some spare TWh up our sleeves..

If we can get Nuclear working and accepted, why bother with the hundreds of billions of dollars, for all the previous solar , hydro pumping and batteries will cost ?...especially as most of it will be junk by then and will have destroyed the economy in the process.

......I remember when my parent's put solar on their house in the bush and it cost $10 a watt. People were saying it was clearly un-viable and could never work on a large scale. Now one in four homes have at least 1.3 kW on their roof. It was subsidised, for sure. But so was every coal and gas plant in the country (only to be sold to the private sector for a song, and not used properly due to the AEMO's structure).

Australia will have a huge renewable component in its energy mix. It's going to happen and it will be paid for by those who want it. If you don't like it, vote them out. But so far it's a pretty compelling case.

Maybe WA coast is different . But over here i doubt there is 1 in 10 homes with any solar, and obviously even fewer with batteries .financially its currently a non starter (15-+ yr payback ...if ever )
And incidentally, the renewables "RET" is what is driving the uptake currently,...and also directly driving up the cost of electricity to EVERY consumer even those who dont have or want it...pensioners, cash poor, etc
Any thing that needs power to produce (practically everything !) will subsequently cost more as those increased power costs are passed on, and much of the profit from this is skimmed off to those overseas investors and distributors who own those power assets.
So just consider that your solar is contributing to those folks who can no longer afford to keep the heating on in winter or the aircon on in schools during the summer !

 

[jonescg]

I hope to look back at this post in 30 years and see how much of it came true. I think we'll both be surprised.

 

[billvon]

If we can get Nuclear working and accepted, why bother with the hundreds of billions of dollars, for all the previous solar , hydro pumping and batteries will cost ?...especially as most of it will be junk by then and will have destroyed the economy in the process.

Money. Solar is just plain cheaper than nuclear - and a lot cleaner.

The federal government is currently trying to save a single reactor in Georgia by throwing loan guarantees at it. The government is currently on the hook for $10 billion for a project that is already billions over budget and years behind schedule. A similar project collapsed in South Carolina after the utility spent almost $10 billion.

So after over $20 billion we might get a reactor working in a few years. Then we get to spend the money required to staff, maintain and fuel it - and safely dispose of the wastes, something no one has a good plan for yet other than "store it at the plant forever." (Which in itself is already causing problems at other reactors.) If you ignore the construction costs, and just add up the O+M plus fuel, you end up spending about 1.9 cents/kwhr - and currently you can get utility scale solar for about 2.4 cents/kwhr INCLUDING construction costs. And that's dropping fast.

(https://atomicinsights.com/nuclear-energy-is-cheap-and-disruptive-controlling-the-initial-cost-of-nuclear-power-plants-is-a-solvable-problem/)
(https://cleantechnica.com/2016/09/20/lowest-ever-solar-price-bid-2-42%C2%A2kwh-dropped-abu-dhabi-jinkosolar-marubeni-score/)

So utilities go for the cheap/clean option.

So just consider that your solar is contributing to those folks who can no longer afford to keep the heating on in winter or the aircon on in schools during the summer !

Around here, my solar is helping keep my neighbor's AC on in the summer - because that's where the power is used. Let's all hope local utilities don't try to install nuclear - it will drive those neighbors into the poorhouse.

 

[Hillhater]

If we can get Nuclear working and accepted, why bother with the hundreds of billions of dollars, for all the previous solar , hydro pumping and batteries will cost ?...especially as most of it will be junk by then and will have destroyed the economy in the process.

Money. Solar is just plain cheaper than nuclear - and a lot cleaner.

Cheaper ?....do you know that Bill, or is it something you have been told/ read on the net ?
Have you tried to run the numbers ?..you may get a surprise.

......If you ignore the construction costs, and just add up the O+M plus fuel, you end up spending about 1.9 cents/kwhr - and currently you can get utility scale solar for about 2.4 cents/kwhr INCLUDING construction costs. And that's dropping fast.....

I have a hard time believing these quoted "contract" costs that are spruked in the media.
But one of the most reliable sources for data is the eia.gov site who collect and analyse all available data.
They clearly state the LCOE cost of new installed Nuclear power at $99.1/MWh, And Solar PV at $85.0 /MWh.
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf Table 1b.
( So less than 0.6 cents/kWh difference)., and as you know LCOE includes all costa including capital, install, maintenance, fuel, finance , etc etc.
EXCEPT !... For solar, whilst they allow for the CF of solar, they do not account for its intermittent nature, and hence the requirement of storage to allow for a continuous supply.!
That Battery capital cost alone (@ $350/kwh battery cost) would add $0.03/kWh !
Also the eia costing are all done on a common 30 yr working life expectation....which is way beyond anyone elses expectations for batteries or PV panels , but well below what we know Nuclear has done.
So no bill, its not just plain cheaper.
And if you look up the carbon footprint of PV and Battery manufacture, you might review your belief in how clean it is also..

 

[Hillhater]

Tesla is quietly deploying solar panels and power-walls to the hurricane-devastated Puerto Rico hospitals and other key facilities.

Funny how the oil-drenched nay-sayers are not showing up with free diesel-generators and tankers full of free fuel...

They sure need all the help they can get..
Aparently the generators are ok and they have some fuel, but the whole distribution grid etc is totally gone.
https://youtu.be/1AAHJs-j3uw
[youtube]1AAHJs-j3uw[/youtube]

 

[spinningmagnets]

Apparently the generators are ok and they have some fuel, but the whole distribution grid etc is totally gone

I recall visiting Broome Australia once, and the houses are all up on stilts. I asked why and they said there are frequent floods up to two feet of water. Every house had a skiff (bass boat?) tied up to the back door, which was odd-looking...because it was a hot desert.

The town was started a long time ago, back before insurance, so...if you didn't build up on stilts, the next flood damage was something that you had to pay for out of your own pocket.

I think we are going to see a trend of a more distributed grid, as opposed to the current examples of a large central generation facility serving a huge area. Nothing wrong with diesel back-up, just...not a wise use of resources to count on it for the daily needs. In places that have plenty of sun, you need to have some solar energy capture in the mix.

Whether a large coal-burning steam-turbine electrical generation plant is destroyed by a hurricane, earthquake, tornado, or...a terrorist attack. When one of your most important services (electricity) is all from one single giant plant, its easy for a huge service area to become vulnerable.

 

[sendler2112]

Solar is just plain cheaper

Please show us an example of a solar farm that is online. It really exists. Show us the project cost and the average output over a full year. As I have done many times here. Not news articles about proposals. Show us something real to support the price. It is currently at $0.08/ kWh for 30 years. Adding even 12 measly hours of battery storage quadruples this. Storage is the killer for a high intermittent sourced grid. It doesn't work to take over more than 30%. No solar proponents are adding in the storage issue. Solar is ok for the cooling peak. We need something else to go with it.
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China is about to show us all what streamlining the red tape and factory construction can do for nuclear. It is still 30 years out but their new GenIV designs will outperform everything that came before.

 

[sendler2112]

Whether a large coal-burning steam-turbine electrical generation plant is destroyed by a hurricane, earthquake, tornado, or...a terrorist attack. When one of your most important services (electricity) is all from one single giant plant, its easy for a huge service area to become vulnerable.

True. The decades long certification process for new ideas in nuclear has stymied the developement of any alternatives to the status quo GenII derivitives which are huge GW scale plants. Open up research to incude small, modular molten salt reactors in the 2-300MW range that don't require a water source for cooling and can be component made and certified in a factory before transporting into place. We have the technology and computer design skills now. We just need the red tape skills and a little money to build a couple to prove it. The key is factory assembly and certification of the core vessel in a size that can be transported.

 

[Hillhater]

MSRs. Can be very small.
Didnt the US build a test unit and install it into an aircraft to prove its portability, back in the 1960's ?
But, somewhere like PR currently, just needs a bunch of those containerised 20MW gensets and hook up cables.
Their situation is critical, so its probably a job for the Military Engineerig Core

But, until we have some incredibly compact, reliable, safe, economic, energy source, its inconcievable to think our industrial and city residential areas can be supplied by anything much removed from our current centralised generation system and grid distribution system.
I doesnt matter if the generation is coal, gas, solar hydro, wind etc etc ,..a terrorist can disable the system by targeting a few key link points..likewise the weather !

 

[sendler2112]

Micro grids for basic needs like cooking and lighting on islands or African villages can be well suited to solar/ battery.
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We had a couple running MSR's in 1970 and the operators were bored saying it completely and safely runs itself. It was shelved due to President Nixon preferring to push the PWR breeder reactors which could be readily configured to make fuel for bombs. Which Thorium MSR's do not do. We have the metalurgy tech now to easily make MSR a reality. But again they are hung up since it takes 5 years to even get permission to try one and no big investment funds care about getting into something that pays off 8% over 60-100 years. Except Bill Gates since has so much money he can be altruistic.
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[sendler2112]

they do not account for its intermittent nature, and hence the requirement of storage to allow for a continuous supply.!
That Battery capital cost alone (@ $350/kwh battery cost) would add $0.03/kWh !
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How did you figure $0.03/kWh for the batteries? I have raw panel with no installation panels at $0.055/kWh over 30 years and batteries with inverters for 12 hours of storage and costing $400/kWh at a cost of $0.11 with no installation. Assuming the batteries can make it to 5,000 cycles and 15 years befor they are replaced. Which is very optimistic.
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Solar with 12 hours of battery storage right now costs $0.16/kWh not including racks, wire, site prep, installation, land, and operating costs.

 

[sendler2112]

Let's all hope local utilities don't try to install nuclear - it will drive those neighbors into the poorhouse.

Actually I'm glad you brought this up. It helped me think past the cost over runs to see thatnuclear is still much cheaper than solar plus batteries even at $20 Billion new costs. I have already run the numbers for $10 Billion and 1GW over 50 years. It comes out to $0.023/kWh. Doubling this to an unheard of $20 Billion is still way cheaper than solar plus 12 hours storage. And 12 hours is obviously not enough. Rock solid 24/7 power for $0.046 plus $0.0186 for fuel and operating costs.
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https://atomicinsights.com/nuclear-energy-is-cheap-and-disruptive-controlling-the-initial-cost-of-nuclear-power-plants-is-a-solvable-problem/
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So even at $20 Billion per reactor they cost $0.065/kWh over 50 years. Way less than solar plus 12 hour batteries at $0.16 just for the parts. Who knows what a completed 1GW solar farm plus batteries really cost since there is no such thing. We don't even have a .1GW solar plus storaage to look at. Storage is the killer.
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People lose sight of the fact that 1GW continuous is a huge amount of power. It takes 6, $2.2 Billion SolarStar facilities to average this and it is dead at night or if it rains.

 

[Hillhater]

I did a simple calculation knowing that Tesla were reported to have recently charged approx $350,000 per MWh installed for a commercial battery system. (or $350/kWh )
So assuming 1kW needed constantly, and approx 18 hours with no sun, we need 18 kWh of battery = $6,300
Over 30 years ( :lol: ) that is $0.60 /day, or $0.025/kWh assuming you spread the cost evenly.
I actually rounded up to $0.03 /kWh , remembering that 18 hrs of no sun is optomistic in any normal winter.
In reality, a commercial utility would install 2 or 3 times that battery capacity for security.
..but as you say , 30 years is a rediculous expectation !
I could have used the eia.gov costing for battery backup @ $2600/kW .

 

[Punx0r]

Why are people hung up on getting a dead constant output 24/7 from solar and throwing in expensive battery storage to try and make that number work? If you have a high demand in the day and low at night then having a decent chunk of your generating mix as solar without storage makes perfect sense. It's like people don't think something should be even considered unless from the outset it fulfils 100% of need 100% of the time. Oh, and is cheaper than everything else. It's like the people who say BEVs are useless because they don't cost $1000 and can tow a huge trailer across a field for 500miles without recharging.

The SolarWorld SW340 is a nice, high end panel. 17.29% efficiency. 180 W/ m^2. $1.03/ W. $355.00 each not delivered.

I know you've done lots of costings sums but while they look convincing at face value I have an issue with this armchair approach when I see basic errors/assumptions. Like above, why are you quoting retail, single-unit panel prices when considering what would be the world's largest solar farm? The panel factories would be built *for* such a project. The costs would not be comparable to retail.

But, somewhere like PR currently, just needs a bunch of those containerised 20MW gensets and hook up cables.

I'm pretty sure the largest containerised diesel gensets are around 3MW?

 

[sendler2112]

Why are people hung up on getting a dead constant output 24/7 from solar and throwing in expensive battery storage to try and make that number work? ?

The grid only works for infrastucture if it is rock steady. Everyone knows this. You can read about this anywhere. Rolling brown outs of just a few volts ruin equipment. That's why I keep saying solar+wind without storage is ok in the grid up to a small percentage to take care of the cooling peak. But it absolutley can't go above 30-40% without solid storage of a few days. And this % can only be tollerated with great cooperation and management. And counts on a major part of that percentage of consumption being very flexible peak driven use of chargers by personal electric cars. Which is actually just a replacement of fossil fossil fuel from the personal tranportation segment and not any big gain by solar on the problem of electrical supply for infrastructure.
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Smart grids that control home thermostats will also help. Be required? The energy company will determine the temperature of your house or building on a daily basis.
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We will need electric car charging stations also fitted as VtoG everywhere. I mean EVERYWHERE. So that the cars can be charged between at the solar peak between 11AM and 3PM when people are at work, and then used as vehicle to grid at night while people are asleep to help stabilize the grid. So this way we can get double use out of the vehicle batteries as transportation and as grid scale storage.
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If there are really 200 Million electric cars with 60kWh batteries running around 20-30 years from now, that is 12 TWh of storage just from our cars. Which would cover 4 hours of our current consumption for example. VtoG in every EV should be mandated. Including mass transit. Stabilizing an intermittent sourced grid will be much more important than transit on some days where in an emergency some of the transit will not run.
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The problem with this scenario is a likelyhood that personal transportation ownership of vehicles larger than an ebike or e razor will go away for the most part as autonomous vehicle ride sharing takes over and more of the population resides in Megalopolises. Autonomous Electric 10 passenger vans will be the busses of the future and will run with full capacity all of the time on a custom route according to whomever is sitting in them. So most of the EV's will never be parked unless they are fast charging.
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So assuming V2G can be a big part of our electrical storage problem is not realistic. In any case, we will need 100's of Gigafactories raking the Earth clean of all Lithium and Cobalt. Mostly for transportation. Stationary storage will more likely have to be something else such as utilizing every feasible hydro location even if it means wiping out 10,000's of valley ecosystems for the greater good, solar thermal instead of PV, Thermal storge steam turbine plants. Gravity rail storage, Flywheels, ect.
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And we will always need at least 60% of some kind of generation that is not intermittant and under human control for quick ramp up response. That is not fossil fuel. Pleas tell me what that is if it is not in a large part nuclear.

 

[sendler2112]

I did a simple calculation knowing that Tesla were reported to have recently charged approx $350,000 per MWh installed for a commercial battery system. (or $350/kWh )
So assuming 1kW needed constantly, and approx 18 hours with no sun, we need 18 kWh of battery = $6,300
Over 30 years ( :lol: ) that is $0.60 /day, or $0.025/kWh assuming you spread the cost evenly.

So this bothered me all night But I finally found the asnwer to why this sounded so cheap this morning. You can't break down the cost of the batteries as if they are generating energy at a certain price/ kWh because they don't make any power. Technically there is a round trip loss of several %. So the only way to eveluate their cost on a system is to take the actual production of the system in kWh and divide that into the total system cost which obviously goes way up if you add even 12 hours of battery storage. As I did in the Australia example that I worked out above. Adding just 12 hours of battery storage will at least triple the cost of the intermittent energy market price in $/kWh. And they are expendable ongoing. Like a fuel.

 

[Hillhater]

Why are people hung up on getting a dead constant output 24/7 from solar and throwing in expensive battery storage to try and make that number work? If you have a high demand in the day and low at night then having a decent chunk of your generating mix as solar without storage makes perfect sense. ....

Yes, it makes sense, but its a shame more people dont agree with that view.
There is a strong movement pushing to go 100% renewable , which means storage would be essential, and battery is the cheapest option.

....I know you've done lots of costings sums but while they look convincing at face value I have an issue with this armchair approach when I see basic errors/assumptions. Like above, why are you quoting retail, single-unit panel prices when considering what would be the world's largest solar farm? The panel factories would be built *for* such a project. The costs would not be comparable to retail.......

The costs for utility scale PV installations are well documented, such as the eia.gov data, so no need to sweat the details.

But, somewhere like PR currently, just needs a bunch of those containerised 20MW gensets and hook up cables.

....I'm pretty sure the largest containerised diesel gensets are around 3MW?

Im sure the PR folks wont quibble about the size of the gensets, ...just send enough to fix the problems.

 

[billvon]

Please show us an example of a solar farm that is online. It really exists. Show us the project cost and the average output over a full year. As I have done many times here. Not news articles about proposals. Show us something real to support the price. It is currently at $0.08/ kWh for 30 years.

Sure. The Topaz plant started construction in 2011 and finished in 2014. (Which means it started when solar was considerably more costly than it is now.) It is a 550MW plant that generates 1100 GWHR per year. It cost $2.4 billion. Thus costs are 7.2 cents per kwhr over 30 years, 4.3 cents per kwhr over 50 years.

Now when you look at the LCOE numbers from the OpenEL database (studies from 2010 to 2014, published 2014 to 2015, which is the latest they've got) you get:
Cheapest solar-PV: 6 cents/kwhr (which is in line with the above)
Cheapest nuclear: 9 cents/kwhr
(https://openei.org/apps/TCDB/)

These, in turn, come close to a recent study by Lazard, which used more current numbers:
Cheapest solar-PV: 4.9 cents/kwhr
Cheapest nuclear: 9.7 cents/kwhr
(https://www.lazard.com/media/438038/levelized-cost-of-energy-v100.pdf)

It is still 30 years out but their new GenIV designs will outperform everything that came before.

Cool. It would be great if such technologies met their hype. But we've been hearing that for 50 years now.

 

[sendler2112]

Now when you look at the LCOE numbers from the OpenEL database (studies from 2010 to 2014, published 2014 to 2015, which is the latest they've got) you get:
Cheapest solar-PV: 6 cents/kwhr (which is in line with the above)
Cheapest nuclear: 9 cents/kwhr
(https://openei.org/apps/TCDB/)

These, in turn, come close to a recent study by Lazard, which used more current numbers:
Cheapest solar-PV: 4.9 cents/kwhr
Cheapest nuclear: 9.7 cents/kwhr

Battery storage for solar or wind adds $0.11/kWh in an ongoing cost indefinitely. For just 12 hours of storage.

 

[billvon]

Battery storage for solar or wind adds $0.11/kWh in an ongoing cost indefinitely.

For now that's true. Battery costs are dropping rapidly as well. (And most solar doesn't need storage, since most solar power is used when it is generated.)

 

[speedmd]

Don't waste your time on energy company trollings. No where does anyone try to quantify the cost of all the added illnesses never mind war subsidies involved with them. Storage... Bla bla bla. Most will just need to re learn the meaning of making hay when the sun shines for most of your domestic needs. AC vs DC. Centralized vs decentralized. Still have not heard much on my initial question on how much is wasted just in supporting the avg grid setup. It would blow your mind.

 

[sendler2112]

Most will just need to re learn the meaning of making hay when the sun shines for most of your domestic needs.

None of you guys watched the Nate Hagens video. Everything around you. All infrastructure is underpinned by energy. Electricity is only 1/3 of total energy. Domestic electricity is only 1/3 of that. In the USA. In some euro countries it is only 20% of the 1/3. Russia and China it is 15% of the 1/3. You all are still completely naive of the scale of our energy consumption and keep thinking in terms of your own electric bill. Look around your house at all of the manufactured goods. Look at your food. Look at your house itself. Everything you see is made of large amounts of fossil fuel energy. With small amounts of raw materials harvested with large amounts of fossil fuel energy. Solar is not dense enough soon enough to replace all of this. There is a crash coming.
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Please at least watch.
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https://youtu.be/YUSpsT6Oqrg
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[billvon]

Solar is not dense enough soon enough to replace all of this.

And yet it is dense enough to grow all our food and provide all the planet's heat.

There's no question we could fulfill all our energy needs with solar alone. Just do the math. Fortunately, we don't need to overnight; a gradual replacement will work just fine.

 

[sendler2112]

So confident in PV. So naive. And no one will even watch 1 video. I'm very sorry.

 

[liveforphysics]

So confident in PV. So naive. And no one will even watch 1 video. I'm very sorry.

What energy tech would you wish to be sealed into a small closed system with? How about a little larger closed system shared with billions of other folks are circulating the same life giving gasses through themselves to live?

You are sealed into a closed system.

Civilization that attempts to continue digging things up that burn for fuel in a closed loop system viewed on a geological time scale appears a brief rapid growth spurt in the film of life covering the earth just before self-extinction hitting from the single life supporting atmosphere becoming fouled to not support life.