Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to renewables advocates, renewables will soon be so cheap it won’t be worth pouring more money into researching nuclear fusion.
Renewable Energy Threatens the World’s Biggest Science Project
Inside the $24 billion long bet on fusion power in France.
By Anna Hirtenstein
20 October 2017, 14:01 GMT+10
The world’s biggest scientific experiment is on course to become the most expensive source of surplus power.
Components of the 20 billion-euro ($24 billion) project are already starting to pile up at a construction site in the south of France, where about 800 scientists plan to test whether they can harness the power that makes stars shine. Assembly of the machine will start in May. Unlike traditional nuclear plants that split atoms, the so-called ITER reactor will fuse them together at temperatures 10-times hotter than the Sun — 150 million degrees Celsius (270 million Fahrenheit).
Its startling complexity, with more than a million pieces and sponsors in 35 countries, mean questions remain about over whether the reactor will work or if it can deliver electricity at anything like the cost of more traditional forms of clean energy. With wind-farm developers starting to promise subsidy-free power by 2025 and electricity demand stagnating, even the project’s supporters are asking whether ITER will ever make sense.
“I’m dubious,” said Chris Llewellyn Smith, director of energy research at Oxford University who has spoken in favor of the research project. “The cost of wind and solar has come down so rapidly, so the competition has become harder to beat than you could have conceivably imagined a decade ago.”
…
In the decades it will take to prove itself, renewables are likely to mushroom, thanks to a 62 percent plunge in the cost of solar panels over the past five years. Wind energy has followed similar trends as turbine sizes surged, boosting the spark coming from each unit. Batteries also are spreading, reducing the need for utilities to maintain a constant “baseload” of supply that ITER would feed to the grid.
“The concept of the need for baseload generation is fading away,” said Paolo Frankl, who heads the renewable power division of the International Energy Agency, a Paris-based institution advising nations on energy. “Technically, you could run a system 100 percent on renewables and even 100 percent just wind and solar.”
…
On one level its funny – advocates of a power concept which doesn’t deliver reliable energy trash talking a power concept which has never been demonstrated to work.
But the more serious issue is how it highlights the risk of putting the lions share of nuclear fusion research effort into ITER.
ITER in my opinion is in big trouble.
The President of France, the country which hosts the ITER project, is a hardline green – in my opinion it is conceivable he will respond to political pressure from renewables advocates, and make life difficult for ITER.
ITER itself is a multi-decade bureaucracy of a project which may never deliver.
Even if ITER delivers, what does it prove? At best it will demonstrate that it is possible to produce nuclear power from fusion – at some enormous premium to existing baseload power technology.
Time to diversify the nuclear fusion research effort.
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You will of course excuse the slip regarding Gas Powered Fire Station Units where it should have said “Gas Fired Power Station Units” GFPSUs ! Ooops!
Renewables are not going to get any cheaper. As with all technologies, they have been getting cheaper over time , but like all technologies they have reached the limit. Remember when a LED TV was £1,000? Now they are £250 or less, but they are not going to get any cheaper because there is nowhere left to go in savings on production costs. I’m pretty sure both wind and solar power have hit that point too.
“pretty sure” why?
I’m not into renewable energy at all…and I trash talk ‘fusion’…well I don’t need to because its consistent failure to make even the slightest progress since the dawn of the nuclear age speaks amply for itself!
ITER is not a project to make fusion work. It is a project to get sure that no nation gets fusion before other, because it would mean a huge economical and hence military edge.
Nations are ready to put huge money in this sort of “let’s keep an eye on each other” project.
Fusion gives mankind the stars. Ergs for your hairdryer are not the point.
“The concept of the need for baseload generation is fading away,”
I didn’t know that the global economy was failing in a way that will make the whole world dark like N Korea.
Although, unless the CAGW religion can be overcome, that will be our future.
There can be no doubt that fusion is the future of energy production. The green blob doesn’t seem to realize that ‘renewables’ are driven by fusion and bringing that fusion closer to where the energy is needed will inevitably make that energy cheaper.
Do I understand from the article that all subsidies for wind and solar power can end by 2025? I’ll believe it when I see it.
It is impossible to believe those that claim the Earth is in mortal danger from carbon dioxide when they reject nuclear which produces zero CO2, hydroelectric projects again with zero CO2 production and natural gas which has cut CO2 production by 10% in less than 10 years. When only the highest cost least efficient power generation is insisted upon it can only be because a solution to the problem put forward is not wanted. Protection and propagation of the problem is the goal, solving it eliminates the ‘problem’ and political army that rely on it for their very existence.
Of course the wind/solar scammers want an end to fusion research. The possibility of unlimited inexpensive clean power is their worst nightmare. No more enslaving the poor rate payers, no CO2 producing excuses to reduce the standard of living. Worst yet, all the poor people in the world having the american upper middle class standard of living as the base line.
True. It’s not about the environment but about power. Our freedom is at stake. Solar and wind energy is a rational choice if the purpose is to create a new class of poor. Smart grids will regulate power (freedom) of the serfs. The greens will be the new noble class. We witness a revolt of the elites.
Solar is freedom, I have lots of it, and have liberated .5% of the families on Oahu.
this solar power does not energize industry (steel, concrete, chemical…) and industry is the root of our prosperity. Don’t fool yourself. Question: “where does your power come from at night, at cloudy days”? To serve a household for 1 week requires 100000 investment in batteries.
Solar can certainly power industry, there is no difference between solar generated electricity and classic “thermal”.
On the battery meme, 2 points— the only way to properly execute solar PV is by staying connected to a diverse grid.
About 8 AGM leadd acid batteries will take care of a conservative house for a day (plus whatever was generated and used during the day is a bonus), about $250 each, so 2000. times 7 days $14,000
Your $100,000 figure is absurd, just a lie to pot shot against solar.
And the cost over the life of the house is?
Well thats an interesting thought, please clarify it’s relevance.
Seems like the comparison to make would be in relation to other possible energy sources.
Lead Acid used in off grid daily use and a 50% draw down, assume 5 year battery life. Smaller draw down, longer life. Lithium and “Aquion” deeper drawdowns and longer life, and MUCH higher cost, like 10 times higher.
62% fall in the price of solar panels over 5 years sounds great but if you have a solar FIT system like I do you know the arithmetic. They’re around 16% efficient at turning the sun’s energy into electricity so imagine their Green nirvana that could magically make such systems 100% efficient and what do you get? Every 1 kilowatt system becomes a 6 kilowatt system but all that does is magnify the variability by a factor of 6 because 6 times nothing at night is still nothing and your storage problem for despatchability is still the same.
Storage is the really big cahuna here and why these numpties keep avoiding installing and paying for it while they leech off thermal generators. We just had the Darwin to Adelaide Solar Challenge here in Oz and it’s obvious they still haven’t worked out how to stick sunlight in a petrol tank. Perhaps try stuffing some wind in the tank instead chaps.
Someday, storage will be essential, but what was learned in Hawaii, is that even at 30% solar PV penetration, the grid can handle it, diversity makes things work out. On larger mainland grids, the diversity will work even better.
yes, we should be developing storage, for some future 10 to 30 years down the road when it will be needed.
Solar provides power to the grid when it needs it the most, and solar owners put load on the grid when the grid needs it the most.
Please respond to that, it doesn’t look like leeching to me.
[solar owners put load on the grid when the grid needs it the most]
nonsense.
Our prosperity is the result of industry (steel, concrete, chemical, ceramics…) So, the real transition is powering steel mills by solar or wind, which will never work.
David, you simply need to power the grid, diversity smooths lots of stuff out, but the PV/conventional blend of generation is not any fundamentally different type of grid. Load following is necessary now, and storage will be necessary pretty far down the road. We don’t need the storage “cost” now, but research should develop better and more cost effective technologies
It worked so well in South Australia. . . /s
Stuff would work a lot better for S Australia if they stayed away from vacuous projects like floating PV
http://reneweconomy.com.au/australias-first-floating-solar-plant-opened-in-south-australia-42322/
Commiebob says –
“The greens seem to think it’s ok for white folks to sort their garbage, ride bicycles, and use funny light bulbs. If most of the brown and black population of the world could live with such ‘constraints’ they would think they had died and gone to heaven.
Racism is as racism does.”
Sorry CB, us “white folks” aren’t, apparently, the only “racists” in this comment stream. I am so tired of the hackneyed comments about white racism. Racism is everywhere you look, especially in those that see racism everywhere. “White folk” seem to always be the ones that get fingered, however. Please remember that those that would hold the third world down are “elite.” Elite are not just “white,” they come in every color. Most “white folk” would just as soon see everyone else have what they have since then no one would feel the need to steal theirs. Thought I would throw that in so you could have something to bite on.
Well said, quite tired of having people try to sell the “collective white guilt trip” to ME.