Wind energy

[farmerben]

Is wind energy a boondoggle?

Requires a continental size smart grid

Requires other energy supply/demand variables to change to adjust to the vagaries of the wind

Has a substantial upfront cost- approx. 2 million per wind turbine where I live not including power lines (that was during the Obama era, things might be slightly different now)

Cuts off in high wind >40 mph to preserve itself.  So its only really good between 30-40 mph wind speed.  

Non recyclable.  Carbon fiber and epoxy blades go into the landfill.  

Windmill blades account for a decent percentage of global consumption of carbon fiber.  So everything else made of carbon fiber would become cheaper if the demand for windmill blades ceased.  

 

[darthgently]

3 minutes ago, farmerben said:

Is wind energy a boondoggle?

Requires a continental size smart grid

Requires other energy supply/demand variables to change to adjust to the vagaries of the wind

Has a substantial upfront cost- approx. 2 million per wind turbine where I live not including power lines (that was during the Obama era, things might be slightly different now)

Cuts off in high wind >40 mph to preserve itself.  So its only really good between 30-40 mph wind speed.  

Non recyclable.  Carbon fiber and epoxy blades go into the landfill.  

Windmill blades account for a decent percentage of global consumption of carbon fiber.  So everything else made of carbon fiber would become cheaper if the demand for windmill blades ceased.  

 

Welcome to wind energy skeptics club, lol.  I’ve driven a lot nationwide and past many huge wind farms many times.  The number of mills actually spinning even on windy days seems to be about 1 in 5 at best most of the time.  And it isn’t for lack of wind.  They are very high maintenance and very costly to do so.  Once in a while I’d see nearly all working in a farm and it was pleasantly surprising but that was not the norm.  Horrible ROI

[farmerben]

 

Gas flares in North Dakota.  Not sure what year the photo was taken.  

Last I heard it was more efficient and cheaper upfront to pump the gas across country, compared to building generators on site and a new electric smart grid.  But neither the existing gas pipes nor the existing electricity grid could handle it.

Edited Wednesday at 10:48 AM by farmerben

[tater]

Not a fan of secondary solar (wind), myself. The power density is awful. It may have improved slightly, but the last number I saw was 2.1 W/m². I can see the %$@%ing things from my house, and they've gotta be 60 miles away (more?). Eyesores. Course I can see a much smaller solar facility far closer that is much smaller, but I'm confident it makes far more power.

[RCgothic]

In a word, yes. 

Wind power is very cheap to construct. 2m per turbine isn't actually a lot compared to the rated power. It's very good at appearing to provide cheap energy, and in the short term is good at cutting fuel consumption at other plants, but actually it makes everything else look more expensive, and then eventually gets more expensive itself. But not as expensive as the price point it drives everything else to.

I'll elaborate. 

(For info my career background is wind turbine gearboxes, then nuclear power)

To begin with

Say there's a national average demand of 10TWh per day, and generalising a bit, you can sell the energy you generate conventionally (coal, gas, nuclear) for $10/MWh. The total energy daily energy requirement is sold for $100M.

Wind starts getting added

Now you add 10% additional wind to the mix, so on a good day for Wind, we turn down the conventional plants a bit, and generate 9TWH conventionally for $90M and 1TWh from wind for $5M.

That only sold for $95M! Woohoo! Money saved, build more!

Wind share increases

Now we can generate up to 50% wind power. Most days we average 10% or so. So on average $95M, good days $75M.

But the conventional plants are beginning to see their utilisation factors drop, and they still cost money to maintain. Additionally, large thermal cycles are very wearing to plant components, so they begin to cost more. The less competitive plants go out of business, so the price of conventional generation doesn't change much on average. They're all getting more expensive, bit at the same time the most expensive ones are dropping out, so it sort of cancels out. For now...

Wind is very cheap! Build more!

Up to 100% wind power

Now on good days up to 100% of our power can be generated by wind! $50m total cost for 10TWh on those days.

But now on those days the conventional plants need to get turned off. This is very bad for them, and also they're now only averaging 80% load factor. The most expensive plants again go out of business, and we now struggle to cover 100% of demand on bad days for wind. Cost of conventional generation goes up to $12/MWh.

So on good days, $50M. But average days of 20% wind now cost $106M. And on bad days, $120M.

Wait... What?

But wind is cheap! It only costs $5/MWh! Build more!

200% wind power!

Wow we sure did a lot of building!

Now on good days it only costs...

Huh, how do we sell 20TWh when demand is only 10TWh/day? That much energy can't be stored. Also we're getting angry phone calls from the distribution grid about overloading their system. They're only going to pay $1/MWh for the electricity we generate today, and if we don't reduce output we're going to get fined. The grid is also cutting prices to consumers to encourage them to take more power off their hands.

But we sold 12TWh today for only $12M. That's... good... right?

On average days, wind now costs $6MWh due to reduced utilisation factor, and produces 40% of the required demand. 

But conventional power is in trouble. These constant load swings keep breaking things, and the utilisation factor is down to 60%. More plants have gone out of business, and conventional can now only manage 80% of full demand at a push. Also it now costs $15/MWh.

On average days, it now costs $114 to generate those 10TWh.

Bad days. Uh oh, the air is still, there might as well be zero generation from wind, and we only have 80% conventional capacity. We're now getting desperate phone calls from the distribution grid trying to avert brown-outs. They're willing to pay us $25/MWh for any power we can produce today, so maybe we can afford to bring a few mothballed generators back online. The costs are also passed on to consumers to discourage demand.

On these days power costs $225M to squeak out 9TWh. Ouch.

But wind still cost less than half as much as conventional power did! The solution has to be building more!

500% wind power!

Boy those conventional power stations have become publicly unpopular, costing as much as they do. It was a huge effort, but we now have the ability to generate a maximum 50TWh/day by wind!

So on a good day, let's see... Uh oh, the distribution grid operator is apoplectic with us. They won't consider paying more than 5c/MWh for power today and we're very lucky they're not charging us!* Still, consumption has managed to rise to 15TWh today as we can do something useful with such cheap supply. 

Wind only costs $750k for 15TWh today.

*In reality wind probably does get charged for supplying to the grid at this point. The  wind supplier then recoups the loss at times when supply is lower and conventional plants are generating. Guess which of wind or conventional comes out of that arrangement looking worse? Hint: It's not wind.

On an average day...

Ok, so our wind utilisation factor now kind of sucks. We're now selling about a third of what we used to be able to per turbine, and that's got to be reflected in the prices. Wind now costs $15/MWh.

Conventional power? Nah, they don't generate anything on the average day now. Half of all conventional plants have gone out of business. The remaining 50% are demanding fees of $2.5/MWh of remaining nameplate capacity (5TWh/day) just to remain on standby. $12.5M per day to generate nothing? The public thinks they're having a laugh at their expense and are not happy 

The average day now costs $162.5M to consumers, and they are very very unhappy.

Bad days for wind... Well the good news is that now even on bad days we can generate 1TWh from our 50TWh nameplate wind installations (probably).

Conventional stations fire up, but they've only got 5TWh between them, and are quite aware of how essential they are. They need to recoup their entire operating costs in these small windows of usefulness The grid operator is desperate. There are widespread brownouts so they've ordered mandatory closures of industry. They'll pay $50/MWh for anything that can be generated today. We also beg off our neighbours, who have their own problems. They'll let us have 1TWH for $60M.

$325M for just 7TWh.

The public is *not* happy.

Big problem

How do we fix this?

It'll eventually become clear to policy makers that building more wind is only going to make the problem worse, but it's hard to get agreement to build anything else when conventional plants are getting paid twice as much per MWh.

In the public view, conventional plants are the expensive problem! The transition to wind is costing them more and more, and it's now affecting industry as well, so business isn't happy either. Everyone becomes disillusioned with the "green agenda". Remarkably, coal power gets a pass on "conventional is expensive" in the public view. The public wants to go back to burning coal and re-open those closed stations, because they remember bills costing less when they were operating.

But also, wind suppliers are actually getting reluctant to supply new turbines to generate at $15/MW on average. The utilisation factor of each turbine is getting so low they're uneconomical even at that price. The grid flatly refuses to pay more, citing public opinion, so new wind farm projects are getting stalled.

The scientific consensus is emphatic we cannot go back to burning carbon, but if nothing changes the public won't take no for an answer. Coal power for the win! Until we all lose.

Nuclear power operators chime in that  they'll build new plants that can generate at $6/MW if the govt loans them $40B per plant up front (which will be paid back over 20 years or so), otherwise the interest on loans sourced from the banking sector means they'll need a guaranteed price per MWh of $18 (and by the way flip flopping on nuclear policy makes those interest rates worse). This is a clear solution to the escalating price problem without going back to burning carbon. But it'll take 10 years, will probably face delays on the first few reactors, and one of these options involves a $40B infrastructure loan supported by general taxation, and the other is more per MWh than the public is paying now. These suggestions go down like a bag of cold sick.

The nuclear operator further points out that if we think $18/MWh is bad, just wait until the currently operating but aging nuclear plants reach the end of their lifespans, and also that if we need 100% backup to cover for wind, what's the point in the wind when the energy can be generated reliably and cheaply by nuclear, with forward-thinking policy?

Someone else suggests we build hydrogen plants that can convert the excess energy when there's surplus, and burn it when there isn't as a form of energy storage (it's really the only way other than pumped hydro to store enough energy at scale). But that's effectively just 9TWh/day of conventional capacity with additional expensive fuel generators attached, and the operators will face the same low utilisation factors that caused the other conventional plants problems.

The pumped hydro suppliers ask which towns and cities we want to submerge permanently beneath reservoirs. Hydro is basically already as developed as possible without major sacrifices.

Somebody else suggests using concrete block towers as a form of gravity storage. They get laughed out of the country for re-inventing pumped hydro but worse in every conceivable way.

No palatable way forward is found, and energy prices continue to rise above inflation.

In Summary

Wind power is the cheapest way to build hideously expensive energy.

Advocates of green energy (of which I am myself) mostly seem to hold the opinion that carbon burning plants are the enemy and that nuclear and wind both have a place in combating them. We should both be on the same side, and if nuclear is struggling on (unrealistic) cost comparison to wind, then we should work on making it cheaper (we are, but it's just not possible to compete with wind on a simplistic comparison for the reasons above). And all of wind's problems can be solved by magical non-existant energy storage solutions (lol)!

The people arguing for harmony in the green energy camp are, in my view, very wrong and self-defeating.

Wind power was a cheap way to quickly reduce carbon consumption. But the problem is that it's too cheap and unreliable. It makes everything massively more expensive, and then impossible to build anything else. And when the public gets sick of it, we'll go back to burning carbon, however ill-advised that is.

And the exact same problems apply to Solar.

(I've generalised, simplified, and exaggerated a fair bit in the above in order to illustrate the point, but I believe the main argument is an accurate representation of the problem)

Edited Wednesday at 09:15 PM by RCgothic

[farmerben]

Wow I like that quantitative analysis RCgothic!

At least with solar you have a reliable evening demand spike, so you can run the gas generators on a predictable cycle.  A mix of 50/50 solar and gas might work fine, but I don't see how even a little bit of wind power really helps balance the equations.

[tater]

58 minutes ago, RCgothic said:

(I've generalised, simplified, and exaggerated a fair bit in the above in order to illustrate the point, but I believe the main argument is an accurate representation of the problem)

Fantastic post.

Question: Do you think there is an optimum mix of wind where it inflects as a % of total power requirements? (ballpark)

 

 

[RCgothic]

5 hours ago, farmerben said:

Wow I like that quantitative analysis RCgothic!

At least with solar you have a reliable evening demand spike, so you can run the gas generators on a predictable cycle.  A mix of 50/50 solar and gas might work fine, but I don't see how even a little bit of wind power really helps balance the equations.

In reality that's 100% gas with some very expensive fuel-conserving extras.

Solar is still extremely spiky, tends to be at a minimum at periods of peak demand evenings and mornings on dark winter days, is generally not fully predictable in most of the world, especially northern latitudes where the solar insolation and utilisation factor is worse, and if there needs to be 100% conventional backup, then why not skip the the extra moving (or indeed static) parts and go 100% nuclear?

Nuclear is actually very cheap with good policy. Good policy is helping nuclear operators with loans at a reasonable interest (and they would pay back with interest, they don't need it for free, just not to be charged extortionate rates by private finance), and building a solid run of plants so that the inevitable kinks with the first of type get worked out. 

Those two points are what SMRs aim to address - cheap enough to build without a loan from the banks, and built in quantity.

I may be biased due to working in the industry, but I'm here because I believe it's logically the best solution for green energy. As mentioned above, I got here from wind.

5 hours ago, tater said:

Fantastic post.

Question: Do you think there is an optimum mix of wind where it inflects as a % of total power requirements? (ballpark)

 

 

Depends on a lot of factors, but I think the inflection point probably comes a little after being able to generate 100% of power through wind on windy days. Thereafter it becomes impossible to sell everything a turbine generates at a reasonable price, utilisation factors of both wind and conventional start to drop off significantly, and active price management starts to pick up in a big way.

Unfortunately that's about the point everyone is marvelling at the savings that have been made, and further expansion becomes basically inevitable. 

The best course would have been to build nuclear from the start (like France did, the greenest cheapest grid in the world that isn't significantly hydro), or not stop building in the first place. 

There's a reasonable and believable argument that by far the most devastating impacts of Chernobyl, TMI and Fukushima were the increased carbon and air pollution emissions caused by walking back the transition from coal.

Lignite coal, Germany? Really? What the actual F.

Edited Wednesday at 09:17 PM by RCgothic

[tater]

20 minutes ago, RCgothic said:

The best course would have been to build nuclear from the start (like France did, the greenest cheapest grid in the world that isn't significantly hydro), or not stop building in the first place. 

Yeah, I've always been very pro-nuke.

The 100% wind inflection point is honestly surprising given what you wrote at that level in the previous post. Seems to me based on that I would have expected the point to be somewhere 50% to <100% based purely on economics.

The externality of wind that makes me, well, hate it, is what an eyesore it is. Hate seeing windmills marring pristine country from many 10s of miles away. I'm atypical in that I can see a huge distance from my house (on the side of a mtn), but man, yuck.

[RCgothic]

My figures were slightly illustrative, but yeah, somewhere around 100% or so isn't far wrong. 

I also agree. It'd be nice to be able to visit a beach without several rows of turbines on the horizon.

The first time you see a turbine it's striking in its elegance. When you can see them everywhere and there's not an unspoiled landscape in the country the appeal rapidly wears off 

[AckSed]

As someone from a country (UK) with a heavily wind-based power mix (15%-46% or more of generation on any given day) and a power grid that works, I am pro-wind. That Hinckley is a horrific money-pit, and we are gaining, and will continue to gain, more use out of interconnects to other countries with wind-heavy power mixes before we ever see it come online is, I hope, uncontroversial. I also recognise that we are somewhat small in comparison to even Texas.

Dashboard for the UK power grid: https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/historical

[RCgothic]

I am also from the UK. Would you be surprised to hear that literally 2/3rds of the price of HPC goes straight into the pockets of the banks?

If EDF had access to a loan for the required amount with typical interest rates the cost of HPC would be cut by a factor of x3 overnight. Not exaggerating.

The reasons for high interest rates on nuclear projects are threefold:

1) A relatively long repayment period. The plant may have an operational life of 60 years neglecting further life extensions, but if it takes 30 years for the banks to turn a profit on that loan, they're not interested. So they bump up the interest. 

2) Government flip-flopping. If we suddenly elect an anti-nuclear govt and the plant gets closed before the bank gets their money back, the bank loses. So they put the interest rates up again to turn a profit sooner. 

3) First of a kind construction delays. Nuclear plants are complex, it's unpredictable what challenges will be faced putting them together. If the first of a kind is delayed (which in the UK HPC is), then it's longer until the bank starts getting paid back from operational revenues. So they put the interest rates up to compensate. 

Over a long period, compounded interest has a horrendous magnifying effect. I am not exaggerating. HPC costs a third of what we're paying to build it. The bankers pocket the rest. 

And yet it will still provide cost effective energy once operational compared to the trajectory we're on currently. And SZC will be faster and cheaper, and so will the one after that as long as we don't stop building them.

Otherwise when HY1&2, HRA & TOR close (there is a hard limit on how long we can keep those graphite-cored reactors going) we are in for a serious supply shock and we will not as a nation enjoy the result.

Edited Wednesday at 08:51 PM by RCgothic

[magnemoe]

42 minutes ago, AckSed said:

As someone from a country (UK) with a heavily wind-based power mix (15%-46% or more of generation on any given day) and a power grid that works, I am pro-wind. That Hinckley is a horrific money-pit, and we are gaining, and will continue to gain, more use out of interconnects to other countries with wind-heavy power mixes before we ever see it come online is, I hope, uncontroversial. I also recognise that we are somewhat small in comparison to even Texas.

Dashboard for the UK power grid: https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/historical

Wind has an very good synergy with hydro, also pretty good with gas if you can change the flow fast as the turbines are fast to spin up and down. 

[Nuke]

4 hours ago, farmerben said:

Wow I like that quantitative analysis RCgothic!

At least with solar you have a reliable evening demand spike, so you can run the gas generators on a predictable cycle.  A mix of 50/50 solar and gas might work fine, but I don't see how even a little bit of wind power really helps balance the equations.

i think that diverse energy generation options are for the better. putting all the eggs in one basket is a recipe for disaster. solar is good for covering daytime peaks, but all night storage is a non starter. what we call storage is more akin to a smoothing capacitor in a switch power supply. fly wheel on an engine is another analogy. it buys time to adjust the slow throttling plants (in these examples, milliseconds). the amount of time grid storage is good for is minutes to hours. useful as a grid management tool, but little more.  nuclear is useful for power that is always required. it is very reliable and very green. its the tortoise to fossil fuel's hare. wind is the cheshire cat (or any cat for that matter), it does what it wants and doesn't make any sense. show me someone who thinks wind and only wind is a good idea, and i will show you the hookah smoking caterpillar who you most certainly dont want managing your energy infrastructure. i guess that makes solar rip van winkle, hydro john henry, and  geothermal are the seven dwarves. fusion is the fairy godmother. getting all those fairy tail architypes to play nice is the hard part.

Edited Wednesday at 08:19 PM by Nuke

[RCgothic]

Also, it's not really contentious to point out that:

Depending on other parts of the continent to provide power during lulls requires installing many times the entire continent's demand requirements in nameplate capacity (with associated low utilisation factors).

2) The UK distribution grid can barely cope with the new strains of transmitting our existing wind capacity across our (relatively small) country instead of the traditional practice of generating power close to the point of use. There was an alarmist news story recently about one of the Heysham nuclear plants going offline with a bang and a lot of steam venting (normal in the event of a sudden grid disconnect). Not the nuclear plant's fault, it was national grid's long-distance trunk which passes there crumbling under the demand placed in it (Heysham is a bit of a network hub).

I'm friends with one of National Grid's most senior transmission engineers. He's constantly bemoaning the state of the infrastructure and the increasing demands on a system never designed to cope with them.

3) Long distance interconnects, particularly on a continental scale, are not, in fact, cheap. They're hideously expensive, with quite substantial losses (so more capacity pls!) Another one of the hidden costs wind power suppliers like to pretend is nothing to do with them.

4) Continents can and do experience weather patterns that affect the whole continent, so all that interconnected redundancy counts for... Actually not much in terms of energy assurance. 

5) Exports are hostage to the good will of neighbours, and they can and will put themselves first if push comes to shove. And the UK has spent a lot of the last decade burning all our goodwill with the bloc that has a near-absolute monopoly on our continental connections. This is not great for energy security. I can also think of another G7 country that has recently decided to pick trade wars with its neighbours, it's generally not a good idea.

6) Did you know wind turbine gearboxes rarely last their design life? I do. I used to design them. Turns out it's very hard to avoid delicate bearings and gears picking up damage from shock loads during transit to remote sites, even with a lot of care.

Edited yesterday at 01:06 PM by RCgothic

[Nuke]

26 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Wind has an very good synergy with hydro, also pretty good with gas if you can change the flow fast as the turbines are fast to spin up and down. 

hydro is useful because it comes with built in storage and can be deeply throttled. it also doesn't have the problems with thermal stress. we use mostly hydro power in southeast and south central alaska. it can on small scales cover 100% of your bases. we have the misfortune of living a couple blocks from the diesel backup generator. its used rarely, they shake it down twice a year do maintenance and let it run for a few days, more often than they use it for emergency power.

[RCgothic]

There's no point at all in having "a diverse energy mix" if you have the ability to generate 100% of your power from a reliable (aka dispatchable) green energy source.

Hydro, Nuclear, and Geothermal are the only ones that count in that regard.

Adding variable sources just adds more things you have to pay to build, maintain, and dispose of, and makes the whole system more expensive for all of the reasons I've already illustrated. 

The only exception I can think of is in the case where hydro forms a significant portion of the mix, but there isn't enough water being replenished to deliver full power at all times. In that very niche case, adding a variable (unreliable) source of energy can keep the reservoirs topped up. I think Norway counts. Very mountainous, very good for Hydro 

But even then, if hydro doesn't provide 100% of the dispatchable supply, chances are a reliable green grid would have spare nuclear or geothermal capacity to use for this at off-peak times.

"But what if there's a problem? Doesn't a mix help?"

Modern nuclear has an availability factor of well over 90%. The outages are generally planned, and only last about 5% of the power cycle. The amount of overcapacity required to comfortably cope with planned outage and multiple unplanned incidents coinciding is not all that much, of the order of 20% of demand. That's not particularly onerous in terms of additional expense.

How much overcapacity is required to construct a reliable grid from unreliable sources? 1000%? 10,000%? However much money gets thrown at it, it still won't be enough, all the while making everything else more expensive.

100% overcapacity but gas? Seriously, just bin the wind turbines and build nuclear. It's amazing how much cheaper a predictable dependable energy grid is.

Just ask France.

Don't ask Germany. They fudge their figures by importing French nuclear whilst pretending scrapping some of the best nuclear plants in the world hasn't made their grid dirtier and less dependable.

Edit: *Realises this is beginning a bit of a rant. Puts phone down, backs away from the internet for today.*

Edited Wednesday at 08:50 PM by RCgothic

[Nuke]

you need diversity because not every location has the same climate. if you live in a desert where there is sun every day and lots of barren landscapes, then why not use solar? even if you just cover canals and parking lots (things desert cities have in abundance, i used to live in phoenix for a time). here we can do hydro because we got the terrain and the rivers, solar is not worth it, and were not industrialized enough to need nuclear. there are locations where wind is reliable enough to be a 95% solution. they are not everywhere. if we are still keeping power supply as close to demand as possible, then we need to be flexible to local conditions. unless we seriously upgrade the carrying capacity of the grid, this is the best way to do it.

keep in mind i am strongly pro nuclear. its a solution that is near 100% green, near 100% reliable, and can be placed practically anywhere there is water. its extremely useful for baseload.

this may be a us vs europe thing. europe is more densely populated than the us, and the transmission losses get bad for long power line runs. we got a lot of different climates with different amounts of free energy available. 

Edited Wednesday at 09:16 PM by Nuke

[StrandedonEarth]

BC has relied on hydro for decades, but now drought has thrown a spanner into things.  

I know this is bordering on conspiracy theory, but is there any evidence or proof that the anti-nuclear movement was funded by fossil fuel (coal) interests?

[Nuke]

i think fossil fuel companies might pivot to other energy sources, they have the engineering capabilities. they just want to stay in business until that happens.

[RCgothic]

3 hours ago, Nuke said:

you need diversity because not every location has the same climate. if you live in a desert where there is sun every day and lots of barren landscapes, then why not use solar? even if you just cover canals and parking lots (things desert cities have in abundance, i used to live in phoenix for a time). here we can do hydro because we got the terrain and the rivers, solar is not worth it, and were not industrialized enough to need nuclear. there are locations where wind is reliable enough to be a 95% solution. they are not everywhere. if we are still keeping power supply as close to demand as possible, then we need to be flexible to local conditions. unless we seriously upgrade the carrying capacity of the grid, this is the best way to do it.

keep in mind i am strongly pro nuclear. its a solution that is near 100% green, near 100% reliable, and can be placed practically anywhere there is water. its extremely useful for baseload.

Even in an equatorial desert, solar can't generate at night and the storage required to cover night-time use is non-trivial.

A well-kept secret of nuclear is it can be placed where there isn't water. SMR designs take this seriously because there's a much larger variety of sites that want to deploy small nuclear. The heat-exchangers just need to be a fair bit bigger when using air as the ultimate heat sink, so if water is an option that's generally preferable. The UK's SZB plant has seismically-qualified air-sink heat exchangers sufficient to dissipate offline decay heat, despite being right on the coast in case of a fault with the seawater intakes.

It's the same for any power plant that uses a thermal heat cycle, water as the heat sink is economically preferable but not strictly required.

*Tries harder to walk away for the evening*

Edited yesterday at 12:46 AM by RCgothic

[Nuke]

storage backed solar is a non starter. what solar does is cover your daytime peak, you still need something to cover your baseload. nuclear doesn't throttle well, solar doesnt throttle at all, you can make up for that with gas, i think phoenix used hoover dam for deep throttle capability (they had nuclear when i lived there too).

i see no reason why air cooled nuclear cant be a thing, that's what britain used for its nuclear weapons program. but that was a plutonium generation facility, not a power plant. i didnt know of any air cooled commercial power reactors. thats a thing i thought about post fukashima.

Edited Wednesday at 09:36 PM by Nuke

[RCgothic]

3 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:

BC has relied on hydro for decades, but now drought has thrown a spanner into things.  

I know this is bordering on conspiracy theory, but is there any evidence or proof that the anti-nuclear movement was funded by fossil fuel (coal) interests?

There's a substantial suspicion advocates of hydrogen powered cars are backed by oil/gas suppliers who know that the vast majority of hydrogen is produced by cracking it off of hydrocarbons (by far the cheapest way of producing hydrogen), and that by interfering with the change to fully electric cars they get to prop up oil/gas demand for longer as demand for petrol falls.

 

Incidentally catalysed high-temp production of hydrogen from water is an appealling use case for the heat generated by high temperature gas, metal, or salt-cooled reactors. Instead of using the heat for electricity generation, it's used to create synfuels.

It's a process not often used due to the expense of heating the reactants, but if there's a nuclear reactor producing high-grade heat at a third of the cost of turning the heat into electricity and using electrical heaters, suddenly it becomes a lot more economically feasible.

Edited yesterday at 12:56 AM by RCgothic

[tater]

I wonder if the inflection point varies much as a function of geography. The UK is substantially smaller than just my state, NM, for example (~315k km² vs ~244k km²). I have to imagine grid differences, and different climates (changing peak demand times/dates across the multiple climate zones of the US) makes this more complicated. Wind and solar are both too unreliable without having to also build a 100% capacity backup, IMO (or batteries capable of dealing with an X-hundred year windless/cloudy/whatever event where supply doesn't exist for some number of days). Having enough batteries for night with a little margin doesn't help if it's cloudy for a week across much of the country (in the case of solar).

We need nukes.

[Superluminal Gremlin]

9 minutes ago, tater said:

We need nukes.

Ha. At least they are legal in the UK. Our clowns of governments have shoved a S-IVB up the asses of all us Aussies

Personally, massive fan of CSP. Im building one as a little hobby. They are interesting, especially for power production at night.