Harnessing Variable Renewables: Where is the Beef?

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has just published a book titled "Harnessing Variable Renewables: a Guide to the Balancing Challenge." Variable renewables refers to solar and wind power generated electricity. Balancing refers to making the grid stable when solar and wind generated electricity are plugged in.

In the best of all possible worlds such a book would be available for free down load on the Internet, so that retired guys like me, who study reports about energy technology, but who cannot afford expensive books, can look at them. Unfortunately downloading this book from the IEA will cost me €80, and 80 Euros is a little steep for me, especially as I am probably going going to find the download useless once I finish writing my review.

Why so expensive? The Press Release answers that question nicely,

Written for decision makers . . .

That means that tax payers, and rate payers will be expected to pay the bill. Hay even the IEA is not above grubbing for money when it finds deep pockets.

"Harnessing Variable Renewables" appears to be a will it work study, intended for decision makers. A will it work study is one which examines a concept and determines whether it is viable in the real world. The IEA press release explains,

Power systems must be actively managed to maintain a steady balance between supply and demand. This is already a complex task as demand varies continually. But what happens when supply becomes more variable and less certain, as with some renewable sources of electricity like wind and solar PV that fluctuate with the weather? To what extent can the resources that help power systems cope with the challenge of variability in demand also be applied to variability of supply? How large are these resources? And what share of electricity supply from variable renewables can they make possible?

There is no one-size-fits-all answer. The ways electricity is produced, transported and consumed around the world exhibit great diversity. Grids can cross borders, requiring co-ordinated international policy, or can be distinct within a single country or region. And whether found in dispatchable power plants, storage facilities, interconnections for trade or on the demand side, the flexible resource that ensures the provision of reliable power in the face of uncertainty likewise differs enormously.

Thus the question decision makers who are addressed in "Harnessing Variable Renewables" will be asking is can the variable electrical output from renewables be balanced on the grid, how can it be balanced. First the conclusion of "Harnessing Variable Renewables" that some variable renewables can be balanced is not new. Even many renewable critics acknowledge that. The real question is not will it work, but how much will it cost to make it work. Costs are the beef in the part of the title that asks, "Where is the Beef." The IEA press release is silent about costs, and so we are left to wonder if the IEA book addresses cost issues. So far none of the reviews of "HVR" I have run across mention costs, yet I would hope that decision makers would would want to know how much a balanced variable renewable grid system would cost, before the give the go ahead to implement such a system.

Reviews of "HVR" are suggestive. For example offshoreWIND.biz tells us,

Assessing flexible resources

Harnessing Variable Renewables: a Guide to the Balancing Challenge lays out a four-step method for assessing existing flexible resources, which can then be used to balance increasingly variable supply and demand. Step one of this Flexibility Assessment (FAST) method assesses the ability of the different flexible resources to change their production or consumption; step two examines the aspects of the power system that will constrain them from doing so; step three calculates the maximum requirement for flexibility of a given system resulting from fluctuating demand and output from wind plants and the like; and step four identifies how much more variability can be balanced with existing flexible resources.

The book features eight case studies in which the FAST Method is applied to eight geographic areas with very different characteristics. The resulting analysis shows that each region has the technical resources to balance large shares of variable renewable energy.

Potentials range from 19% in the least flexible area assessed (Japan) to 63% in the most flexible area (Denmark). The IEA also assessed the resources of the British Isles (Great Britain and Ireland together), 31%; the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal together), 27%; Mexico, 29%; the Nordic Power Market (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden), 48%; the Western Interconnection of the United States, 45%; and the area operated by the New Brunswick System Operator in Eastern Canada, 37%.

This range of results is due to the different flexible resources found in these areas. Norway, for example, has extensive hydropower, which is a very flexible resource; while Japan’s power plants, many of which run on nuclear and coal, are not as flexible (e.g. it takes longer for these sources to respond to fluctuations in demand).

Thus the assumption by the the IEA researchers is that grid managers will draw on existing grid resources to back up renewable energy. The study finds in effect that their are limitations to renewable grid penetration posed by reliance on existing grid resources. Indeed in most countries renewable grid penetration of less than 50% will be possible are using existing grid resources for balancing.

This means that for most countries a high renewables grid penetration system discussed in "HVR" is only at best a bridge to the 4/5th fossil fuel reduction that climate scientists envision us requiring by 2050. But can a renewables only system take us all the way to an energy future than produces only 20% of the CO2 produced today by fossil fuels?

There are clearly grounds for doubt, and clearly grounds for wondering it is going to be possible to produce 80% of all energy resources through reliance on renewables, how much will it cost to do so.

As I have pointed out decision makers need to know how much a balanced high renewables penetration system will cost. If "HVR" addressed the cost issue and offered good news, the pro-renewable reviewers, and indeed the press release would have mentioned that fact. If it did not address cost issues, then decision makers lack important information that are required to make appropriate decisions or the future sources of post-carbon energy.

Since I have no information on costs related to the "HVR" case studies, I will have to go with my own case studies, and since the United States Western Interconnect is one of the cases studied, I will note a previous Nuclear Green post, "The cost of carbon mitigation with renewables." In that post I discussed the Eastern Wind Integration and Transmission Study and , How do Wind and Solar Power Affect Grid Operations: The Western Wind and Solar Integration Study.These studies looked at 30% to 35% renewablea penetration of the two largest North American interconnects. Not quite as high as the 48% maximum penetration which "HVR" envisioned for the Western Interconnection. I noted that there were both significant connections about the actual CO2 mitigation that

As with all National Renewables Energy Laboratory reports, the WWSIS made no attempt to compare renewables costs and performance with nuclear power. But a relatively simple thought experiment can yield some very telling results. First we can assume that nuclear power will displace coal rather than CCGT. The Energy Information Agency estimates that the levelized cost of Advanced Nuclear will be 119.0, or about 12 cents per kWh. If nuclear displaces coal at that cost, the cost of displacing one ton of CO2 would be $119. Now let us take the 11% renewables case. The 2016 levelized cost of wind is 149.3, while the levelized cost of solar thermal is 256.6. Thus the average levelized cost of the 11% renewables is 159.08, and the cost of displacing a ton of CO2 with renewables is $159.0 + transmission costs and other hidden cost of wind generation systems, and the added CO2 emissions of fossil fuel wind backups kept spinning. plus the added CO2 efficiencies of fossil fuel generators used in load leveling and load following roles. Since wind is displacing relatively carbon efficient CCGTs rather than carbon inefficient coal fired generating plants. each MW of CCGT power displaced would produce 800 pounds of CO2, rather than a ton of CO2 produced by the equivalent electrical output of a coal fired power plant. Thus carbon mitigation with the 11% wind April scenario will cost about $400 + hidden costs or over three times as much as nuclear power would costs.

In the April 35% penetration case, wind becomes the predominate source of electricity on most days, and it displaces 2/3rds of coal generation capacity and all the CCGTs. Yet for the July 35% penetration case, wind failed to displace most CCGTs and no coal. Thus the WWSIS study data reported provided in sufficient information for understanding the the potential carbon mitigation costs . However it should be noted that the DoE study, Eastern Wind Integration and Transmission Study(EWITS) found that the cost of total system electrical output increased dramatically as wind penetration rose to 30%.

I concluded that,

Clearly then increasing wind penetration in the West will increase the level of carbon mitigation as well as its costs. It is also clear that wind displaces CCGTs before it displaces coal, and this increases the cost of carbon mitigation by wind significantly. Carbon mitigation with conventional nuclear would thus appear well over 3 times more cost effective compared to carbon mitigation with wind. The true cost effectiveness advantage of nuclear cannot be gaged until we know more about the hidden costs of wind, but the hidden costs appear to extract greater cost penalties at higher levels of wind grid penetration.

These conclusions suggest that Wind and Solar energy at high penetrations may not be cost effective tools for carbon mitigation. Taken all together, what we know about the contents of "HVR" is consistent with variable renewables being a questionable and expensive bridge to a low carbon future.

The Sussex Affair: The Conspiracy to Hide Renewables Cost?

The Sussex Affair refers to a Canadian document leaked to the media a few weeks ago by some Canadian Conservative Party politicians, The document purports to be to be a strategic plan to support Renewable Feed in Tariffs in Ontario. The document states,

• A number of renewable energy developers have come together to form a lose coalition of interests, to promote renewable energy policy in Ontario and support the agenda set as part of the Green Energy and Economy Act and the Feed‐in‐Tariff program.

• This coalition will be joined by other groups, such as Environmental Defence and the GEA Alliance, as well as labour, economic development, health and environmental stakeholders, to develop common messaging, communications tools (ie. paid and earned media) and targeted local campaigns in areas where opposition to renewable power exists.

• The goal of this effort will be two‐fold:

1. Help support an expedited release of FIT contracts, including those associated with new Bruce‐Milton transmission capacity; and
2. Support the broader government plan for sustained contracting for wind and solar through the FIT Program, as part of the Supply Mix Directive and Long‐Term Energy Plan.

• As renewable energy is also anticipated to be a wedge issue in the election, with the PCs supporting a move away from renewables, this effort should consolidate industry and non‐industry stakeholders in rallying support for a continued focus on green power as important economic, social, and energy policy in Ontario.

The next goal, the one which has created something of a sensation in Canada, states,

• In this, it will be critical to “confuse” the issue in the political/public/media away from just price to include key value attributes such as jobs, clean air, farm income, etc. Renewables cannot be defined by price alone.

The document is marked,

PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL

So is this a working document of a deliberate conspiracy to confuse the public about renewable energy costs, or is it a right-wing hoax?

The Document was presented to the public last week by Ontario Conservative Party Opposition Leader Tim Hudak, who stated,

This deck contains evidence of an active push to form a special interest coalition intent on defending the McGuinty government’s costly energy experiments, including massive handouts to industry.

According to The Star story, the Sussex Group has

confirmed it pitched the proposal to a “broad group” — not just its clients — that included people involved in health and the environment to expand the debate about green energy. But it wouldn’t name names.

Sussex spokesperson, Brett James, acknowledged,

I think it was a poor choice of words, because the effort is actually to provide clarity to the debate that right now is only about price, and to make sure that the benefits of clean energy are reflected in the debate as well.

According to The Star story,

Sussex, which has offices in Toronto and Ottawa, has seven active lobbyists on the Ontario registry. Its client list includes the Electricity Distributors Association of Ontario and several renewable energy companies, such as FarmTech Energy, Recurrent Energy and Interwind Corp.

The Sussex document does appear to pull back the curtain on the weeding of "Green" ideological interests, and a seemingly unethical cabal of Renewable manufacturers, and investor rent seekers, who are using the "Greens" to promote subsidy and FIT driven profits at the expense of tax payers and rate payers, not just in Canada, but also in Europe and the United States. The document reveals plans for a well financed campaign intended to garner "Green" support for a FIT conspiracy, and channel that support into votes for the Ontario Liberal Party, which appears to be committed to raising ratepayers costs, in order to pay for local Feed in Tariffs.

The Sussex document is all about PR spin and lobbying, not about energy solutions. It probably reflects similar manipulative PR/lobbying campaigns in the United States. The watchword of the Greens is to

Confuse the public about renewable and nuclear energy costs.

Although the Sussex document does not mention nuclear power, the Sussex clients have no interest in public awareness of the relative cost of nuclear and renewable energy. While renewable advocates such as Amory Lovins, Mark Cooper, Joe Romm, and David Roberts, repeatedly tell the public that nuclear power costs too much, they always avoid offering a realistic comparison of nuclear and renewables costs. The question has to be if Lovins, Cooper, Romm, Roberts and others are being paid to confuse the public about nuclear costs. I don't know, but the reading the Sussex document certainly raises the possibility.

Greens are willingly duped by the pro-renewable spin, and are not inclined to ferrite out the real cost relationship between nuclear power and renewable generated electricity. Green voters believe that they are being virtuous because they are willing to play high prices for renewable generated electricity. Actually they are being nothing more than dupes of renewable business interests.

The last canard is the notion that support for renewable rent seeking, is somehow a Liberal/Left Wing cause. Renewable rent seeking is nothing more than a conspiracy to cheat the public through renewable tax subsidies, and Feed in Tariffs. There is nothing liberal about cheating the public to fill the coffers of rent seeking capitalists. There is nothing left-wing about spreading confusion about renewable and nuclear energy costs. The Sussex document suggested that renewables advocates should

Inventory potential economic/investment/jobs benefits. In other words, if we have 1000MW of new wind/solar contracts coming out, XX manufacturing facilities will be built,, employing XX direct and indirect jobs, with XX person years involved in the generation projects themselves.

Such benefit claims are likely to be full of baloney. In 2009 a west Texas Wind project was projected to receive $450 million in Federal stimulus money in addition to hundreds of millions more in Federal and State tax monies. Project investors lived in China, and the wind turbines were to be built in a Chinese factory, so money appropriated to help American workers and businesses, was actually going to create Chinese jobs and provide income for Chinese investors. Needless to say the pro-renewable, anti-nuclear spin merchants, Lovins, Cooper, Romm, and Roberts, do not tell that part of the story.

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If Most of What I Know Comes from Google, Why Do I Know More Than Eric Schmidt?

Eric Schmidt gets nuclear costs wrong

I am looking at a presentation that says Eric Schmidt is wrong about the relative costs of nuclear and renewables. Way, way, way wrong. This is not one of those phonied up, propaganda extravaganzas by Mark Cooper, or Amory Lovins. No this is an honest to God presentation by a utility company to some bankers. The Utility, the South Carolina based SCANA, tell the banker, Wells Fargo, hey we believe that over the next 40 years we can deliver nuclear generated electricity for less than electricity generated by any other source. Less than electricity produced by combined cycle gas. less than biogas, less than chicken shit (if you don't believe me, check out the presentation), less than coal, less than on shore wind, less than off shore wind less than photovoltaics.

According to SCANA, nuclear generated electricity will cost just 58% of the cost of wind generated electricity, 26% of offshore wind generated electricity, and just 12% of electricity generated by photovoltaics. In case you think that SCANA has some pro-nuclear prejudice against renewables, you should also know that SCANA is also in the natural gas business. SCANA distributes natural gas to much of South Carolina, as well as parts of North Carolina and Georgia. Renewables are good for the natural gas business, because renewables need natural gas backups. What SCANA tells Wells Fargo is not the sort of ideological driven green propaganda we hear from Eric Schmidt.

The SVANA cost estimates are consistent with the 2016 levelized cost estimates of of the Energy Information Agency. They are consistent with the findings of Berry Brooks and Peter Lang. And they are consistent with my own studies of renewable cost. Although renewable advocates continue to tell us how high the price of future nuclear will be, they never balance this argument with a serious assessment of the cost of renewables. When confronted with evidence of real world renewable costs, renewable advocates tell us that renewable costs are going down all of the time, or that if you just through enough money in the form of government subsidies at renewables, the renewable cost liability will go away. The argument that renewable costs are declining is not born out by my own studies of wind and solar project costs. And renewables advocates won't tell us when renewables will be capable of surviving without massive subsidies.

Dr. Schmidt mistakenly failed to Google renewables cost, when he looked at the cost of nuclear power. Or perhaps he believed that he did not need to do so, because the experts he consulted that the cost problems of renewables were rapidly disappearing.

The devil in me wants to make fun of Eric Schmidt for his wrong headed pronouncement about nuclear costs as I have in the past. But Dr. Schmidt is a smart man, and maybe some day he will stop listening to Amory Lovins and Google the worlds "nuclear cost", find SCANA's data, and discover his mistake. If you humiliate an enemy, you may make him an enemy for a long time. Hopefully, Dr. Schmidt is a mature human being who can acknowledge his mistakes, and alter his views accordingly.

A tip of the hat to Steve Dardan for the Graphic, and for a link to a related presentation by Stephen A. Byrne, SCE&G's Senior Vice President Generation, Nuclear and Fossil Hydro. SCE&G is a subsidiary of SCANA.

Maryland project reveals photovoltaics system costs

The State of Maryland has announced plans to build a solar photovoltaic facility at Mount Saint Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Maryland , not far from Baltimore and Washington DC. The facility has a nameplate capacity of 16 to 17 MWs, will cover 100 acres, and will reportedly cost around $60 million. of course it is doubtful that the $60 million figure includes subsidies. The PV system is expected to produce 21,000,000 kilowatt hours of electricity per year, and will be completed by December 2012. Since there are few "large" PV facilities in the United States, this information will be enough to learn about PV performance and cost.

Lets do a little analysis. First, 21 GW hours from a 16 MW facility means that the facility is expected to produce electricity at capacity for 1312.5 hours a year. There are about 8760 hours a year. So that will give us a capacity factor of about .15. But our performance estimate maybe a bit optimistic. Weather data for nearby Baltimore reports only 105 clear days a year, with another 108 partly cloudy days, and a staggering 152 sunless days a year. This would suggest that any PV system output would be diminished by low quality solar radiation for at least half of the day light hours during a year.

Near by Washington, D.C has even worse solar exposure. NOAA reports only 92 days of total sunshine a year, and an astonishing 168 sunless days. That would suggest optimal PV performance on only 25% of the days. Thus we are going to mark the estimated output estimates as questionable and quite possibly optimistic, and subject to revision once the system is up and running, but I will assume them for the sake of this analysis.

There are other, quite possibly optimistic figures in the press release, for example the $60 million price tag, but I am not going to argue about it now. If we multiply to higher of the two capacity figures given in the press release, 17 MW, by the capacity factor of .15, we get a 2.55 MW average output. And now we can calculate our capital cost per unit of real output. Each watt of average output will cost $23.53 in capital costs. Mark Cooper, who is an employee of anti-nuclear fanatic Ralph Nader, claims that

The likely cost of electricity for a new generation of nuclear reactors would be 12-20 cents per kilowatt hour (KWh) . . .

Cooper's motive for making this claim is to discourage new nuclear construction in the United States. In contrast Cooper refers to

renewable energies at 6 cents per kilowatt hour, . . .

Clearly that will not be the case for the Emmitsburg solar photovoltaic facility. Thus we have to mark Cooper's estimate of future nuclear cost as equally suspect.

These findings are in keeping with with the Energy Information estimate for the 2016 levelized cost of photovoltaics, which it places at 395.7 or close to 40 cents per kW hour. In contrast the EIA reported the 2015 levelized cost of nuclear power to be 107.3, or a little less than 11 cents per kWh.

There are few available case studies the actual performance of Photovoltaic projects. "NNadir" offers us one for a 52 kilowatts PV system on the roof of Boston's Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. NNadir found that the Boston system produced on average 10.6% of its rated capacity. The system was paid for by a grant of $700,000. Thus for every watt of actual average output the MMCA paid $66.04. But it is worse because the MMCA paid in cash, and thus the $66 figure is overnight costs. Costs on which no interest needed to be paid in this case. I can only conclude that a large scale photovoltaic is and will continue be prohibitively expensive for the foreseeable future.

Electrical Reliability and Wind Redundancy

I have an Internet friend, NT, who lives at the very southern tip of India. We frequently chat on line, our conversation are windows into life in India. Our conversations are frequently interrupted by power outages, which crash my friends computer. I had no idea why those outages occurred so frequently, until I recently learned that electricity for NT's community is generated by two small conventional power plants and a large wind farm. NT has electricity when the wind is blowing, but local electrical demand can overwhelm the output of the small electrical plants, in the absence of a brisk breeze. At periods of high electrical demand the result is a blackout that only is reversed when the wind starts blowing again. When NT's computer crashes because of an electrical blackout, that may be the end of our conversation for the rest of the day. According to NT outages could last for hours, and it was often impossible to predict when electrical services would resume.

People in the United States could adjust to such conditions, but would they want too? Until very recently I lived in Dallas, Texas. Summers in Dallas can be blisteringly hot. Hotter in fact than NT's home town of Kanyakumari, where the summer temperature seldom rises about 95 F. In contrast the average Dallas temperature in July and August is 96 F, with as many as 59 100 degree days having been observed. The Dallas heat can be a health hazard to older people with heart conditions. Thus air conditioning in Dallas is not a luxury, it is a matter of public health. In 2003 when Dallas like summer heat descended on Western Europe, 50,000 people died. Thus electrical reliability in Texas is not a matter of personal connivance, it is a matter of public health.

Thus when a famous energy expert claims

there is not and has never been a need for any particular plant or kind of plant to run all the time, . .

what is he really saying? Does our expert mean that reliability is not a desirable characteristic?

Our expert alleges,

All power plants fail, varying only in their failures’ size, duration, frequency, predictability, and cause. Solar cells’ and windpower’s variation with night and weather is no different from the intermittence of coal and nuclear plants, except that it affects less capacity at once, more briefly, far more predictably, and is no harder and probably easier and cheaper to manage. In short, the ability to serve steady loads is a statistical attribute of all plants on the grid, not an operational requirement for one plant. Variability (predictable failure) and intermittence (unpredictable failure) must be managed by diversifying type and location, forecasting, and integrating with other resources. Utilities do this every day, balancing diverse resources to meet fluctuating demand and offset outages. Even with a largely (or probably a wholly) renewable grid, this is not a significant problem or cost, either in theory or in practice—as illustrated by areas that are already 30-40% wind-powered.”

This is a very cleaver argument, but there is an error. What differentiates base load power from other generation sources in not a never fail reliability, but low generation cost. Base load power is low cost power, and the reason grid operators seek it out, is because it is available day in and day out at a low cost. Since the grid operator is interested in fulfilling customer demand at the lowest cost, the operator seeks to contract with the lowest cost power source for power as much time as possible. The fact that low cost power providers may be also highly reliable operators is a significant plus for the grid operators, because he or she does not does not have to contract with higher cost power providers at periods of high power demand.

The problem for the grid operator is that electricity must be provided, no matter the energy costs. Our way of life is dependent on reliable electricity, and not just for air conditioning. Consider the the great blackouts of 1965, 1977 and 2003. The August 14-15, 2003 blackout shut down many cities in the United States and Canada. Cost estimates vary, but the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association (OMA) estimated the direct costs of the blackout on Ohio manufacturers to be $1.08 billion. Numerous large manufacturing plants were shut down for a day. Ontario set asside $75 million to compensate local governments for their blackout related expenses, and lost revenue. Utilities lost between one and two billion dollars, and the total losses for the day long blackout may have been as high as $10 billion. Clearly then the electrical reliability problems which my friend NT experiences in India would not be considered acceptable in the United States.

The baseload issue then is the balance between grid reliability and low electrical cost. If the wind capacity factor were .30 and the capacity factor for nuclear is .90, at least 1000 MW wind farms would be required to produce as much electricity as one reactor 1000 MW reactor. But a wind system with three generator is not likely to be as reliable as the reactor. In Archer and Jacobson suggest that it would take at least five 1000 MW wind farms to begin to approach a reactor's reliability, and that a wind array containing seven wind farms would still not be as reliable as a single reactor. The seriousness of the redundancy problem is illustrated by Peter Hawkins' case study of German wind.

Germany’s 22,000 MW of wind, with a capital cost of about $40 billion, is really effectively a capacity of only about 4,000 MW in terms of production capability. As a result, the wind plants in Germany represent 16 per cent of the total capacity (MW), but only about 5 percent of the electricity production (MWh).

By increasing their wind capacity to 48,000 MW in 2020, the germans hope to be able to increase their wind generated electrical output to 13% of their generation total. But the added 26,000 MWs of wind capacity would cost at least $100 billion. actually it probably would cost more because in order to increase their wind capacity factor, the Germans would be required to build offshore wind generators, and German offshore wind is proving to be as expensive. The German Alpha Venture offshore project has a name plate generating capacity of 60 MW and cost $375 million to build. That is $6.25 watt, a cost that lands German wind squarely in the nuclear cost range for much less reliability and a far shorter life span. But from a carbon reduction standpoint the increase in German wind capacity will not lead to a decrease in German CO2 emissions. At least not if the German Left gets its way and shutdown all German reactors by 2020. The 26,000 MWs of German wind generators would not even begin to approach the displaced electrical generation of German reactors. No wonder German

wind integration study, which covers the period to 2020, did not project CO2 emissions beyond 2015.

The shutdown of German reactors would increase absolute amount of CO2 emitted in the generation of German electricity, That does not really matter to German Greens, whose insane hostility to nuclear power knows no bounds. The Greens would clearly prefer to destruction of human life on this planet to the toleration of nuclear power.

Renewables advocates argue that the limitations of wind can be countered by adding solar generation to the renewables mix. But given the limitations of renewables, renewable advocates have found only three methods of making renewables reliable:

1. Burn a lot of natural gas whenever renewable generated electricity is in short supply.

2. When renewable output is high, save the surplus in some form of energy storage.

3. Build transmission systems from areas where surplus generation is possible, to areas where electrical supplies would be inadequate due to the limitations of local renewable resources.

Each of these approaches has serious flaws. The first approach is unsatisfactory because it fails to eliminate carbon emissions from the electrical generation system.

The second approach is advocated by a report titled Energy Self Reliant States. The word storage is repeated over and over in this report:

Very high penetration rates will require new developments in electricity storage. . . .
establish a system of widely distributed and abundant storage that would change the very underpinnings and assumptions of an electricity system designed without storage in mind. . . .
Some renewable fuels, like sunlight and wind, are variable. Thus the estimates, especially for wind, assume a significant level of storage or on-demand distributed generation. . . .
sufficient electricity storage . . .
sufficient electricity storage . . .
These investments should be designed to allow the integration of many variable and dispersed generators as well as growing amounts of distributed storage. . . .
To achieve very high proportions of our electricity from variable renewable energy sources will require very significant amounts of storage and/or a restructuring of our electricity system to rely on more natural gas-fired distributed backup generators. The electricity storage sector has seen many technological and commercial developments. This report does not examine storage and its implications but in our analysis of variable renewable energy potential we assume sufficient storage is available. . . .

The report argues:

that a new extra high voltage inter-regional transmission network may not be needed to improve network reliability, relieve congestion and expand renewable energy. The focus should be on upgrading the transmission, subtransmission and distribution systems inside states. These investments should be designed to allow the integration of many variable and dispersed generators as well as growing amounts of distributed storage. New in-state transmission lines may well be needed but these will probably be lower voltage lines. In any event, they should be built only after maximizing energy efficiency and the use of existing transmission capacity.

Energy efficiency and demand reduction, as well as the use of distributed generation, can free up significant amounts of distribution and transmission capacity.

But what would such a storage system cost? Tom Konrad. a renewables advocate suggests that

On a national basis, such storage would cost an estimated $13 Trillion, or over 65 times the cost of the transmission investments they oppose.

Konrad argues that by connecting low renewable resource states with electricity produced in high resource states, much of the cost of storage could be avoided. Konrad argues that a $700 billion transmission system could be substituted for the $13 trillion storage system. However, Konrad's estimate is presented with out the sort of detailed analysis that would back up his claims. Before the $700 Billion estimate is accepted, it would have to be tested against a worst case scenario.

Even if we accept Konrad's cost estimate for the total transmission package, we have to weigh that against lower cost alternatives. The Babcock & Wilcox, small mPower reactor is expected to cost less than $3500 per kW. MPower reactors can be located on the grounds of old coal fired power plants. close to target electrical markets, eliminating the need to expand the current grid, or alternatively add very large and hugely expensive grid storage components. A $700 Billion investment in mPower reactors would buy half of the current generation demand. Given that practically immortal reactors now produce about 20% of our electricity, the other 30% of the electricity could be had for another reactor investment of $400 billion or less. Furthermore, reactors can be situated close to the sea coast, where their now wasted heat can be set to work producing massive amounts of fresh water. The sale of water thus would add to the nuclear revenue stream, while adding little to nuclear costs. The $400 billion reactor investment would end the necessity of investing several trillion dollars in renewable generation capacity, and the all nuclear system would be be far more reliable than either renewables plus storage or renewables plus new long distance transmission. In addition the nuclear system would offer significant new water source for areas now experiencing water shortages.

Thus the fallacy in the "base load fallacy" argument is its failure to acknowledge the relationship between electrical reliability and electrical costs. The name plate capacity costs of renewable electricity means little. What will matter in a post carbon grid is the cost of reliable electricity, and nuclear generated electricity, even conventional nuclear generated electricity would cost far less than a renewables plus storage or a renewables plus transmission approach. The only other renewables reliability approach would involve the unacceptable emissions of large amounts of CO2. Thus, nuclear power can supply reliable electricity at a far lower cost than renewables, and would not extract a carbon penalty.

Lowering Nuclear Costs

I am a big fan of Barack Obama, but the folks who are advising him on his energy policy are playing him for a fool. Blogger "uvdiv" recently demonstrated the incongruity of Mr. Obama's message and its setting in a recent speech the President gave at a new Florida Power & Light Solar generating facility. In order to fully appreciate the unintentional Irony of the president's speech, the reader is also encouraged to read a post on it in Rod Adams' blog. Rod calculates that given a capacity factor of 25%,

the capital cost of the facility is roughly equivalent to paying $21,600 per kilowatt for a plant that has a capacity factor of 90%, which is a bit less than average for a US nuclear power plant.

Rod's calculation is probably low since it fails to take into account the effect of Florida's frequent cloud cover on the solar plants generating capacity. Given the huge cost of the solar facilities rather modest power output, the President's remark that the traditional grid

costs us too much money

seems downright absurd.

The president talked about

The President then ascended into the realm of the transcendentally silly.

a clean energy superhighway that can take the renewable power generated in places like De Soto and deliver it directly to the American people in the most affordable and efficient way possible.

Oh please, please, please Mr. President, tell us that you did not write that. Tell us that you did not think about what you were saying. The president talked about saving consumers $20 billion, saving $150 billion, cutting utility bills, without the slightest insight into the huge cost of the facility where he chose to make his speech.

The President clearly does not have a clue, furthermore he sets himself on the side of "Green" rhetoric, and against a sensible dialogue about our energy future.

I have to be honest with you, though. The closer we get to this new energy future, the harder the opposition's going to fight. The more we're going to hear from special interests and lobbyists in Washington whose interests are contrary to the interests of the American people.

There are those who are also going to suggest that moving toward a clean energy future is going to somehow harm the economy or lead to fewer jobs.

What the President does not seem to understand is that his view of the energy future is going to be enormously expensive, so expensive that it will be possible for this country to afford it, and ruinous if it tries.

In 2007 when I began to explore our national energy options, the high cost of the "green" renewable energy option quickly became clear. It also became quite clear to me that the cost of conventional nuclear power plants would be too high to make Light Water Reactors the technology of choice for carbon mitigation. This is not to say that Light Water Reactors are impossibly expensive. In fact the levelized cost of power produced from LWRs built during the next decade appears to be lower than the Levelized cost of Solar or wind generation facilities. The problem then is that all carbon replacement energy forms currently on the table are too expensive.

As I have noted else were, the current cost of reactor construction in India is already competitive with the cost of coal fired electrical generation plants, and improving the economies of scale of Indian reactors would appear to hold the promise of even lower capital costs. In addition Indian nuclear technology is rapidly developing, and it appears that India will be the first nation to develop a low cost thorium fuel cycle. It is clearly the case that unless the cost of post-carbon energy in the United States can be dramatically lowered, that the United States will become an economic backwater.

Given the high price of renewable electrical technology, and the high price of Light Water Reactors, alternative low cost electrical technology should be given the highest priority for the sake of maintaining the nation's economy. I have long been aware that advanced nuclear technologies were explored at American National Laboratories from the 1940's until the 1990's. These technologies were not rejected for technical reasons, but because they did not receive political support for their further development and implementation.

Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory regarded Molten Salt Reactor technology as being particularly promising. In 1967 ORNL Director Alvin Weinberg wrote:

Nuclear power, based on light-water-moderated converter reactors, seems to be an assured commercial success. This circumstance has placed upon the Atomic Energy Commission the burden of forestalling any serious rise in the cost of nuclear power once our country has been fully committed to this source of energy. It is for this reason that the development of an economical breeder, at one time viewed as a long-range goal, has emerged as the central task of the atomic energy enterprise. Moreover, as our country commits itself more and more heavily to nuclear power, the stake in developing the breeder rises—breeder development simply must not fail. All plausible paths to a successful breeder must therefore be examined carefully.

To be successful a breeder must meet three requirements. First, the breeder must be technically feasible. Second, the cost of power from the breeder must be low; and third, the breeder should utilize fuel so efficiently that a full-fledged-energy economy based on the breeder could be established without using high-cost ores. The molten-salt breeder appears to meet these criteria as well as, and in some respects better than, any other reactor system. Moreover, since the technology of molten-salt breeders hardly overlaps the technology of the solid-fueled fast reactor, its development provides the world with an alternate path to long-term cheap nuclear energy that is not affected by any obstacles that may crop up in the development of the fast breeder.

The molten-salt breeder, though seeming to be a by-way in reactor development, in fact represents the culmination of more than 17 years of research and development. The incentive to develop a reactor based on fluid fuels has been strong ever since the early days of the Metallurgical Laboratory. In 1958 the most prominent fluid-fuel projects were the liquid bismuth reactor, the aqueous homogeneous reactor, and the molten-salt reactor. In 1959 the AEC assembled a task force to evaluate the three concepts. The principal conclusion of their report was that the "molten-salt reactor has the highest probability of achieving technical feasibility."

This verdict of the 1959 task force appears to be confirmed by the operation of the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment. To those who have followed the molten-salt project closely, this success is hardly surprising. The essential technical feasibility of the molten-salt system is based on certain thermodynamic realities first pointed out by the late R.C. Briant, who directed the ANP project at ORNL. Briant pointed out that molten fluorides are thermodynamically stable against reduction by nickel-based structural materials; that, being ionic, they should suffer no radiation damage in the liquid state; and that, having low vapor pressure and being relatively inert in contact with air, reactors based on them should be safe. The experience at ORNL with molten salts during the intervening years has confirmed Briant's chemical intuition. Though some technical uncertainties remain, particularly those connected with the graphite moderator, the path to a successful molten-salt breeder appears to be well defined.

We estimate that a 1000 MWe molten-salt breeder should cost $115 per kilowatt (electric) and that the fuel cycle cost ought to be in the range of 0.3 to 0.4 mill/kWh. The overall cost of power from a privately owned, 1000-MWe Molten-Salt Breeder Reactor should come to around 2.6 mills/kWh. In contrast to the fast-breeder, the extremely low cost of the MSBR fuel cycle hardly depends upon sale of byproduct fissile material. Rather, it depends upon certain advances in the chemical processing of molten fluoride salts that have been demonstrated either in pilot plants or laboratories: fluoride volatility to recover uranium, vacuum distillation to rid the salt of fission products, and for highest performance, but with somewhat less assurance, removal of protactinium by liquid-liquid extraction or absorption.

The molten-salt breeder, operating in the thermal Th-233U cycle, is characterized by a low breeding ratio: the maximum breeding ratio consistent with low fuel-cycle costs is estimated to be about 1.07. This low breeding ratio is compensated by the low specific inventory* of the MSBR. Whereas the specific inventory of the fast reactor ranges between 2.5 to 5 kg/MWe the specific inventory of the molten-salt breeder ranges between 0.4 to 1.0 kg/MWe. The estimated fuel doubling time for the MSBR therefore falls in the range of 8 to 50 years. This is comparable to estimates of doubling times of 7 to 30 years given in fast-breeder reactor design studies.

From the point of view of long-term conservation of resources, low specific inventory in itself confers an advantage upon the thermal breeder. If the amount of nuclear power grows linearly, the doubling time and the specific inventory enter symmetrically in determining the maximum amount of raw material that must be mined in order to inventory the whole nuclear system. Thus, low specific inventory is an essential criterion of merit for a breeder, and the detailed comparisons in the next section show that a good thermal breeder with low specific inventory could, in spite of its low breeding gain, make better use of our nuclear resources than a good fast breeder with high specific inventory and high breeding gain.

The molten salt approach to a breeder promises to satisfy the three criteria of technical feasibility, very low power cost, and good fuel utilization. Its development as a uniquely promising competitor to the fast breeder is, we believe, in the national interest.

It is our purpose in the remainder of this report to outline the current status of the technology, and to estimate what is required to develop and demonstrate the technology for a full-scale thermal breeder based on molten fluorides.

Less than two years after Dr. Weinberg wrote these encouraging words, the Nixon Administration began to shut down Molten Salt Reactor research in Oak Ridge.

Except for the cost estimate number, little appears to have changed in the prospect for this technology. Reviving the development of Molten Salt Reactor technology would be relatively inexpensive, and the cost savings potentially could be enormous.

President Obama needs to stop floundering around delivering silly speeches about his failing energy policy. He needs to find a new policy direction, one which will lead to low cost energy.

The Energy Collective in the Era of Confusion

One of the principle problems of the Energy Collective, is the failure of most collective writers to understand the issues they write about it terms of cost. Not only are Energy Collective writers confused about cost, they spread their confusion to the public. Some of the most popular writers on the Energy Collective are what I charitably call aggressive, anti-nuclear nut cases. The anti-nuclear nut cases relentlessly harp on the supposedly enormous cost of nuclear power plants, often using high end cost estimates to make nuclear power look bad. These writers inevitably advocate the use of renewable generating capacity as an alternative, with the implied assertion that electricity generated from renewables will cost far less than nuclear generated power.

Needless to say the aggressive anti-nuclear nut cases never compare the cost of nuclear power with the cost of reliable renewable electricity. But even renewable advocates who do not take an aggressive anti-nuclear position, pitch puffballs at renewables costs. Renewables manufacturers, and installation builders frequently try to hide the very high costs of part time, unreliable renewables facilities. Unfortunately renewables friendly writers are party to the conspiracy to hind renewables cost, This pattern shows up over and over in the writing of Energy Collective renewables friendly writers.

In order to demonstrate the problem I made a case study of a recent Energy Collective post by Tyler Hamilton, a senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star. I would not classify Tyler an anti-nuclear nut case and I have posted a link to "Clean Brake" on Nuclear Green. But Tyler is a far to uncritical renewables advocate in my book. My case study is based on a post of June 18 titled, Duke Energy solar storage pilot worthy of replication. Tyler is nothing, if not a shameless cheerleader for renewable energy, opens his story:

It’s with great delight that I read about the handful of U.S. utilities that are seriously testing out various conservation, smart grid, storage and renewable technologies in an effort to extend greener offerings to customers. The latest is Duke Energy’s McAlpine Creek project, part of which involves the deployment of a 50 kilowatt solar PV array, consisting of 213 solar panels, at a substation that feeds the grid or, alternatively, can charge up a 500-kilowatt zinc-bromide battery system.

But no where in Tyler's story is there a hint about how much such a system would cost. This is a very practical question that energy writers should be answering. I decided to to do the leg work that Tyler failed to provide his readers. So how much does the installation cost? According to solarbuzz, PV installations cost from $8 to $10 per W. That would give us an installation cost of $400,000 to $500,000. The facility will have an optimal output on uncloudy days of 333,000 kWh. Hamilton claims that battery backup costs as little as two cents per kW, but I was unable to find any confirmation that zinc-bromide batteries were available at that price. I managed to track down the cost of ZBB zinc-bromide batteries which run to $400 per kWh. Thus the 500 kW battery most likely costs another $200,000. We clearly have a facility which is capable of producing electricity on demand, and will produce something close to 14 kWs per hour in a 24 hour day. The facility costs $600,000 to $700,000. Thus we have a cost of from $43 to $50 per watt of reliable output, or 5 to 6 times the cost of a hugely expensive nuclear plant.

Were Tyler to compare the cost of reliable electricity from the Duke PV facility with the cost of nuclear power, he would simply be forced to admit that reliable PV power was not competitive with nuclear power. No doubt Tyler would experience something less than "great delight" as he made this admission.

During the last two years, I have done repeated case studies that address the cost of reliable renewable electricity. I have looked at several schemes to make solar and wind generated electricity reliable, and assessed the cost of each scheme. The results were always the same. The estimated cost of reliable renewable electrical generating facilities have always proven to be more expensive than the estimated costs of new nuclear generating facilities, For far to many Energy Collective writers, this all too obvious conclusion is so distasteful, that they are simply participating in what amounts to a massive coverup of the real price of reliable renewable generating facilities. The failure of Energy Collective writers to address the issue of adverse renewables cost is an ethics issue, and it has serious consequences.

I have dubbed this current period in thinking about energy, the era of confusion.

We live in an era of confusion. We know that our energy future will be different, but we are like people who are somewhere between dreaming and being fully awake. Our dreams intrude into our thoughts, confusing us. In order to wake up we must stop confusing dreams with reality.

Unfortunately this confusion between dream and reality infects writers whose real responsibility is to help deliver the public from its confusion. To continue to yield to ones own confusion while ignoring evident reality is only human, but to lead in an era of confusion one must do a great deal more than yield to one's own confusion. For energy writers there is an ethical imperative to not yield, even if by not yielding we are forced to admit things which we find distasteful.