There are multiple reasons that renewables can not be fully integrated into the grid to provide reliable and affordable energy.
Your article does not mention cost, scale or environmental impacts.
Cost - everywhere that RE has made a significant penetration into the grid, prices are higher.
Germany, California, Denmark are the best examples. It is a fallacy that RE is the lowest priced electricity source. There is a better metric, called LFSCOE, levelized full system cost of electricity. Once you look at the full costs, RE is not the least expensive, it's the most expensive.
Scale - Currently RE wind and solar provide about 15% of the total US electricity demand, and only 3% of the world's primary energy demand. This is after 20 years and $5 trillion dollars. The cost estimates to enable 100% RE vary, but it is safe to say, it will be trillion of dollars every year for the next 25 years. This is impractical.
environmental impacts - RE requires much more minerals than traditional sources.
Per Mark Mills, "Building wind turbines and solar panels to generate electricity, as well as batteries to fuel electric vehicles, requires, on average, more than 10 times the quantity of materials, compared with building machines using hydrocarbons to deliver the same amount of energy to society."
It seems like you missed the points of this and my prior posts. Yes, renewables are very expensive if you use the LFSCOE measure, and I explained in detail why that is the case in my post on why the experience with computer processing does not mean that renewables can replace fossil at a lower cost. But it is also indisputable that once constructed, renewables can produce electricity at a much lower cost than fossil, and a lower cost than nuclear, because renewables don't need fuel to generate electricity. This provides a definite benefit to the grid, even though it does not allow renewables to replace fossil or nuclear, as I explained in my post about the benefits and detriments of renewables. When system operators decide which generation to dispatch, they base those decisions as much as possible on variable costs, because that reduces the total costs incurred by the system to generate electricity. Think of it this way. If you have two cars and are deciding on which one would be less expensive to drive on a long trip, you would choose the one that gets the better gas mileage no matter which one cost more to purchase. In the same way, running renewables to generate electricity when the sun and wind conditions allow it instead of fossil and reduces the cost of generating electricity no matter which costs more to place in service. Of course you still need some way of producing electricity when sun and weather conditions are not favorable, and doing that with renewables and storage alone is not a good approach, but that does not negate the benefit renewables can provide in producing low cost electricity.
Further, I never suggested in this post that renewables should completely replace fossil units. You are correct that would be hugely expensive and inefficient. Rather, the whole point of my post was to explain how pairing renewables with baseload units, both fossil and nuclear, can greatly reduce the costs needed to provide reliable service on an electric system by allowing renewables to provide their low variable cost electricity while relying on baseload units to support system reliability. When you do that, LFSCOE is not an accurate measure of the costs of renewables.
You are ignoring the point of LFSCOE, which is that you have to consider the cost of backup power when the sun isn’t shining which is at least half of every day.
Sure, solar is cheap during the day but then you have to pay for the SCGT to ramp up quickly every day at dusk.
I just saw a ramp curve for California that showed an incredibly large and fast ramp to make up for solar going from 20 GWHR to zero in a span of a few hours. LFSCOE takes that into account and you are stating that it’s not accurate. I totally disagree.
This daily cycling of a power plant causes wear and tear on the steam and water systems. I worked at power plants all my life. This causes increased maintenance costs to INCREASE.
You are trying to justify an intermittent power source and say it can integrate. How about the daily cycling of gas power plants to accommodate solar? What about those costs?
At what point would you estimate is optimum for renewable penetration? 30%, 50%, 70%?
I am obviously doing a bad job explaining myself on a couple of points. Let me first try a different way to explain my point on LFSCOE. Since you operated a power plant, I am sure you are familiar with the longstanding practice in the electric industry of buying cheap non-firm energy when it is available instead of operating a more expensive power plant that you own at its full capacity. When the non-firm energy is no longer available, you generate the electricity you need from the more expensive plant. And by buying cheaper non-firm energy when it is available you reduce the total cost you incur to generate electricity. No one claims that the non-firm energy you purchase is actually much more expensive than the energy produced by the power plant due to its non-firm nature.
Energy produced by renewable energy can be used in the same way as non-firm energy produced by conventional generators; it can displace more expensive fossil energy while leaving the fossil generator available to generate electricity when the renewable generator cannot, just as it does when non-firm energy is interrupted. When renewable generation is used for this purpose, the LFSCOE is not an appropriate measure of the cost of the renewable generation. This is because the purchase of the renewable energy is only replacing the energy produced by fossil generators and not their capacity, i.e. their availability to produce electricity when it is needed. But LFSCOE is an appropriate measure of cost if you are adding renewable generation to provide capacity that has to produce electricity on demand 24/7. And I agree with you than when you want renewable generation to provide more than a minimal amount of capacity, the cost is prohibitively expensive.
Second, I agree with you that renewable generation can cause many operational problems for the grid. If you read my previous post on how to evaluate the benefits and detriments of renewable generation, you will see that I used the exact same example of the problems caused by renewables in California that you mention in your comments. The point I am trying to make in this current post is that those problems are caused because the renewables are not being integrated into the grid but rather are being forced into the grid without any thought to whether the grid can accommodate them.
Third, what I am trying to do in this post is to describe ways in which renewables can be integrated into the grid without incurring the full LFSCOE and also without creating operational problems. I first explain that today, this can only be done if you limit the amount of renewables placed into service. In the future, however, if you have significant amounts of energy storage and also lots of baseload capacity it might be possible to integrate more renewables. You can avoid the cycling issues that you mention in your comments by having the baseload units continuing to operate to charge the energy storage facilities when renewables are producing energy. Then, when the renewables are not producing power, you can use the baseload units to serve load, supplemented by the discharge of electricity from storage as needed .
You can disagree with my conclusion that this approach would work, but I hope you understand that I am not claiming that we can simply jam unlimited amounts of renewables into the grid without considering what that does to cost and reliability. That is not integration. It is a recipe for disaster.
Ok, I understand your points better now, thanks for taking the time to explain.
So it sounds like you don’t want forced mandates, or would you prefer reduced mandates? How about eliminating the IRA, PTC and ITC?,
At what point would you estimate is optimum for renewable penetration? 30%, 50%, 70%?
I was a senior reactor operator in the control room, I was not involved in deciding which plants operated. We were base load, 100% all the time unless we had some testing or maintenance to perform which required us to reduce power.
I was at FERC for the last five years of my career before I retired. When I was there I was the Senior Legal Advisor to one of the Commissioners, who was the Chairman for awhile. Much of what I know about the grid I learned in my 35 years of private practice before then at an energy law group that was ranked as the number one practice in the country. While there I represented many utilities, large and small, and had to learn about all aspects of grid operations and markets, both from the perspective of individual utilities and RTOs. Although I feel like a know a lot about grid operations, I know there are many aspects that I do not understand perfectly, if at all. I have really learned a lot from doing this Substack, both from the writing and from comments I get from my readers.
I don't really have a view on how much renewable penetration is optimal. The important point is that that it not be forced but rather integrated in a way that does not threaten reliability. The exact amount depends on the available technology and the location. Relatively inexpensive and reliable grid level storage will permit greater penetration, but I don't what that would look like so we are problably pretty far away from it. Regions with lots of sun and/or wind can probably use more renewables and regions in cold areas and not much wind probably less.
As for subsidies, I think that they can be a good way to encourage renewables when they first came out but that they should be phased out as the industry matures. Not sure exactly when that is. I don't have as much trouble with the IRA, PTC and ITC because they have the effect of reducing the cost of renewables and don't set a fixed price for their energy. I like the state sponsored subsidies less because they tend to set a price for renewable energy that is way above market, while at the same time giving them an incentive to artificially reduce market prices for non-subsidized generators.
A question in terms of subsidies - What would you call the socialized incentives to buy nuclear. No nuclear plant in the world can be procured in the competitive energy market without 100% ratepayer subsides and guarantees. Nuclear gets the same federal incentives that solar, wind and batteries gets, the ITC and/or PTC, but cannot raise investor capital at risk like solar, wind and batteries can (and natural gas). If a solar project goes belly up the only ratepayer capital at risk is the ITC and that developer is paying taxes the next year. If a nuclear plant goes south the ratepayers are on the hook for the full cost for years like the ratepayers in SC paying billions for no facility - which the SC and GA ratepayers were mandated to buy and pay for without a choice. There was no competitive bid to procure SC or GA Vogtle plant for that matter. Either we have a competitive energy market or a socialized energy market. We need to fully implement the requirement of the Energy Policy Act across the US.
States incentivized solar to get it to a level playing field that states knew was out there which is the same with batteries. Like solar storage costs are declining. States can end all subsidies now and see who can compete. At actual capital costs of $16,620/kW for nuclear (Vogtle) vs $1,200/kW for solar and $2,240 solar and storage (LBNL) you can over build a lot of solar and long duration storage and still be cheaper. It is an expensive way to procure backup capacity. Maybe in the short term but its not a ling term solution.
Matt one of the hardest push backs on renewable integration is cost to end user. There is plentiful data to show areas with high renewable penitration, there is a substantial increase in electric rates to go with it. Texas is the lone anomaly. What can be done?
There are lots of different reasons for cost increases, but in general I think one important reason is that renewables are not being properly integrated into regional grids in some places. Another reason is that the cost of subsidies in some states are being baked into consumers’ electric bills.
Matt I am afraid we will have to agree to disagree that renewable energy will become the primary energy source, unless some technology breakthroughs are made. The costs are too high, the lifespan is too short and land use is too great. In general including the present popular battery technology, we are seeing a 15 year ROI. That is just too short to recover capital costs and be competitive. Not to mention the technical problems of inertia, dispatchable power, spinning reserves, response to AGC, frequency responsive droop governors, and a while host of issues that have largely been ignored
Regarding reactors not able to follow loads, your statement only applies to the reactors of the past, so much has been done to improve their operation while the USA was on a reactor hiatus. The Navy is proof of that with their fast ramping technology.
IMHO subsidies were renewables worst enemy. They made developers lazy because there was no incentive to improve the product. The same bad design was good enough to make money
I made no predictions in my post about whether renewables will become the predominant source of energy, but only tried to explain how they possibly could be integrated into the grid, which also includes lots of baseload generation. Much of the post was trying to explain the dangers in proceeding too quickly without taking steps to integrate appropriately. My guess is that it could happen eventually, or at least that it could happen in conjunction with other non-emitting technologies such as nuclear and hydro, but it will take a long time and will require many innovations and advances in technology to overcome the many challenges, including the ones you list.
The question is not whether it is possible to integrate "renewables" into the grid but whether it makes sense in the long run. Had the post-TMI anti-nuclear hysteria and the resulting draconian over-regulation not driven up the cost of nuclear power by an order of magnitude or more, there would currently be no need for large-scale wind and solar power. And if we ever get back to a sane nuclear regulatory environment, they will not be needed then either.
Nuclear can never be the sole energy source for the grid no matter how inexpensive. It is too inflexible operationally to keep up with the constantly changing loads on the grid without massive overbuilding. Renewables and storage is one possible complement to provide the necessary flexibility, although natural gas combined cycle and turbines are another, although they have their own fuel security issues.
I disagree wholeheartedly with this comment. Nuclear boiling water reactors are inherently incredibly agile. The reactor can be ramped from 20% (in house load supply) to 100% power in minutes. Pressurized water reactors designed without boron control can do the same. BWRs were originally designed as load-followers.
After the NRC put the clamps on nuclear power, it became uneconomical to operate this way. Also, before renewables were injected, what the grid wanted was massive baseload capacity. The nuclear fuel designs changed to support steady state 100% power for two years between outages. Higher enrichment, burnable poisons, thinner clad and more densely packed fuel arrays all supported 100% power at the expense of agility. Also, fuel costs are tiny compared to other operating costs because of regulatory compliance. Therefore, operating at 20% power costs the same as operating at 100% power. Why would you follow load then?
There are no technical issues preventing load-following, agile nuclear power plants, unlike BESS. The issues are regulatory and economic.
Thanks for that comment. My experience with nuclear has been with the less flexible types of generators and I did not know that it was possible to build more flexible load following generators. Having said that, I still think that we will not serve all electric load with nuclear power for a long, long time, if ever. Even if it were possible to reduce the costs of nuclear by an order of magnitude, that still is a cost of $2-3 billion for a large reactor with a capacity of 1,000 MW or so, which is not cheap and not something that very many companies can afford.
Further, my back of the envelope calculation (based on the fact that about 100 reactors supply about 20% of electricity produced today) is that we would need another 400 reactors to generate 100% of that amount of electricity. Even if 5 reactors could be built every year, it would take 80 years to complete 400 new reactors. In the interim, other types of generation capacity will be required.
Another potential issue could arise in regions that experience peak loads that are significantly higher than minimum loads on the same days. This can happen in regions that experience very hot summer heat. It might be the case that you need a certain number of reactors to operate at maximum capacity, but you don't need all of them to serve the minimum load, even when they are operating at their minimum output. For example, if you need five 1,000 MW reactors to serve a 5,000 MW peak load, but the minimum load at night is only 800 MW, you would have to shut down one of your five generators at night if they have to operate at least at 20% capacity, the number you used in your comment. I suspect that it is not possible to repeatedly shut a nuclear reactor down at night and then restart it the next morning. I don't know for sure that this would be an issue, but I suspect that it could be. It is precisely for this reason that electric systems today employ several different types of generation, because no single type can operate under all operating conditions.
Finally, as much as we might wish it were not so, nuclear reactors cost over $10 billion to construct and take 5-10 years to complete. At that cost and pace, it will be much more expensive and take much longer to build the necessary number of reactors to supply all of our energy requirements. Even if we assume that reactors have a 100 year life, a number I have seen, all currently existing reactors would have to be retired well before 400 new reactors are constructed, and the earliest of those 400 to be constructed might need to be retired as well.
I agree with you that nuclear should not be a single supplier of energy, just like no other single supplier should. A mix is desirable for a multitude of reasons. I was responding to the premise that “Nuclear can never be the sole energy source for the grid no matter how inexpensive.” The 20% house load is not a limit on the reactor, just an estimate of the power the reactor supplies in-house when lined up that way. Just a convenient place to idle with the generator connected. As I said, The issues are economic and regulatory, not technical.
What is the technology we will use for grid scale energy storage? All of this speculation hinges on massive amounts of storage that can be constructed at a reasonable price. Without that, renewables must be paired with agile thermal generation of equal capacity.
According to my sources, grid storage on a sufficient scale will never be feasible or economical by a long shot. And even if it were, it would be an environmental disaster on both ends, mining and disposal after 10 or 20 years of use.
Yes, grid scale storage is essential for renewables to replace fossil generation. I don’t know enough to say how likely that will be, but it seems like lithium ion batteries will not be the solution or at least not the main solution.
Admittedly, I haven't got this read and digested entirely yet, but I believe there is a more basic question to be asked: if all things were equal, that is, there were no subsidies, tax credits, etc, would utilities consider adding renewable capacity to their system? What are the five reasons suggesting they should? What are the five reasons suggesting they shouldn't? Which conclusion weighs heavier?
The outcome of that analysis would then dictate grid integration practices.
I don't think that is the right question. Rather, the question is whether, if there were no subsidies, would companies continue to construct renewables. The answer depends on both the costs of the renewables and the market price they can get for the energy and capacity produced. My understanding is that solar and on-shore wind are cost competitive today and are likely to get cheaper. And since, once constructed, renewables can produce electricity at almost no additional cost, it seems likely they can sell at a profit, especially if paired with energy storage that would qualify for capacity payments.
Who knows if that profit would be great enough that it would induce companies to make the up-front investment? I think there is a good chance that they would continue to be constructed.
Indeed, that is a better question, but either way, the answer remains the same: it depends. The minimal operating cost is a compelling argument. But, then why haven’t these technologies always been part of the mix? Wind and sun have always been free, thus utilities should have always used them. But they haven’t. This suggests that there are other, more complex considerations, and that a simple cost v. benefit comparison is incomplete.
It's academic, though, as government intervention has become a fixture in the marketplace, with incentives on both supply and demand side. So you're right, we'd better figure out how to integrate them now, and what is the optimum level of renewables on the grid.
There are multiple reasons that renewables can not be fully integrated into the grid to provide reliable and affordable energy.
Your article does not mention cost, scale or environmental impacts.
Cost - everywhere that RE has made a significant penetration into the grid, prices are higher.
Germany, California, Denmark are the best examples. It is a fallacy that RE is the lowest priced electricity source. There is a better metric, called LFSCOE, levelized full system cost of electricity. Once you look at the full costs, RE is not the least expensive, it's the most expensive.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4028640
Scale - Currently RE wind and solar provide about 15% of the total US electricity demand, and only 3% of the world's primary energy demand. This is after 20 years and $5 trillion dollars. The cost estimates to enable 100% RE vary, but it is safe to say, it will be trillion of dollars every year for the next 25 years. This is impractical.
https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/cost-of-transitioning-to-100-percent-renewable-energy/
environmental impacts - RE requires much more minerals than traditional sources.
Per Mark Mills, "Building wind turbines and solar panels to generate electricity, as well as batteries to fuel electric vehicles, requires, on average, more than 10 times the quantity of materials, compared with building machines using hydrocarbons to deliver the same amount of energy to society."
https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/mines-minerals-green-energy-reality-checkMM.pdf
It is literally impossible to increase our mining output to match the requirements of shifting to anything close to 100% RE
This Green New Deal is economic insanity.
I won't even mention the main problems of intermittency and synchronous grid inertia
It seems like you missed the points of this and my prior posts. Yes, renewables are very expensive if you use the LFSCOE measure, and I explained in detail why that is the case in my post on why the experience with computer processing does not mean that renewables can replace fossil at a lower cost. But it is also indisputable that once constructed, renewables can produce electricity at a much lower cost than fossil, and a lower cost than nuclear, because renewables don't need fuel to generate electricity. This provides a definite benefit to the grid, even though it does not allow renewables to replace fossil or nuclear, as I explained in my post about the benefits and detriments of renewables. When system operators decide which generation to dispatch, they base those decisions as much as possible on variable costs, because that reduces the total costs incurred by the system to generate electricity. Think of it this way. If you have two cars and are deciding on which one would be less expensive to drive on a long trip, you would choose the one that gets the better gas mileage no matter which one cost more to purchase. In the same way, running renewables to generate electricity when the sun and wind conditions allow it instead of fossil and reduces the cost of generating electricity no matter which costs more to place in service. Of course you still need some way of producing electricity when sun and weather conditions are not favorable, and doing that with renewables and storage alone is not a good approach, but that does not negate the benefit renewables can provide in producing low cost electricity.
Further, I never suggested in this post that renewables should completely replace fossil units. You are correct that would be hugely expensive and inefficient. Rather, the whole point of my post was to explain how pairing renewables with baseload units, both fossil and nuclear, can greatly reduce the costs needed to provide reliable service on an electric system by allowing renewables to provide their low variable cost electricity while relying on baseload units to support system reliability. When you do that, LFSCOE is not an accurate measure of the costs of renewables.
You are ignoring the point of LFSCOE, which is that you have to consider the cost of backup power when the sun isn’t shining which is at least half of every day.
Sure, solar is cheap during the day but then you have to pay for the SCGT to ramp up quickly every day at dusk.
I just saw a ramp curve for California that showed an incredibly large and fast ramp to make up for solar going from 20 GWHR to zero in a span of a few hours. LFSCOE takes that into account and you are stating that it’s not accurate. I totally disagree.
This daily cycling of a power plant causes wear and tear on the steam and water systems. I worked at power plants all my life. This causes increased maintenance costs to INCREASE.
You are trying to justify an intermittent power source and say it can integrate. How about the daily cycling of gas power plants to accommodate solar? What about those costs?
At what point would you estimate is optimum for renewable penetration? 30%, 50%, 70%?
I am obviously doing a bad job explaining myself on a couple of points. Let me first try a different way to explain my point on LFSCOE. Since you operated a power plant, I am sure you are familiar with the longstanding practice in the electric industry of buying cheap non-firm energy when it is available instead of operating a more expensive power plant that you own at its full capacity. When the non-firm energy is no longer available, you generate the electricity you need from the more expensive plant. And by buying cheaper non-firm energy when it is available you reduce the total cost you incur to generate electricity. No one claims that the non-firm energy you purchase is actually much more expensive than the energy produced by the power plant due to its non-firm nature.
Energy produced by renewable energy can be used in the same way as non-firm energy produced by conventional generators; it can displace more expensive fossil energy while leaving the fossil generator available to generate electricity when the renewable generator cannot, just as it does when non-firm energy is interrupted. When renewable generation is used for this purpose, the LFSCOE is not an appropriate measure of the cost of the renewable generation. This is because the purchase of the renewable energy is only replacing the energy produced by fossil generators and not their capacity, i.e. their availability to produce electricity when it is needed. But LFSCOE is an appropriate measure of cost if you are adding renewable generation to provide capacity that has to produce electricity on demand 24/7. And I agree with you than when you want renewable generation to provide more than a minimal amount of capacity, the cost is prohibitively expensive.
Second, I agree with you that renewable generation can cause many operational problems for the grid. If you read my previous post on how to evaluate the benefits and detriments of renewable generation, you will see that I used the exact same example of the problems caused by renewables in California that you mention in your comments. The point I am trying to make in this current post is that those problems are caused because the renewables are not being integrated into the grid but rather are being forced into the grid without any thought to whether the grid can accommodate them.
Third, what I am trying to do in this post is to describe ways in which renewables can be integrated into the grid without incurring the full LFSCOE and also without creating operational problems. I first explain that today, this can only be done if you limit the amount of renewables placed into service. In the future, however, if you have significant amounts of energy storage and also lots of baseload capacity it might be possible to integrate more renewables. You can avoid the cycling issues that you mention in your comments by having the baseload units continuing to operate to charge the energy storage facilities when renewables are producing energy. Then, when the renewables are not producing power, you can use the baseload units to serve load, supplemented by the discharge of electricity from storage as needed .
You can disagree with my conclusion that this approach would work, but I hope you understand that I am not claiming that we can simply jam unlimited amounts of renewables into the grid without considering what that does to cost and reliability. That is not integration. It is a recipe for disaster.
Ok, I understand your points better now, thanks for taking the time to explain.
So it sounds like you don’t want forced mandates, or would you prefer reduced mandates? How about eliminating the IRA, PTC and ITC?,
At what point would you estimate is optimum for renewable penetration? 30%, 50%, 70%?
I was a senior reactor operator in the control room, I was not involved in deciding which plants operated. We were base load, 100% all the time unless we had some testing or maintenance to perform which required us to reduce power.
What did you do at FERC?
I was at FERC for the last five years of my career before I retired. When I was there I was the Senior Legal Advisor to one of the Commissioners, who was the Chairman for awhile. Much of what I know about the grid I learned in my 35 years of private practice before then at an energy law group that was ranked as the number one practice in the country. While there I represented many utilities, large and small, and had to learn about all aspects of grid operations and markets, both from the perspective of individual utilities and RTOs. Although I feel like a know a lot about grid operations, I know there are many aspects that I do not understand perfectly, if at all. I have really learned a lot from doing this Substack, both from the writing and from comments I get from my readers.
I don't really have a view on how much renewable penetration is optimal. The important point is that that it not be forced but rather integrated in a way that does not threaten reliability. The exact amount depends on the available technology and the location. Relatively inexpensive and reliable grid level storage will permit greater penetration, but I don't what that would look like so we are problably pretty far away from it. Regions with lots of sun and/or wind can probably use more renewables and regions in cold areas and not much wind probably less.
As for subsidies, I think that they can be a good way to encourage renewables when they first came out but that they should be phased out as the industry matures. Not sure exactly when that is. I don't have as much trouble with the IRA, PTC and ITC because they have the effect of reducing the cost of renewables and don't set a fixed price for their energy. I like the state sponsored subsidies less because they tend to set a price for renewable energy that is way above market, while at the same time giving them an incentive to artificially reduce market prices for non-subsidized generators.
A question in terms of subsidies - What would you call the socialized incentives to buy nuclear. No nuclear plant in the world can be procured in the competitive energy market without 100% ratepayer subsides and guarantees. Nuclear gets the same federal incentives that solar, wind and batteries gets, the ITC and/or PTC, but cannot raise investor capital at risk like solar, wind and batteries can (and natural gas). If a solar project goes belly up the only ratepayer capital at risk is the ITC and that developer is paying taxes the next year. If a nuclear plant goes south the ratepayers are on the hook for the full cost for years like the ratepayers in SC paying billions for no facility - which the SC and GA ratepayers were mandated to buy and pay for without a choice. There was no competitive bid to procure SC or GA Vogtle plant for that matter. Either we have a competitive energy market or a socialized energy market. We need to fully implement the requirement of the Energy Policy Act across the US.
States incentivized solar to get it to a level playing field that states knew was out there which is the same with batteries. Like solar storage costs are declining. States can end all subsidies now and see who can compete. At actual capital costs of $16,620/kW for nuclear (Vogtle) vs $1,200/kW for solar and $2,240 solar and storage (LBNL) you can over build a lot of solar and long duration storage and still be cheaper. It is an expensive way to procure backup capacity. Maybe in the short term but its not a ling term solution.
Matt one of the hardest push backs on renewable integration is cost to end user. There is plentiful data to show areas with high renewable penitration, there is a substantial increase in electric rates to go with it. Texas is the lone anomaly. What can be done?
There are lots of different reasons for cost increases, but in general I think one important reason is that renewables are not being properly integrated into regional grids in some places. Another reason is that the cost of subsidies in some states are being baked into consumers’ electric bills.
Matt I am afraid we will have to agree to disagree that renewable energy will become the primary energy source, unless some technology breakthroughs are made. The costs are too high, the lifespan is too short and land use is too great. In general including the present popular battery technology, we are seeing a 15 year ROI. That is just too short to recover capital costs and be competitive. Not to mention the technical problems of inertia, dispatchable power, spinning reserves, response to AGC, frequency responsive droop governors, and a while host of issues that have largely been ignored
Regarding reactors not able to follow loads, your statement only applies to the reactors of the past, so much has been done to improve their operation while the USA was on a reactor hiatus. The Navy is proof of that with their fast ramping technology.
IMHO subsidies were renewables worst enemy. They made developers lazy because there was no incentive to improve the product. The same bad design was good enough to make money
I made no predictions in my post about whether renewables will become the predominant source of energy, but only tried to explain how they possibly could be integrated into the grid, which also includes lots of baseload generation. Much of the post was trying to explain the dangers in proceeding too quickly without taking steps to integrate appropriately. My guess is that it could happen eventually, or at least that it could happen in conjunction with other non-emitting technologies such as nuclear and hydro, but it will take a long time and will require many innovations and advances in technology to overcome the many challenges, including the ones you list.
Got it, my apologies if I misinterpreted.
The question is not whether it is possible to integrate "renewables" into the grid but whether it makes sense in the long run. Had the post-TMI anti-nuclear hysteria and the resulting draconian over-regulation not driven up the cost of nuclear power by an order of magnitude or more, there would currently be no need for large-scale wind and solar power. And if we ever get back to a sane nuclear regulatory environment, they will not be needed then either.
Nuclear can never be the sole energy source for the grid no matter how inexpensive. It is too inflexible operationally to keep up with the constantly changing loads on the grid without massive overbuilding. Renewables and storage is one possible complement to provide the necessary flexibility, although natural gas combined cycle and turbines are another, although they have their own fuel security issues.
I disagree wholeheartedly with this comment. Nuclear boiling water reactors are inherently incredibly agile. The reactor can be ramped from 20% (in house load supply) to 100% power in minutes. Pressurized water reactors designed without boron control can do the same. BWRs were originally designed as load-followers.
After the NRC put the clamps on nuclear power, it became uneconomical to operate this way. Also, before renewables were injected, what the grid wanted was massive baseload capacity. The nuclear fuel designs changed to support steady state 100% power for two years between outages. Higher enrichment, burnable poisons, thinner clad and more densely packed fuel arrays all supported 100% power at the expense of agility. Also, fuel costs are tiny compared to other operating costs because of regulatory compliance. Therefore, operating at 20% power costs the same as operating at 100% power. Why would you follow load then?
There are no technical issues preventing load-following, agile nuclear power plants, unlike BESS. The issues are regulatory and economic.
Thanks for that comment. My experience with nuclear has been with the less flexible types of generators and I did not know that it was possible to build more flexible load following generators. Having said that, I still think that we will not serve all electric load with nuclear power for a long, long time, if ever. Even if it were possible to reduce the costs of nuclear by an order of magnitude, that still is a cost of $2-3 billion for a large reactor with a capacity of 1,000 MW or so, which is not cheap and not something that very many companies can afford.
Further, my back of the envelope calculation (based on the fact that about 100 reactors supply about 20% of electricity produced today) is that we would need another 400 reactors to generate 100% of that amount of electricity. Even if 5 reactors could be built every year, it would take 80 years to complete 400 new reactors. In the interim, other types of generation capacity will be required.
Another potential issue could arise in regions that experience peak loads that are significantly higher than minimum loads on the same days. This can happen in regions that experience very hot summer heat. It might be the case that you need a certain number of reactors to operate at maximum capacity, but you don't need all of them to serve the minimum load, even when they are operating at their minimum output. For example, if you need five 1,000 MW reactors to serve a 5,000 MW peak load, but the minimum load at night is only 800 MW, you would have to shut down one of your five generators at night if they have to operate at least at 20% capacity, the number you used in your comment. I suspect that it is not possible to repeatedly shut a nuclear reactor down at night and then restart it the next morning. I don't know for sure that this would be an issue, but I suspect that it could be. It is precisely for this reason that electric systems today employ several different types of generation, because no single type can operate under all operating conditions.
Finally, as much as we might wish it were not so, nuclear reactors cost over $10 billion to construct and take 5-10 years to complete. At that cost and pace, it will be much more expensive and take much longer to build the necessary number of reactors to supply all of our energy requirements. Even if we assume that reactors have a 100 year life, a number I have seen, all currently existing reactors would have to be retired well before 400 new reactors are constructed, and the earliest of those 400 to be constructed might need to be retired as well.
I agree with you that nuclear should not be a single supplier of energy, just like no other single supplier should. A mix is desirable for a multitude of reasons. I was responding to the premise that “Nuclear can never be the sole energy source for the grid no matter how inexpensive.” The 20% house load is not a limit on the reactor, just an estimate of the power the reactor supplies in-house when lined up that way. Just a convenient place to idle with the generator connected. As I said, The issues are economic and regulatory, not technical.
Thanks, I have learned something new from your comments
What is the technology we will use for grid scale energy storage? All of this speculation hinges on massive amounts of storage that can be constructed at a reasonable price. Without that, renewables must be paired with agile thermal generation of equal capacity.
According to my sources, grid storage on a sufficient scale will never be feasible or economical by a long shot. And even if it were, it would be an environmental disaster on both ends, mining and disposal after 10 or 20 years of use.
Yes, grid scale storage is essential for renewables to replace fossil generation. I don’t know enough to say how likely that will be, but it seems like lithium ion batteries will not be the solution or at least not the main solution.
Admittedly, I haven't got this read and digested entirely yet, but I believe there is a more basic question to be asked: if all things were equal, that is, there were no subsidies, tax credits, etc, would utilities consider adding renewable capacity to their system? What are the five reasons suggesting they should? What are the five reasons suggesting they shouldn't? Which conclusion weighs heavier?
The outcome of that analysis would then dictate grid integration practices.
I don't think that is the right question. Rather, the question is whether, if there were no subsidies, would companies continue to construct renewables. The answer depends on both the costs of the renewables and the market price they can get for the energy and capacity produced. My understanding is that solar and on-shore wind are cost competitive today and are likely to get cheaper. And since, once constructed, renewables can produce electricity at almost no additional cost, it seems likely they can sell at a profit, especially if paired with energy storage that would qualify for capacity payments.
Who knows if that profit would be great enough that it would induce companies to make the up-front investment? I think there is a good chance that they would continue to be constructed.
Indeed, that is a better question, but either way, the answer remains the same: it depends. The minimal operating cost is a compelling argument. But, then why haven’t these technologies always been part of the mix? Wind and sun have always been free, thus utilities should have always used them. But they haven’t. This suggests that there are other, more complex considerations, and that a simple cost v. benefit comparison is incomplete.
It's academic, though, as government intervention has become a fixture in the marketplace, with incentives on both supply and demand side. So you're right, we'd better figure out how to integrate them now, and what is the optimum level of renewables on the grid.