Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

eia.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 276 posts

Re: Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

#241

Post by littlestymaar »

epistasis wrote: post #240
doikor wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know about France but TVO in Finland is way under that. Their earlier reactors were built in the 70s. They have been hitting 15 to 20€/MWh for decades now. Or at least this is the price they have been selling to their owners without going bankrupt for decades now. Target with OL3 in the mix is 40€/MWh so OL3 alone is probably in the 50€/MWh to 60€/MWh range. (and they got a really good deal with OL3) https://ww…

Paid off reactors can get by on O&M only costs. The trouble is getting through that initial period of paying off the loan and interest. Also, older reactors were far simpler and reliable to construct. (Though "simpler" does not mean simple, they are still extremely complex beasts of machines.) Finland was smart enough, and France dumb enough, to sign a fixed-cost contract for OL3. This ended up in complete disaster f…

What you're saying is just true of EPR, but not revelant at all in comparison to what happened when the nuclear plants where mass produced. As the parent said, nuclear has been very cheap for 3 decades.

Re: Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

#242

Post by Reason077 »

doikor wrote: post #233
epistasis wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France did not experience a significant fall in construction costs when they were building lots of reactors in the 1970s. There's not much hope of getting that €125/MWh below €100/MWh, and honestly that €125/MWh is likely a sever underestimate to start with.

Don't know about France but TVO in Finland is way under that. Their earlier reactors were built in the 70s. They have been hitting 15 to 20€/MWh for decades now. Or at least this is the price they have been selling to their owners without going bankrupt for decades now. Target with OL3 in the mix is 40€/MWh so OL3 alone is probably in the 50€/MWh to 60€/MWh range. (and they got a really good deal with OL3) https://ww…

One big difference in the costs is that now days, new reactors are required to fund their own eventual decommissioning and long-term waste handling costs from operating income.

That wasn’t always the case! In the UK, taxpayers have been left with enormous liabilities for managing and cleaning up old nuclear sites:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/23/uk-nucle...

Finland deserves credit for actually building a long-term waste storage repository, which helps solve one of the biggest ongoing issues/costs with nuclear decommissioning.

Re: Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

#243

Post by graemep »

mbgerring wrote: post #193
Maakuth wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course those capacity factors hide one important bit, the dispatchability. While the capacity factor is the same in this list for wind and hydro, the wind and solar generation are naturally capped by nature. When demand exceeds the natural availability of these, you need to dispatch some extra generation. Hydro and natural gas are well suited for this, coal can do it even if dirtily. Nuclear generation could be ma…

More on-site batteries can fix the need for dispatchable power on the grid side, and the cheaper batteries get, the more attractive such solutions start to look.

It is also resilient to grid failures. Even better if you add on-site generation.

Re: Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

#244

Post by hinkley »

pstuart wrote: post #96
hinkley wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How much solar/wind/battery capacity can 34B USD buy!? According to How Big Things Get Done, at least 30B worth. Nuclear plants have some of the worst cost and time overruns for large projects, wind and solar some of the lowest (beaten only by roads). And his theory as to why this happens, is that wind, solar, and roads are self-similar. Building the first 10% directly informs you on how to build the next 10%. Ever…

This is why if nuclear is to have a future it would be via Small Modular Reactors. But even that appears to be too expensive.

I've been anti-nuclear for a long time, and SMR is the least unpalatable choice.

Not without caveats though. Humans are shit at statistics. Their sense of the aggregate danger of putting 100 'safe' items in close proximity often underestimates the odds by half, and in some cases by an order of magnitude.

You might get lucky and lose two personal hard drives in your entire life, but the IT guy managing 100 drives is dealing with failed drives 'all the time'. Backblaze reports on something like 10,000 drives and they are claiming something on the order of 200-300 failures. And I think that's per quarter, not per year.

What do you do with an array of reactors where one right in the middle did not fail cleanly?

Re: Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

#245

Post by doikor »

Reason077 wrote: post #242
doikor wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know about France but TVO in Finland is way under that. Their earlier reactors were built in the 70s. They have been hitting 15 to 20€/MWh for decades now. Or at least this is the price they have been selling to their owners without going bankrupt for decades now. Target with OL3 in the mix is 40€/MWh so OL3 alone is probably in the 50€/MWh to 60€/MWh range. (and they got a really good deal with OL3) https://ww…

One big difference in the costs is that now days, new reactors are required to fund their own eventual decommissioning and long-term waste handling costs from operating income. That wasn’t always the case! In the UK, taxpayers have been left with enormous liabilities for managing and cleaning up old nuclear sites: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/23/uk-nucle... Finland deserves credit for actually bui…

The operators have been paying into a fund since the 80s which is meant for decommissioning and spent fuel storage.

Basically it is a legal requirement (some small fraction of a cent for every kWh produiced)

This is really the only sane way to do it.

Also we got lucky with the ground under Olkiluoto being good spot for nuclear waste storage so not much NIMBY stuff for that as it is already the site for the biggest nuclear power plant in the country. It is also small town so a huge % of the population there work at the plant or its sub contractors.

Re: Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

#246

Post by samatman »

hef19898 wrote: post #76
samatman wrote: post #40

This is nameplate capacity: the power a generator can deliver, full on, under ideal conditions. Solar and wind always look great when measured in nameplate capacity, which is why this is done. If you want to know how much electricity they will generate, you have to multiply by the capacity factor. Nuclear, for instance has a capacity factor of 0.9 in the US: it delivers 90% of its nameplate capacity in a given year.…

Somehow, that is the latest pro-niclear / anti-renewables talking point. Not tgat people in field learn the principle of load factor in one of the first days of 101 lectures on the subject... It least it is an evolution up from "solar isn't working at night" and similar deep and hot takes on the subject.

Pro-nuclear doesn't make one anti-renewables. They're complementary technologies, the rivalry is entirely one-sided. Not to mention incredibly aggravating to those of us who would like power to be reliable, with no emissions.

Re: Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

#247

Post by cma »

epistasis wrote: post #224
cma wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lifetime of panels and batteries vs modern nuclear plant? I guess also do the nuclear numbers use the real liability and disposal costs, or subsidized ones?

The cost per kWh numbers take into account lifetimes and nuclear waste disposal

What about Proce Anderson liability cap? Potential trillion dollar incidents reduced to $10 billion cap.

Re: Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

#248

Post by samatman »

Evidlo wrote: post #59
samatman wrote: post #40

This is nameplate capacity: the power a generator can deliver, full on, under ideal conditions. Solar and wind always look great when measured in nameplate capacity, which is why this is done. If you want to know how much electricity they will generate, you have to multiply by the capacity factor. Nuclear, for instance has a capacity factor of 0.9 in the US: it delivers 90% of its nameplate capacity in a given year.…

Why does nuclear not deliver closer to its ideal power output? Are nuclear plants really down 10% of the time?

Scheduled maintenance. Refueling, replacing worn-out components, that sort of thing. One nine of uptime is pretty good in the "continuously running power plants" business.

Emphasis on scheduled. Wind operators get no choice at all in when they're generating power, and this is true of solar as well, although the fluctuation is easier to predict, especially in very sunny climates.

A fleet of nuclear reactors can be taken offline on a schedule, with advance notice, so they alternate being out of commission. This makes it easier to supply reliable baseline power.

Re: Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

#249

Post by hinkley »

einpoklum wrote: post #147
pstuart wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why if nuclear is to have a future it would be via Small Modular Reactors. But even that appears to be too expensive.

Indeed. I mean, I'm not sure the smallness is a key factor, but the modularity for sure and maybe the size limitation comes with that. I'm not much of a fan of nuclear (pun not intended?) and would like to see solar + wind (+ other renewables) cover most of the load. But if enough resources were pooled to design an SMR, with extensive safety studies, lifetime planning, involvement of multiple parties (e.g. scientific…

Matt Ferrell posted a video about vertical bifacial solar (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqizLQDi9BM) last week that has me hopeful for more demand-aligned solar output.

They absorb more indirect light, but the main advantage is that hot panels drop in efficiency, and standing them up improves heat dissipation substantially.

One of the bits that stood out to me is that it has an output curve that partially lines up with The Duck, because you get a period of low-angle exposure near sunset. I suspect you get quite a drop at high noon, but that's fine as long as not all solar panels in the grid are vertical.

Re: Solar and battery to make up 81% of new US electric-generating capacity in 2024

#250

Post by littlestymaar »

littlestymaar wrote: post #145
MagnumOpus wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French nuclear power has a levelized cost of about $70/MWh - which is about the same cost as the levelized cost of solar or wind in France, without most the headaches of intermittency. (Remember the average French person lives further north than the average Canadian...)

Exactly, and don't forget that nuclear costs in France are being driven high by wind (and solar, but less so), because it cannot run at its optimal power because it has to reduce produced power when there's wind.

Downvote all you want, when you artificially decrease capacity factor from the average 90% to 65% because you have to accommodate for wind, in an industry when fixed costs are the vast majority of costs, you mathematically raise the cost per MWh…
Post reply on HN