Guest post by David Middleton
The push to save U.S. nuclear plants for the sake of fighting climate change is threatening support for the bread and butter of clean power: wind and solar.
New York and Illinois have already approved as much as $10 billion in subsidies to keep struggling reactors open for the next decade as part of a plan to limit fossil fuel consumption. Lawmakers in Ohio, Connecticut and New Jersey are debatingwhether to do the same.
The reactors, which are being squeezed by low natural gas prices, offer a singular advantage in the fight against global warming because they produce round-the-clock electricity without emitting greenhouse gases. Yet renewable energy operators including NRG Energy Inc. and Invenergy LLC say keeping nuclear plants open will leave grids awash with excess power, leaving little demand for new wind and solar farms.
“It’s the wrong policy — and whether it proliferates or not is going to be a really big factor,” Invenergy Chief Operating Officer Jim Murphy said during a panel discussion at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance conference in New York Monday.
[…]
“Renewable energy operators say keeping nuclear plants open will leave grids awash with excess power, leaving little demand for new wind and solar farms.”
Keeping the “grids awash with excess power” is the only way to handle bellwether events without having to rely on brownouts and blackouts. Solar and wind can neither provide base-load nor flexible response to bellwether events. Increasing reliance on renewables makes it imperative that we keep the “grids awash with excess power.”
There appears to be a lot of whining about subsidies for nuclear power… With the renewables crowd doing all of the whining:
[…]
Nuclear’s economic woes comes as wind and solar are starting to show they’re cheap enough to compete with traditional generators, after years of help from subsidies. The push to aid reactors began last year after Exelon Corp. successfully argued in New York and Illinois that since nuclear does not contribute to global warming, its plants should receive a premium to help level the playing field with wind and solar.
“The fossil generators sell electricity with air pollution,” Joseph Dominguez, an Exelon executive vice president, said in an interview. “We sell electricity without air pollution — and that’s a different product.”
There are key differences between wind and solar subsidies and those for nuclear, according to clean-energy developers. Renewable energy credits have spurred an emerging industry, whereas nuclear subsidies are to preserve aging plants. And while wind and solar developers compete against each other for subsidies, those for nuclear benefit a single technology.
Market Rules
“The renewables industry has been playing by competitive market rules that have helped to produce good prices,” Amy Francetic, an Invenergy senior vice president, said in an interview. “This is picking and winners and losers in a way that’s troubling.”
[…]
“The fossil generators sell electricity with air pollution,” Joseph Dominguez, an Exelon executive vice president, said in an interview. “We sell electricity without air pollution — and that’s a different product.”
Nuclear power absolutely is the leader of the pack at reducing so-called “greenhouse” gas emissions:
If reducing greenhouse gas emissions is important, nuclear power is the obvious answer. If reducing greenhouse gas emissions at a reasonable cost is important, natural gas is the obvious answer. If treading water is important, wind is the obvious answer. If failure is important, solar is the obvious answer. So, Mr. Dominguez is generally correct.
“The renewables industry has been playing by competitive market rules that have helped to produce good prices,” Amy Francetic, an Invenergy senior vice president, said in an interview. “This is picking and winners and losers in a way that’s troubling.”
Really? Ms. Francetic, *government* always picks “winners and losers in a way that’s troubling.”
As far as the renewables industry “playing by competitive market rules that have helped to produce good prices”…
The most recent U.S. Energy Information Administration report on energy subsidies reveals the following:
Solar and wind power are insignificant sources of energy.
Solar and wind power receive massive Federal subsidies.
The solar and wind subsidies are truly massive in $/Btu.
The true folly of solar power is most apparent in subsidies per kilowatt-hour of electricity generation. At 23¢/kWh, the solar subsidies in 2013 were nearly twice the average U.S. residential retail electricity rate.
Solar and wind subsidies are weighted toward direct expenditures of tax dollars.
Federal solar and wind subsidies were 3-4 times that of nuclear power in 2013. Only 2% of the nuclear power subsidies consisted of direct expenditures, compared to 72% and 56% for solar and wind power respectively… And the renewables industry has the gall to complain about New York and Illinois kicking in $500 and $235 million per year in extra subsidies to keep nuclear power plants running in their States. Really?
Solar power simply can’t work without massive subsidies. While the economics of wind power are improving, renewables are still extremely expensive relative to existing coal and nuclear power plants.
Most of the Federal subsidies for oil & gas (96%), coal (71%) and nuclear power (67%) consist of tax breaks. The subsidies for oil & gas aren’t really even subsidies. These are standard tax deductions and depreciation of assets.
What About the Externalities?
What about them? The cost of compliance with pollution regulations is built in to the cost of fossil fuels. The mythical Social Cost of Carbon has no net present value at a real world discount rate. What about the externalities of renewables? The costs of backup generation and power failures due to their intermittency are not built into the cost of these energy sources.
Featured Image
Please define the elements of subsidies for each production area. Many times the renewable industry seems to confuse subsidies with tax credits that all producers receive.
Here’s the full report:
https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/pdf/subsidy.pdf
Wind generators sell electricity without pollution!!!
Typical nuke: 1000MW output typical WG: 4MW, so we need 250 WGs to equal 1 nuke.
BUT, WGs typically give only 30% of there rated output, so we need 3 times more to match.
That is 750 WGs to equal 1 nuke.
How much material and energy go into the creation of a WG farm with 750 units spread over thousands of acres? I have not done the sums but in terms of concrete, steel, copper etc it is looking likely that the WG route is more costly.
Then we get to operating these two choices. When the wind is wrong, we need external power that can be turned on or off very quickly to make up for WG intermittency. These other power generators need to be factored in.
Although ‘free’ energy from the wind sounds good and obvious at first glance, after looking into the issue, it is not such a good deal after all.
But you have to keep the nuclear generator spinning in the background for when the wind doesn’t blow, so there never is an equating point.
Why didn’t anyone question the troll’s assertion that the costs for the Fukishima incident is upwards of $188 billion? What is the estimate based on? Why so much? (fear factor?, because it’s a government job?) What is the source of the estimate?
No one addressed it because it was a Red Herring Fallacy.
And the troll keeps harping on something even he declared is not the issue.
IQ/IQ test (intelligence quotient / integrity quotient):
Question 1: If a force 10 earthquake and 30m high tsunami strike an industrial facility and cause damage to it, does this necessarily mean the design and safety of the facility was deficient?
Lefties: “YES”
Skeptics: “No”
Question 2: Does the tectonic geology of the Baltic Sea mean that Germany should draw conclusions from the Fukushima accident? Is the probability of a force 10 earthquake and 30m tsunami equal in Germany as in Japan? And are geologists all oil-funded deniers anyway so what the hell?
Lefties: “YES”
Skeptics: “No”
Question 3: Does “Tsunami” mean “big wave” in both the German and Japanese languages?
Lefties: “YES”
Skeptics: “No”
This article is absolute rubbish.
No time now to comment in depth, but will return later. Just a couple of points for now:
Nuclear power in the US is almost 100 percent subsidized by the government.
The stubborn refusal by nuclear plant operators to reduce output (they say it’s unsafe to vary their output) forces every other form of generation to reduce or go offline. Those gas, hydro, and coal plants bear the cost and maintenance burden that nuclear plants cannot and will not take on.
More later.
Much, much more.
I’ll look forward to refuting “more later, much, much more.”
http://s2.quickmeme.com/img/68/68ab4b98f7a35f911e1dc3314ebd5b06dae6479de176b961c79cd9ad9d8b6253.jpg
One has to wonder what negative contribution to society is keeping Roger from telling his nuke lies.
Rog will be the life of the party… 😉
He won’t bother. As a lefty, he’s proven his virtue by posting his lies, so now he can go home and tell all his friends in Mom’s basement how he told off a bunch of climate d#nIers.
Translation: I can’t prove anything I say but I’m paid by the word so I’ve got to write something, even if it’s nothing but shameless lies.
Am unable to post a comment.
https://youtu.be/0-19bUU7etQ
Re nuclear plant subsidies, the following is more than appropriate. Everything below is factual; nothing is opinion nor is it conjecture.
Nuclear subsidies exist as:
1) huge loan guarantees from government, approximately $8.3 billion for the Vogtle plant alone. The four US reactors presently under construction are in jeopardy from the designer’s bankruptcy (Westinghouse )
2) government legal relief from radiation liability, under the Price-Anderson Act, (see commentary just below)
3) regulation that no lawsuits during construction will be allowed (with a minor exception),
4) regulation to raise electricity prices during construction to avoid interest costs on construction loans; South Carolina has already increased rates to pay for nuclear construction, now seeks another increase. “The latest request, if approved, will mean customers will be paying about $20 more per month for their power than they were at the beginning of 2009. ”
5) operating and safety regulations that are routinely relaxed to allow nuclear plants to not spend money to comply.
6) Regulation reform to subsidize nuclear plants operating – although they lose money otherwise – on the basis of “carbon-free” power; this directly penalizes coal and natural gas-fired power plants.
7) New nuclear plants receive 2.3 cents per kWh generated for the first 10 years of operation. For a 1000 MW plant operating 100 percent (as nuclear advocates claim they do), that is $201 million per year. After ten years, that is $2 billion.
8) The ability to charge customers for the costs of decommissioning a nuclear plant, when the already-collected funds prove insufficient for the lengthy and costly task. See e.g. Omaha, Nebraska and the Fort Calhoun nuclear plant.
The language of the Price-Anderson Act states:
“Congress passed the Price-Anderson Act in 1957 to ensure that adequate funds would be available to compensate victims of a nuclear accident. It also recognized that the risk of extraordinary liability that companies would incur if a nuclear accident were to happen would render insurance costs prohibitively high, and thwart the development of nuclear energy.
. . .
The Price-Anderson Act requires owners of commercial reactors to assume all liability for damages to the public resulting from an ‘extraordinary nuclear occurrence’ and to waive most legal defenses
they would otherwise have. However, in exchange, their liability
will be limited to capped amounts established in the Act.
First, each licensed reactor must carry the maximum amount of
insurance commercially available to pay any damages from a severe
nuclear accident. That amount is currently $300 million.
Any damages exceeding that amount are to be assessed equally
against all covered commercial reactors, up to $95.8 million per reactor
(most recently adjusted for inflation by NRC in August 2004).
Those assessments would be paid at an annual rate of no more
than $10 million per reactor. According to the NRC, all of the nation’s 103 commercial reactors are currently covered by the Price-Anderson retrospective premium requirement.
Funding for public compensation following a major nuclear incident
would therefore include the $300 million in insurance coverage
carried by the reactor that suffered the incident, plus the
$95.8 million in retrospective premiums from each of the 103 currently
covered reactors, totaling $10.2 billion. On top of those payments,
a 5 percent surcharge may also be imposed, raising the total
per-reactor retrospective premium to $100.6 million and the total
potential compensation for each incident to about $10.7 billion.
Under Price-Anderson, the nuclear industry’s liability for an incident
is capped at that amount, which varies depending on the
number of covered reactors, amount of available insurance, and an
inflation adjustment that is made every 5 years.
The Act provides that in the event that actual damages from an
accident are in excess of this amount, Congress will ”thoroughly review” the incident and take such action as is necessary to provide ”full and prompt compensation to the public.” ”
— source: Price-Anderson Act Amendments of 2005
To encourage the nuclear industry to build any plants at all, the inherently unsafe characteristics of nuclear power plants required government shielding from liability, or subsidy, for the costs of a nuclear accident via the Price-Anderson Act.
Even as early as the 1950s, the nuclear industry was aware of the catastrophic nature of a nuclear accident, a meltdown due to a loss-of-cooling-accident, radiation released into the atmosphere or water, and the potential for hundreds of thousands of deaths or even many, many more. Industrial insurance underwriters also were keenly aware of the risks, and had their premiums adjusted accordingly. Utilities that wanted to enter the nuclear power business realized quickly that they could not afford to build the plants, plus pay for insurance premiums. The price for their nuclear-based power would be prohibitive – and the adverse publicity would be devastating. One can imagine the headlines: “Nuclear Disaster Insurance Increases Electricity Prices to Unaffordable Levels.” Or, some similar headline.
Subsequent events have shown that such nuclear calamity is not only possible, but extremely deadly. Three major events have happened to date, at Three Mile Island in 1979 with a reactor core partially melting down, Chernobyl in 1986 with a core explosion, and Fukushima Dai-ichi in 2011 with three reactors melted down and four containment buildings exploded. With hundreds of reactors operating world-wide and almost one hundred more either planned or under construction, more meltdown disasters are inevitable.
The very existence of nuclear power plants depends on Congress renewing the Price-Anderson Act as it periodically expires. Without the government assuming the excess liability, nuclear plants would shut down immediately. No utility company has resources of $1 trillion, and certainly cannot buy insurance in that amount. The Act is the single largest subsidy for nuclear power, greater than loan guarantees ($8 billion roughly for each reactor), the carbon tax on coal plants that benefits nuclear plants due to their “carbon free” power production, no lawsuits being permitted during construction (a limited exception applies), increased electricity prices during nuclear plant construction to avoid paying interest on loans, and operating safety regulations routinely relaxed to allow nuclear plants to continue operating without meeting safety standards.
It is a struggle to think of any other industry that enjoys such a government benefit: what other industry would shut down tomorrow if its uninsurable risks were not borne by the government? The risks are so great, and the cost of insurance is just too high for the nuclear power industry to compete, or even exist, without the comfortable cushion of the Price-Anderson Act.
Indeed, that raises the question: are nuclear plant operators too comfortable, too complacent, due to the certain knowledge that any catastrophic event will be paid first by $300 million in insurance, and then cost them only $100 million each? Any amount over and beyond those limits will be paid for by the US Government. Perhaps nuclear plants would pay more attention to safety, and operating procedures if they knew the plant would shut down or be sold at auction to pay the damages. Perhaps the nuclear industry would be much more self-policing if the limits were $20 billion for each reactor, not the $100 million that exists today.
I have some experience with nuke plant closures since many years ago I worked at a nuke plant that closed in California and then subsequently worked at plants that were in trouble.
Power generation is a local issue. Commercial US nuke plants were built at a time when local utilities were regulated. Costs were passed on to customers. Power plants were built to meet demand.
A lot has changed in 40 years. Power generation has been deregulated. Fracking has caused an oversupply of natural gas. Wind and solar has been built for political reason not to meet demand for power.
What happens in a community when a nuke plant closes? First the jobs go away. Then there is huge drop in the tax base when the plant is no longer generating power. Power has to be imported from some place that benefits from selling power to that community.
What never happens? Renewable energy never replaces the baseload power from the nuke plant.
The first misconception about nuclear power and the fossil generation is that it is subsidized. The power industry is a cash cow for governments. It is the role of government to redistribute money for the benefit of society.
There is a clear economic trend in the US. Smaller, older, single unit plants are not economical and are closing. However, this experience with a local economic loss provides data to states about the ramification of closing nukes.
Some states have decided keeping nukes running is better than exporting tax dollars by importing power that may be ‘cheaper’ in the short term.
“It is the role of government to redistribute money for the benefit of society.”
No it is the role of government to do those things that can’t be efficiently done by the private sector. Things like policing and defense.
Government NEVER redistributes money for the benefit of society, even if the politicians lie and claim that it does.
What government does is redistribute money for the benefit of those who run government. Be it buying votes so that they can stay in power, or just siphoning off the money for themselves and their friends.
Never!
Clearly MarkW was home schooled by his mother. And she did not do a very good job.
Nuke plants and the people who work at them pay property taxes. Government uses that money for such things as schools, libraries, and hospitals; that benefit society.
Clearly Kit P has gone senile.
Fascinating how his response to me doesn’t even address the issue I raised.
But then, I’ve learned to expect that from him.
Germany turned off just under 505 of its nuclear overnight in 2011 after Fukushima.
the grid did just fine.
In the years since, renewables have filled the gap quite adequately.
In the last month 4 of the 8 now remaining German nuke plants have been offline for various reasons… German grid has been fine, even setting some new records for percentage of power from renewbales.
50% oh for an edit capability!
Germany replaced those coal plants with nuclear from France and hydro from somewhere else. (I’ve forgotten which country, sorry)
err, nuclear,not coal
Here is a link concerning a PPA for a utility scale solar farm we have driven by in the southern Nevada desert.
http://pucweb1.state.nv.us/PDF/AxImages/DOCKETS_2015_THRU_PRESENT/2015-7/3615.pdf
http://energy.nv.gov/uploadedFiles/energynvgov/content/Programs/Boulder%20Solar%20Power%20LLC%20Tax%20Abatement%20Application%20Attachments.pdf
I also went to SUNPOWER web site. Like all solar, actual production and costs are lacking. I looked at there ‘solar calculator’ which is not working at the moment.
They base their economics on panels lasting 25 years for the PPA.
That’s likely generous, and when you’re talking about half a billion, there are going to be a lot of ones that die.
Another point is that the max capacity of those panels drops every year. Some say by 1% point per year. Solar enthusiasts claim that it is less. But even they admit there is a drop off.
The economics assume that there is no drop off in efficiency right up till the time the panel needs to be replaced.
It’s not entirely clear from the reports I read, but those maybe individual photo diodes failing. As I think a wafer contains multiple diodes connected in parallel , and a panel has multiple wafers.
I always thought it was from degradation of the crystal lattice which resulted in both fewer photons being caught and increased internal resistance.
That’s just the silicon. the lattice defects are a problem when they cross the junction barrier, that’s where the resistive leakage comes from. But you also have the metalization that migrates and corrodes, while making a connection to the silicon, and from wafer to wafer. The current densities can be really large, in logic chip designs (as opposed to power generation) we’d have multi-million Amp’s per sq cm ( a silicon chip can
tolerate current densities up to 10^10 A/cm^2 http://www.ifte.de/mitarbeiter/lienig/slip05.pdf ). Which as connected by that silver conductive tape looking stuff. Electronics failure rates by type worst to best is Bad connectors, good connectors, mill spec connectors, solder connections, welded connection,wire, evaporated metal steps, evaporated metal contacts, evaporated metal interconnects. or something like that. And if you detected a theme, well that was intentional. Most failures are of the bad, broken or burnt up connection somewhere down the line kind. with a few connections that aren’t suppose to be there thrown in as well (like the lattice short). For solar, you then apply heat, cold, thermal cycles, water, some places salt(which moves around on surfaces, attracted to electrical charge), UV, mechanical vibration from wind. Some of those wafers will last 1000 years, they just won’t be connected to anything.
Figures suggest 30 to 40 years -30 year warranties are not uncommon.
Degradation rate seems to be about 0.5% a year – but not for every panel:
https://cleantechnica.com/2015/10/19/how-long-will-solar-panels-last/
“According to a study undertaken by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) a few years ago, which looked at the ‘photovoltaic degradation’ rates of some 2000 solar installations, the average solar panel loses about half of a percentage point (0.5%) of efficiency per year, which means that a panel at the end of its 25-year warranty period should still be operating at about 88% of its original capacity. However, not every panel will see degradation rates as high as 0.5%”
Griff
How are your solar panels working?
“Figures suggest 30 to 40 years -30 year warranties are not uncommon.”
Solar warranties are good for getting a fire started in your woodstove. I have read a few. First, the manufacture must still be in business.
Second, you pay to take them down, you pay to ship them in the original packing.
Third, panels are only part of a solar system and any part can cause failure of the whole system.
It is for this last reason that I think solar panels, a limited resource, should only be used at utility scale PV project like here in the desert southwest. At least they may get repaired.
If Griff had bother to read the links I provided, he would would see these PV systems are complex with tracking and water cleaning systems. Water is a scarce resource in this part of the world.
Forth, failure of solar PV systems is not reported. Who cares anyway? The goal of PV is PR pictures not making power, or so it would seem. And why report stupidity?
That wasn’t a very good reliability report, they just collected field data, and I think the majority of the panels were in the field less than 10 or 12 years. And none of the manufactures have done accelerated life testing. They all just use field installations. Hot and Dry places are one thing, but hot, wet, and salty places, daily extremes in temp are death to electronics. Oh, don’t forget all the plastics and silicon getting UV irradiated. And you want to install a half billion of them, to charge batteries that last 4 or 5 years tops when used as laptop batteries. This is madness. And yes, there are folks who get on the train, and rake in the money, and as soon as it drys up. They will leave.
This issue is also being debated in Ohio.
“Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station employs 700 people full time, with an average annual pay of $86,000 before benefits. Keeping it in production will generate nearly $30 billion in economic output to the state.
Next week the legislature in Columbus is scheduled to begin hearings on a bill that would correct some of the market flaws, as New York and Illinois have done in the recent past, and as New Jersey and Connecticut are now considering.
On Wednesday night, the school board for the area including Oak Harbor passed this resolution:
Resolution of the Board of Education of the Benton-Carroll-Salem Local School District
…..
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the Benton-Carroll-Salem Local School District Board of Education supports the work of Ohio legislators as they work on plans to help preserve our state’s baseload nuclear plants known as the Zero Emission Nuclear Resource Program (ZEN).”
http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2017/04/an-ohio-school-board-is-working-to-save.html
One of things to note about the solar industry is that output is often in expected generation not actual.
From the nuclear industry:https://www.nei.org/Knowledge-Center/Nuclear-Statistics/US-Nuclear-Power-Plants
“U.S. electricity from nuclear energy in 2016: 19.7 percent, with 805.3 billion kilowatt-hours generated.
Nuclear industry capacity factor (2016): 92.1 percent.
Nuclear power uprates: More than 7,300 megawatts of power uprates have been approved by the NRC since 1977. That is the equivalent of adding seven reactors to the electric grid.”
There is also a very good trend in the ‘Industrial Safety Accident Rate’ which went from 0.38 in 1997 to 0.03 in 2015.
@Griff
“In the years since, renewables have filled the gap quite adequately.”
This is a story about the US not a small country in old Europe. Nuclear provides baseload power, it can not be replaced by wind and solar.
Let’s do some math. Nevada has a 25% solar mandate. Say the local power company needs an average of 10,000 MW each hour. That is 2500 MW needed but with a 20% CF, 12,500 MWe of capacity must be on line.
So the first obvious problem is that the PV are going to be producing a lot more power than is needed and then no power at night.
The next obvious problem is that with a 25 life, 500 MWe has to be built each year.
“Degradation rate seems to be about 0.5% a year”
That is another 62.5 MWe needed each year.
That 562.5 MWe is a huge mountain of hazardous waste generated each year just for one metropolitan area.
They are predicting wind gust of 60 mph. Not driving the motorhome anyplace. Visibility will drop dramatically along with PV output. In the future, we will have to worry about flying PV panel debris.
The bottom line is that solar is not the least bit sustainable.
Not just flying debris. Wind blown sand will scour the glass coverings which will make them less efficient.
Additionally, if you aren’t careful while cleaning, sand or other grit on the surface can also scratch the glass.
PS: On these big commercial installations, I don’t know if the glass can be replaced or not. On the home units that I have seen, it can’t.
PPS: If you cover the panel with a replaceable shield, you have added to the cost of the installation and decreased efficiency (by and admittedly small amount) at the same time.
If the capacity factor (CF) is 20%, how do the providers get 25% of all electricity from solar? It’s not possible without storage, which is expensive (and never cost tallied by solar power advocates), and doesn’t exist. Even the huge 100 MWH Tesla battery (that’s 1000 X as large as one of their car batteries) touted as South Australia’s savior would need to be multiplied X 1600 to get 10,000 MW for 16 hours. And that assumes no cloudy days. Asking neighboring states to fill in during only cloudy days would put an unacceptable stress on the grid.
In Nevada, solar PV probably has a capacity factor closer to 30%.
Even at 20%, you could get 25% of your electricity from solar. Just install more MW of solar.
Um, no. You over build the solar capacity beyond the 20% CF * 25% RPS. Build more, makes more – the RPS is set by load, not generation. So If I build 50% of my generation in solar, but my total generation is 200% of my load, I’m still beating the 25% requirement. (Say 100 MW is load – you have 200 MW of generation, and 100 (50%) of it is solar. At a 30% CF (which is what is seen in the Mohave and Sonoran deserts), you have an average 30 MW of generation for a 100 MW of load. Done. ) Remember this is all done on an ANNUALIZED basis – hence google and apple and all the other tree huggers(and cities now – thank you Las Vegas and Salt Lake) who claim 100% renewable. That’s annualized. SMH.
Regardless, right now the bulk of the RPS in Nevada is being met by Geothermal, not solar – because its constant, not intermittent – though its getting very close – if Tonopah’s Crescent Dunes (thermal oil – disaster of a plant – two years? beyond COD) is on-line, that may actually be no longer the case.
There are plants in the Desert SW that are not seeing the degradation that is supposed here – there is degradation, but its not at a 1% per year. Again, the problem is that we don’t have NERC reliability data to check it against. There’s no need to test – there are plants that are now in their second decade. Should probably look those up.
I was using Retired K’s numbers and assertions such as: “Nevada has a 25% solar mandate.” which would not allow other ‘renewables’ as geothermal, and his statement of 20% CF. I have already discounted the 800 MW from Hoover dam, as AGW enthusiasts don’t allow big hydro to be counted as ‘renewable’
David: you said: “Even at 20%, you could get 25% of your electricity from solar. Just install more MW of solar.” I guess that means storage to get to the 25% number, not the 100% number I assumed, but didn’t clarify. I agree, that would need a lot fewer batteries, or selling power to neighbors. That’s a bookkeeping exercise depending on your politics.
Let’s say you mandate the following generation distribution:
Nuclear 25%
Coal 25%
Natural Gas CC 25%
Solar PV 25%
If the capacity factors are:
Nuclear 95%
Coal 85%
Natural gas 85%
Solar PV 20%
You would have to install the following capacity ratio:
Nuclear 1.1
Coal 1.2
Natural gas CC 1.2
Solar PV 5.0
Now, this would raise havoc with the grid; but it could be done.
Nevada’s solar mandate is a percentage of the overall RPS – its not 25% of the total load. I think its something like 25% RPS, and of that 25%, 20% has to be solar. (I think its 20% not 25, but its been a while, and there have been assembly bills passed).
Also, Nevada doesn’t receive 800 MW from hover – its entitled to ~480 MW at most and that is split between NVE and some municipalities in Nevada. The RPS in Nevada only allows “small hydro” to be counted – not large, which means Hoover is out anyway.
I looked up the specifics: “Included within the RPS is a requirement that at least 5 percent of the total renewable energy in the portfolio must be generated by solar facilities through 2015 and at least 6 percent must be generated by solar facilities beginning in 2016. In addition, the 2005 Nevada Legislature determined that energy efficiency measures can be used to comply with up to 25 percent of the annual RPS requirement. Of that 25 percent, 50 percent must come from measures installed at residential customer service locations”
So efficiency is bigger than solar in the RPS, but its all still 25% of load.
NERC has not developed reliability reporting standards for solar yet. It has begun it for wind, which will be interesting to review in 10 years. There is some discussion about how to calculate the solar reliability metrics but obviously, there is a HUGE solar lobby that doesn’t want any of this data collected, much less published. My experience has been that the bulk of the reliability issues are on the inverters, not the panels themselves. And that yes, you see some degradation in the PV panels over time, but within the performance guarantee of the contract. This is in reference to a long term PPA in the desert SW.
The purpose of my example of the solar mandate was to show that it is not practical. As an engineer in the power industry, if it is not practical it will not happen. Politicians can mandate whatever makes them feel good but it takes engineers to make it work.
“the RPS is set by load, not generation”
Generation = load
Storing significant amounts of electricity is not practical. Batteries are not green and very dangerous. If we want ugly let’s go back to the way we did coal 50 years ago and have really cheap power.
For fixed PV 20% CF is ideal. 0% CF is what I expect because that is the most common. For tracking panels I think 30% may the BS number provided.
Tracking violates the kiss (keep it simple stupid) principle for a marginal increase in generation. A 100 MWe plant makes $5000 worth of power for its best hour. At the same rate, a 1200 MWe nuke make about 1.5 million a day. The point here is that there is a difference in the level of urgency when keeping power flowing.
Ptomely 2 writes,
“Question 1: If a force 10 earthquake and 30m high tsunami strike an industrial facility and cause damage to it, does this necessarily mean the design and safety of the facility was deficient?
Lefties: “YES”
Skeptics: “No””
The question I had is why so many died? I know the answer for only three. At the nuke, one worker died from injuries suffered in the earthquake. Two more drowned inspecting the main condenser. They thought they were safe.
From other reading, I think the reason so many died is they thought they were safe. Government signs said they had arrived at a place that was a safe tsunami evacuation area based on experience.
To answer question 1, the design and safety were not deficient.
Let me provide a simple example. Our son just moved into a bigger house to accommodate a growing family. The smaller house was newer and had hard wired smoke detectors in every bedroom to meet code. The bigger house was older and had no smoke detectors in bedrooms but met code as pointed out by our house inspector. Also the gas dryer and water heater were no longer vented properly.
We paid $1000 to have breakers installed, wire pulled, and boxes (11) installed for smoke detectors and ceiling fans. Before moving the baby to the new house my son and I completed the work and corrected the deficiencies.
During original construction, the cost of exceeding smoke detector code would have been marginal compared to many of the cosmetic selling features.
My point is that we live in a world with a low bid mindset. We have mindless regulations on coal plants without honest cost benefit analysis. We have unrealistic mandates for wind and solar without seeing what the impact will be.