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The Remarkable Progress of Renewable Energy

The Drive to Replace Summer-Only ‘Peaker’ Power Plants | WIRED - "These power plants run during the hottest months, when energy is in demand. But they are expensive, and they pollute nearby low-income neighborhoods."

Expense?
A new report has found that New Yorkers over the last decade have paid more than $4.5 billion in electricity bills to the private owners of the city’s peaker plants, just to keep those plants online in case they’re needed—even though they only operate between 90 and 500 hours a year. Even at the upper limit, that’s less than three weeks. This all means that the price tag for peak electricity in the Big Apple is 1,300 percent higher than the average cost of electricity in the state.
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Air quality?
]In the South Bronx neighborhoods of Hunts Point and Longwood, asthma hospitalization rates are nearly double the city average. Peaker plant emissions during a severe summer heat wave can exacerbate this underlying burden. Dariella Rodriguez, director of community development for The Point CDC, a South Bronx nonprofit that is part of the PEAK Coalition, says that residents being stuck indoors during the Covid-19 pandemic highlights the urgency of finding alternative solutions to existing peaker plants.

“Especially in the South Bronx, in a community like Hunt’s Point, where we know we’re very vulnerable to heat, weak infrastructure, and also air quality, this is a moment to rethink how our city and our state can use the land, build clean infrastructure, and support groups that are engaging in creative ways to change their communities,” Rodriguez said.
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What to do about peakers?
The reports argue that renewable energy and battery storage are the best alternatives to replace fossil-fuel-fired peaker plants. In California, for instance, the aging Oakland Power Plant will soon be replaced with a mix of solar and battery storage. In New York City, environmental advocates have been pushing to transform Rikers Island, which houses the city’s most notorious jail complex, into a green infrastructure hub that would replace the peaker plants in the southernmost peninsula of the Bronx.
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I note that nuclear-power advocates support nuclear reactors for baseload electricity generation, not peak generation. Who has ever heard of a nuclear-reactor peaker?

Renewable-energy development is stimulating a large amount of research into storage technologies and synfuels. Research that never happened with nuclear energy, as far as I know, even though it would be very useful for that kind of electricity generation.

Wind and solar energy have the problem that they are intermittent, and nuclear energy has the problem that it is too steady. Storage technologies get around both problems.
 
lpetrich said:
Who has ever heard of a nuclear-reactor peaker?
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I have. Sort of.
When i was in high school, we toured an experimental reactor site. Primary purpose is research, but they do dump any power they produce onto the grid. They mentioned that they had been scheduled to shut down the plant one summer, to adjust some mechanisms, but Idaho Power had begged them to stay up and operational for the hottest weeks. They were real proud of that. Everyone who delivered any part of the tour mentioned it. We heard the same phrases about seven times that day. I suspect it was part of a PR release.


Also, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. They brought one online for Griswold's Xmas lights. Seems likely.
 
‘Nuclear power is now the most expensive form of generation, except for gas peaking plants’ – pv magazine International - "The latest edition of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report indicates the stagnation of the sector continues. Just 2.4 GW of net new nuclear generation capacity came online last year, compared to 98 GW of solar. The world’s operational nuclear power capacity had declined by 2.1%, to 362 GW, at the end of June." - datelined September 24, 2020

The Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE):
  • Nuclear: (2015) $117/MWh (2019) $155/MWh
  • Solar: (2015) $65/MWh (2019) $49/MWh
  • Wind: (2015) $55/MWh (2019) $41/MWh
Installed in 2019: nuclear: 2.4 GW, solar: 98 GW, wind: 59.2 GW

Total nuclear-generation capacity fell 2.1% over 2019-2020 to 362 GW.

The number of operation nuclear reactors peaked at 438 in 2002, and in mid-2020, it dropped to 408, the 1988 number.

The average age of these nuclear reactors was 30.7 in mid-2020, with 2/3 operating for more than 31 years.

Under-construction ones (2019) 46, (2020) 52 -- 15 of them, with capacity 14 GW, are in China. "Most of those projects, however, have suffered years-long delays."


Australia sets new wind output record, breaks through 6,000MW for first time | RenewEconomy
The peak wind output in the National Electricity Market set on Saturday was 6,120MW, at 8.25pm, according to energy analysts Dylan McConnell from the Climate and Energy College, and Paul McArdle from Global Roam.

It was then broken a day later, at 5.40pm on Sunday, when it reached a peak of 6,421MW, and then up to 6,428MW at 8.05pm. The average renewable energy output in Australia’s main grid was more than 50 per cent from around 10.30am to 3pm.
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How great to see that.
 
Big auto is commuting to EVs. Seattle id starting to put EV busses into service. Seattle is requiring new apartment buildings to have a percentage of parking spaces with charging capacity,

The electricity will have to come from somewhere.

Nuclear sounds like part of the solution to me.
 
lpetrich said:
Five or six orders of magnitude???

It's hard to take seriously claims like that when they are grossly contrary to reality. Grid scale Battery costs are declining faster than Wind and Solar - Katy for Coos County for instance. Still about 2 to 4 times more expensive than bare renewables, but not 10^5 - 10^6.
It's only possible to sustain a full scale industrial economy with nuclear power. Or with some hypothetical alternative that currently doesn't exist, or seem likely to be discovered, invented, or magicked into existence any time soon.
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We are starting to find out otherwise. I note that we are starting to see a lot of technologies being developed for renewable energy that could have been developed for nuclear energy, but that weren't. High-capacity batteries, for instance. Or synfuels.
Right now, the only thing standing between renewables and blackouts is burning gas.
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In fill-in-the-gaps fashion. Just like with nuclear energy.
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I think he's overstating it but getting all our power from renewables is completely unrealistic at current tech levels. There's simply nothing good enough to provide the amount of storage needed.
 
bilby said:
Yeah, but it handles dips in production measured in minutes or hours. To handle seasonality, you need storage that's both sufficient in size, and cost effective, when deployed on scales of months or years.

Nobody's saving solar power from June to use in February. In fact, nobody's storing electricity generated at 3pm for use at 3am. To make the leap to months rather than minutes of storage will need cost reductions at least on the scale I am suggesting.
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But people are storing power at 3pm for use at 3am. The guys using it off grid.

Things have gotten a lot better than they used to be but of any modern technologies the best you'll get is about 20 cents per kWh just for the battery. For higher up-front costs you can get that down to 9 cents per kWh by going with the ancient tech of a Nickel-Iron battery--but they do need periodic watering and proper enclosures as they vent hydrogen during charging.
 
lpetrich said:
The Drive to Replace Summer-Only ‘Peaker’ Power Plants | WIRED - "These power plants run during the hottest months, when energy is in demand. But they are expensive, and they pollute nearby low-income neighborhoods."

Expense?

Air quality?

What to do about peakers?
The reports argue that renewable energy and battery storage are the best alternatives to replace fossil-fuel-fired peaker plants. In California, for instance, the aging Oakland Power Plant will soon be replaced with a mix of solar and battery storage. In New York City, environmental advocates have been pushing to transform Rikers Island, which houses the city’s most notorious jail complex, into a green infrastructure hub that would replace the peaker plants in the southernmost peninsula of the Bronx.
Click to expand...
I note that nuclear-power advocates support nuclear reactors for baseload electricity generation, not peak generation. Who has ever heard of a nuclear-reactor peaker?
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France does some load following with nuclear. It's not technically difficult, it's just not necessary unless your grid is almost entirely powered by fission.

Wind and solar, on the other hand, can't even produce baseload power. They require demand to follow their production, which is insane.

Without these crazy and pointless swings in production, all this talk of peakers and storage would be practically irrelevant.
Renewable-energy development is stimulating a large amount of research into storage technologies and synfuels. Research that never happened with nuclear energy, as far as I know, even though it would be very useful for that kind of electricity generation.

Wind and solar energy have the problem that they are intermittent, and nuclear energy has the problem that it is too steady. Storage technologies get around both problems.
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Storage technology gets around the small peak problem in nuclear heavy grids, like France and Ontario, where Hydro (particularly pumped storage) can fill the gaps. As mentioned above, France also load-follows with some of her nuclear plants - they're not just monolithic baseload producers, that just happens to be the most profitable option for them in grids with fossil fuel generation that can load-follow more profitably.

It's not up to the job in wind and/or solar heavy grids though, because intermittent generators massively exacerbate the size and duration of peaks.

Storage simply cannot be made adequate to deal with the supply troughs inherent in grids with high intermittent renewables components. Particularly when those troughs in supply align with peaks in demand - such as the late afternoon summer peaks, that coincide with the collapse of solar generation at dusk.

Renewables make this problem FAR worse. Storage (basically pumped hydro) could solve the problem, but not when people persist in adding wind and solar that make it worse.

The recent rise in profitability and therefore capacity for fossil gas powered generation is a direct and very obvious consequence of the rise of intermittent renewables. To suggest them as a solution to this problem is perverse.
 
lpetrich said:
‘Nuclear power is now the most expensive form of generation, except for gas peaking plants’ – pv magazine International - "The latest edition of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report indicates the stagnation of the sector continues. Just 2.4 GW of net new nuclear generation capacity came online last year, compared to 98 GW of solar. The world’s operational nuclear power capacity had declined by 2.1%, to 362 GW, at the end of June." - datelined September 24, 2020

The Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE):
  • Nuclear: (2015) $117/MWh (2019) $155/MWh
  • Solar: (2015) $65/MWh (2019) $49/MWh
  • Wind: (2015) $55/MWh (2019) $41/MWh
Installed in 2019: nuclear: 2.4 GW, solar: 98 GW, wind: 59.2 GW

Total nuclear-generation capacity fell 2.1% over 2019-2020 to 362 GW.

The number of operation nuclear reactors peaked at 438 in 2002, and in mid-2020, it dropped to 408, the 1988 number.

The average age of these nuclear reactors was 30.7 in mid-2020, with 2/3 operating for more than 31 years.

Under-construction ones (2019) 46, (2020) 52 -- 15 of them, with capacity 14 GW, are in China. "Most of those projects, however, have suffered years-long delays."


Australia sets new wind output record, breaks through 6,000MW for first time | RenewEconomy
The peak wind output in the National Electricity Market set on Saturday was 6,120MW, at 8.25pm, according to energy analysts Dylan McConnell from the Climate and Energy College, and Paul McArdle from Global Roam.

It was then broken a day later, at 5.40pm on Sunday, when it reached a peak of 6,421MW, and then up to 6,428MW at 8.05pm. The average renewable energy output in Australia’s main grid was more than 50 per cent from around 10.30am to 3pm.
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How great to see that.
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So, which is it?

Are huge peaks in supply to be celebrated; Or is load-following a major problem whose current solution (gas peaker plants) is highly undesirable?

You can't have it both ways.


Oh, and talking about having it both ways, how is the newly elevated cost of low carbon electricity a good thing?

And what has made nuclear power so expensive? It wasn't expensive in the 1970s, and the technology hasn't become more difficult - quite the reverse.

The only reason nuclear power costs have increased is that regulatory and compliance costs have increased. Which is purely political vandalism - an economic attack, led by the same gas producers who are advocating intermittent renewables, who see nuclear power as a significant threat to their fossil fuel business (and see wind and solar as a boon to those same businesses).

There's no technical reason for nuclear power to be so expensive as it is in the US and Europe. Indeed, in Korea and China, it isn't.

Protesters cause expensive and unnecessary delays, and then turn around and say "See! It's too expensive and takes too long to build!"

Fuck. Off.

IMG_6145.JPG

What's so special about Chinese and Korean engineers, that makes them far better at building power plants than American engineers?

Nothing. The difference in the US is purely political, and is inherent to opposition to nuclear power, not to its construction.

Note also the median construction days per MWh is 2.519. That's better than most wind or solar farms. And a nuclear plant gets ~900kWh/MWh of capacity, delivered on demand. A solar farm gets maybe 200kWh/MWh of capacity, delivered when the sun shines regardless of demand, and more importantly NEVER delivered when the sun isn't shining, regardless of demand.
 
Loren Pechtel said:
bilby said:
Yeah, but it handles dips in production measured in minutes or hours. To handle seasonality, you need storage that's both sufficient in size, and cost effective, when deployed on scales of months or years.

Nobody's saving solar power from June to use in February. In fact, nobody's storing electricity generated at 3pm for use at 3am. To make the leap to months rather than minutes of storage will need cost reductions at least on the scale I am suggesting.
Click to expand...

But people are storing power at 3pm for use at 3am. The guys using it off grid.
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And I am sure both of them are very happy. :rolleyes:

Domestic use is a trivial fraction of demand. The ability of individual households to go off grid (at great expense and with a concomitant reduction in comfort and labour-saving) says fuck all about the ability of society to do so.
Things have gotten a lot better than they used to be but of any modern technologies the best you'll get is about 20 cents per kWh just for the battery. For higher up-front costs you can get that down to 9 cents per kWh by going with the ancient tech of a Nickel-Iron battery--but they do need periodic watering and proper enclosures as they vent hydrogen during charging.
Click to expand...

I bet they're terrific for running aluminium smelters and steelworks too. :rolleyes:
 
lpetrich said:
‘Nuclear power is now the most expensive form of generation, except for gas peaking plants’ – pv magazine International - "The latest edition of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report indicates the stagnation of the sector continues. Just 2.4 GW of net new nuclear generation capacity came online last year, compared to 98 GW of solar. The world’s operational nuclear power capacity had declined by 2.1%, to 362 GW, at the end of June." - datelined September 24, 2020

The Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE):
  • Nuclear: (2015) $117/MWh (2019) $155/MWh
  • Solar: (2015) $65/MWh (2019) $49/MWh
  • Wind: (2015) $55/MWh (2019) $41/MWh
Installed in 2019: nuclear: 2.4 GW, solar: 98 GW, wind: 59.2 GW

Total nuclear-generation capacity fell 2.1% over 2019-2020 to 362 GW.

The number of operation nuclear reactors peaked at 438 in 2002, and in mid-2020, it dropped to 408, the 1988 number.

The average age of these nuclear reactors was 30.7 in mid-2020, with 2/3 operating for more than 31 years.

Under-construction ones (2019) 46, (2020) 52 -- 15 of them, with capacity 14 GW, are in China. "Most of those projects, however, have suffered years-long delays."


Australia sets new wind output record, breaks through 6,000MW for first time | RenewEconomy
The peak wind output in the National Electricity Market set on Saturday was 6,120MW, at 8.25pm, according to energy analysts Dylan McConnell from the Climate and Energy College, and Paul McArdle from Global Roam.

It was then broken a day later, at 5.40pm on Sunday, when it reached a peak of 6,421MW, and then up to 6,428MW at 8.05pm. The average renewable energy output in Australia’s main grid was more than 50 per cent from around 10.30am to 3pm.
Click to expand...
How great to see that.
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Wind and solar look cheap when you compare nameplate capacity. But nameplate capacity isn't electricity. When you look at the cost per actual MWh delivered, rather than the cost per MW installed, Nuclear power is cheaper.

Between 1965 and 2018 the world spent $2.1 trillion to get 31% more electricity from nuclear than it got for the $2.6 trillion it spent on solar and wind.

And that solar and wind power was overwhelmingly delivered when wholesale prices were low. So those facilities were only profitable because of guaranteed sale prices (above the wholesale price); and/or the provision of subsidies.
 
lpetrich said:
Renewable-energy development is stimulating a large amount of research into storage technologies and synfuels. Research that never happened with nuclear energy, as far as I know, even though it would be very useful for that kind of electricity generation.

Wind and solar energy have the problem that they are intermittent, and nuclear energy has the problem that it is too steady. Storage technologies get around both problems.
Click to expand...
Wind and solar (hydro) can't get us to sustainability alone, forget using excess production for battery storage to see to peak demand, as excess only exists where there is fossil or nuclear. I also ponder just how viable a battery storage system could possibly manage peak demand, seeing peak demand, especially these days, can be a bit difficult to anticipate. How much do you overbuild it?
 
bilby said:
What's so special about Chinese and Korean engineers, that makes them far better at building power plants than American engineers?

Nothing. The difference in the US is purely political, and is inherent to opposition to nuclear power, not to its construction.

Note also the median construction days per MWh is 2.519. That's better than most wind or solar farms. And a nuclear plant gets ~900kWh/MWh of capacity, delivered on demand. A solar farm gets maybe 200kWh/MWh of capacity, delivered when the sun shines regardless of demand, and more importantly NEVER delivered when the sun isn't shining, regardless of demand.
Click to expand...

Chinese it's clear--cut corners on safety.
 
Loren Pechtel said:
bilby said:
What's so special about Chinese and Korean engineers, that makes them far better at building power plants than American engineers?

Nothing. The difference in the US is purely political, and is inherent to opposition to nuclear power, not to its construction.

Note also the median construction days per MWh is 2.519. That's better than most wind or solar farms. And a nuclear plant gets ~900kWh/MWh of capacity, delivered on demand. A solar farm gets maybe 200kWh/MWh of capacity, delivered when the sun shines regardless of demand, and more importantly NEVER delivered when the sun isn't shining, regardless of demand.
Click to expand...

Chinese it's clear--cut corners on safety.
Click to expand...

I have seen no evidence of that, in the nuclear power industry.

And even if it were true, it wouldn't explain South Korea's success.
 
bilby said:
Loren Pechtel said:
bilby said:
What's so special about Chinese and Korean engineers, that makes them far better at building power plants than American engineers?

Nothing. The difference in the US is purely political, and is inherent to opposition to nuclear power, not to its construction.

Note also the median construction days per MWh is 2.519. That's better than most wind or solar farms. And a nuclear plant gets ~900kWh/MWh of capacity, delivered on demand. A solar farm gets maybe 200kWh/MWh of capacity, delivered when the sun shines regardless of demand, and more importantly NEVER delivered when the sun isn't shining, regardless of demand.
Click to expand...

Chinese it's clear--cut corners on safety.
Click to expand...

I have seen no evidence of that, in the nuclear power industry.

And even if it were true, it wouldn't explain South Korea's success.
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China cuts corners on everything. The surprise would be if they didn't with their reactors.
 
Clean, green, environmentally friendly battery storage.

Oh, wait.

Shit.

https://www.bay939.com.au/news/local-news/128264-big-battery-on-fire-toxic-smoke-impacting-northern-suburbs

A warning has been issued for toxic air quality for Batesford, Bell Post Hill, Lovely Banks, Moorabool and Geelong's northern suburbs.

Anyone located in Batesford, Bell Post Hill, Lovely Banks, Moorabool should move indoors. Close all exterior doors, windows and vents and turn off heating and cooling systems.
...
A 13-tonne lithium-ion battery, part of the Victorian Big Battery is fully alight in Moorabool
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In the news fire departments are having to deal with EV car crashes and batteries, so what?
 
Speaking of progress or rather lack of it.
Decided to measure efficiency of ordinary floor fan. Guess the number?

22% which is horrible. Did the same with small ventilation type which you embed into the wall about 4-5%

These asynchronous motors suck.
 
Tigers! said:
steve_bank said:
In the news fire departments are having to deal with EV car crashes and batteries, so what?
Click to expand...

Just a reminder that battery technology is not all unicorns and fairy dust.
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Yes. My comment is about making a case against renewables and EV on the basis that it has its on set of issues.

The conservative approach. Gas cars and EVs have downsides, therefore there is no need to get rid of gas cars.

The news report showed firefighters dealing with an RV crash fire.

The short circuit capacity and hazard of any battery is high, extreme with EV batteries.
 
steve_bank said:
Tigers! said:
steve_bank said:
In the news fire departments are having to deal with EV car crashes and batteries, so what?
Click to expand...

Just a reminder that battery technology is not all unicorns and fairy dust.
Click to expand...

Yes. My comment is about making a case against renewables and EV on the basis that it has its on set of issues.

The conservative approach. Gas cars and EVs have downsides, therefore there is no need to get rid of gas cars.

The news report showed firefighters dealing with an RV crash fire.

The short circuit capacity and hazard of any battery is high, extreme with EV batteries.
Click to expand...

If minimising risk in electricity generation is the priority, then nuclear is the best option.

However if reliability is the priority, nuclear is the best option.

And if minimising carbon emissions is the priority, nuclear is the best option.

Which makes the whole thing seem like a 'no brainer'. Until you consider hazardous waste.

If minimising the hazard from waste is the priority, the best option is nuclear.

So there's that.
 
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