Apples and Oranges? Compairing Nuclear costs with Wind

Renewable advocates often criticizr nuclear power costs, but rarely compare the costs the cost of Nuclear power with renewables. When challenged to make the comparison, renewable advocates will often resort to the apples to oranges dodge. That is when challenged to make a comparison between nuclear electrical costs, and renewable electrical costs, renewable advocates will claim that such a comparison is impossible because it is an apples to oranges comparisons. There are several ways to get around the the apples to oranges dodge. One way would be to compare the cost of generating a kW of electricity for a year (8400 kWhs). Once we do that we quickly would discover that a single nuclear plant would come close to producing the 8400 hundred hours of electricity on its own, while most renewables are going to require substantial help. Photovoltaic generators in very sunny spots, may produce 4 to 5 times their rated capacity every day. But there are 4 hours a day, so the daily electrical output of PV solar generator may only be around 20% of its rated capacity. In contrast a nuclear reactor will generate on average over 9o% of its potential output in a year. Thus one way to compare our apples and oranges is to compare how much of their name plate output actually gets delivered. This if a PV system costs $40 million is is rated at 10 million Watts, but only produces 4 times that amount in a day, then we are paying not $4.00 per 24 hour a day watt, but $4 per 5 hours a day watt. in order to find how much it costs to for for a 24 hour a day watt, we are going to have to multiply our $4.00 by around 5. Thus our watt of 24 hour a day electricity is going to costr about $20.00, Renewable advocates will objet that we don't need for all electricity o be 24 hour a day electricity, but of course the problem is that a good deal of the electricity wind produces, is generated when consumers don't want electricity, while wind does not produce electricity when consumers want it.

I believe that recently, I made a very powerful case against wind generated electricity. I demonstrated that West Texas winds are not matched to consumer demand. I pointed to the admission by a well known West TexasWind developer that the West Texas business exists because of subsidies, not profits. I pointed to arguments suggesting that wind matched to fossil fuel generation does not substantially lower the carbon emissions from wind-fossil fuel generating systems, and that investments in nuclear power would bring far more CO2 reduction, dollar to dollar than investments in wind. My conclusion was that a new West Texas wind project financed by Chinese investments and American stimulus monies, existed solely because government subsidies would be financing much of it, and that those subsidies would primarily benefir chinese workers and investors. The project did little to mitigate the energy related emissions of CO2 from the electrical generation industry, and thus was a a largely wasted investment as far as climate is concerned.

My story got posted on the energy collective, and about the same tme, the energy collective posted another essay, by David Levy, a University of Massachusetts, management professor. Levy, in effect criticized protests against the West Texas wind project on the grounds that were directed to its failure to creat American jobs. Levy suggested that such attitudes place American business related policies at a disadvantage in competition with China.

I can see Levy's point, but in one respect Levy goes off base, He claims

the proposed wind farm will generate plenty of clean power,

This, bot the jobs issue goes to the heart of my case. The words "clean power" are a sort of shibboleth. Levy seems to believe that ifthe words "clean power" can be attached to a project, it is justified. I asked Levy,

David, Do you have any answers to my argument that the proposed Texas wind farm will generate largely useless power that will not meet the needs of Texas electrical consumers, and that money spent on this project would will be far less effectively spent on a nuclear project if CO2 mitigation is the project goal. I suspect that a government subsidy of a nuclear project would create more long term American jobs.

Levy responded,

read that land-based wind power costs a long term average of 4-8c/kWh, depending on location and scale. At least we have plenty of wind online to be able to estimate the costs. True, there are problems of intermittency, but gas powered peak backup is needed for multiple reasons, including plant downtime, etc. It doesn't need to back up wind one-to-one. Intermittency only becomes a major problem when wind reaches 15-20% of grid capacity, a limit being reached in parts of Europe. But a balance of wind, solar thermal (good for the hot afternoons and with some storage potential), some long-distance transmission (esp. across time zones), and new storage technologies will address the issue. We really don't know the long term costs of nuclear, including decommisioning. In Mass., we are paying around 2c/kWh, I think, for the 'transition charge', the nuclear bailout.

Now David's comment raises several questions about wind cost. First, Davod assumes that the price of wind is its true cost. That is not the case. Last year Drew Thornley looked at hidden Texas wind costs. Thornly notes,

Cost estimates for wind-energy generation (not includ- ing costs of building and maintaining wind turbines) of- ten exclude many of wind energy’s costs, such as the following:
• Wind-energy transmission costs;
• Grid-connection and grid-management costs;
• The costs of backing up wind turbines with tradi- tional power sources;
• Lost tax revenues from federal and state subsidies and tax breaks.

Thornley notes another, little noticed. subsidy for wind in Texas:

unlike conventional-power generators, wind-energy providers do not have to pay ERCOT for generation-schedule deviations.† This is no small perk for Texas’ most intermittent energy source, and it distorts wind energy’s price, relative to conventional power prices. The result of this is that non-wind generators, and primarily customers, must bear the cost of ERCOT’s deploying regulation and other reserves when there are large deviations from their schedules.

Thus when Levy recites the "4-8c/kWh" cost for wind generated electricity, he no doubt ignores the hidden costs of wind. Levy tells us that fossil fuel back up need not be one on one. Excuse me professor, but in Texas and indeed in California as well, when summer winds stops blowing and wind capacity factors drop as low as .02, you are going to need one on one backup, if you are going to avoid rolling blackouts when air conditioners start begging the grid for electricity.

Levy's solutions to the problems of wind contained many hidden costs, Build long distance transmission lines, well according to Thornton in 2008 they cost $3,282,828.28 per mile. That does not count against Levy's "4-8c/kWh." Levy does not tell us how much it costs to build and operate a fossil fuel or solar back up system. The Royal Academy of Engineering, estimated that the cost of maintaining and operating a back up fossilfuel system increased the real cost of wind generated electricity by something close to 70%.

CSP facilities currently run to $4 billion per GW, and that gets you 5 GWh per day of electricity. Levy tells us, "Intermittency only becomes a major problem when wind reaches 15-20% of grid capacity"? Ask ERCOT, if they agree.

Professor Levy claims, "We really don't know the long term costs of nuclear." But do we know the long term cost of wind? Given Thornley's observations, we don't even know the short term cost of wind. Wind generators are suppose to last for 25 years, but the data suggest that they last about 16 years. After 16 years they windmills ware out and have to be replaced. Nuclear plants have a nominal life span of 40 years, but many are now being relicensed for 20 more years, and research has begun on extending their life to as long as 80 years. Levi mention "transition charges." How come there are no nuclear transition charges in Texas or Tennessee? Finally uses the strange term, "nuclear bailout." Wind is constantly being bailed out, at the rate of two cents per kWh, what is a nuclear bailout?

If there is an apples to oranges comparison of wind and nuclear power, It would appear that much of the problem is that many costs for renewable electricity are not accounted for when renewable advocates make comparisons.

How much would an all renewables electrical system cost?

The Gore plan, the Google plan, the energy writings of Joe Romm, the views of the Internet site Gristmill, and other self proclaimed energy authorities, all maintain the view that an all renewable grid is possible.  Some time  ago I attempted to evaluate the theory of reliable wind suggested by Mark Z. Jacobson.  Jacobson argued, based on empirical data from 17 sites in the southwestern Great Planes, that wind generation could be made reliable by building grid links between those sites.  Jacobson found that the linked sites could be expected to produce at least 20% of their rated capacity 80% of the time.  Jacobson further argued that this reliability approached that of base generated electricity.  My analysis, using a 2008 wind cost estimate of $2500 per KW, and evaluating the Google energy plan, found that the 380 wind GWs called for by the Google plan would cost $900 billion to install,    This estimated installation cost did not include the expansion of the grid that would be needed to transmit the electricity from the windmill array to consumers.   I found that the linked wind array could be counted on to produce about 80 GWs of electricity 80% of the time.  The linked wind system, however, had a serious flaw.  It could not deliver power on hot summer days when electrical demand peaked.  

I undertook a comparison between the Google wind proposal and  an alternative scheme to build nuclear reactors at the same combined cost as the wind array.   I estimate at $900 Billion dollars would purchase 112 one GWe reactors.  At a .90 capacity factor, the reactors could be counted on to deliver 101 GW of electricity at any time.  Or a little over 20% more electricity at any given time than the wind array.  Unlike the wind array, the reactors could be counted on to deliver electricity at close to maximum capacity on hot summer days.  

In addition I offered evaluations of the cost of wind with three energy storage plans.  The use of batteries, to store wind generated electricity, the use of pumped storage, and the use of Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES).  My CAES study was in turn based on  "The Economic Impact of CAES on Wind in TX, OK, and NM," by Ridge Energy Storage & Grid Services L.P, for the Texas State Energy Conservation Office. in 2005. I assumed .40 wind capacity factor and that 40% of the energy output from the CAES system would come from the burning of natural gas, a standard assumption for CAES systems. The Ridge Energy study showed that electricity could reliably dispatched on a 24 hour a day basis from a CAES system on a 24 hour a day basis, even during low wind summer days, demonstrating the viability of a Wind-CAES system, However, the energy output of CAES systems is .80 of energy inputs. This suggests that there are considerable in efficiencies in the use of wind generated electricity by the wind CAES system, and that at least 30% of the electrical input is lost to system inefficiencies. Ridge Energy estimated that the capital cost of a CAES system would run @$765 per KW, an exceedingly modest sum, but one which should be examined. The capital cost for source wind array combined with the CAES system is in fact much higher.

I stipulated a cost for new West Texas wind of $2250 per name plate KW in 2009. This price was at the low end of 2008 windmill costs in North America. Since the capacity factor of West Texas runs around .40, the adverage output West Texas wind producer can expect to pay $5625 for every KW of electrical producing capacity. Since only 70% of the electricity entering the CAES facility reaches the consumer, the wind producer must increase his wind generating capacity by 30% to compensate for the energy loss. Thus the price of the wind generated electry entering the CAES facility must compensate the wind producer for something like a $8000 capitol investment for every average KW sold by the CAES facility. When added to the $765 per KW capital investment in the CAES facility, and the cost of natural gas used with CAES technology, we get a very ugly picture, of the cost of wind generated electricity.

In my pumped storage study, I reviewed the cost of the Northfield Mountain Pumped storage facility in New England. I calculated the cost of the 1080 MW facility at 3.7 billion 2008 dollars using the 1972 cost and a standard conversion table. I noted that an estimated 2008 cost for a reactor of similar capacity would be around $5 billion. The pumped storage facility had the ability to deliver power for 10 hours at a tome, while the reactor could be expected to deliver power continuously at least 90% of a year.

In order to produce electricity for the pump storage facility, a wind generating array would have to be built. The cost of that array would be paid for when electricity from the pump storage facility was sold. Pump storage operates at 75% efficiency. That is 25% of the energy input is lost before electrical output. Thus assuming a very generous West Texas capacity factor of .40 for the wind array with a rated output of 1400 MWs operating 24 hours a day would be required to fill the pump storage facility. Lets assume costs at the low end of the 2008 range for windmills, say $2250 per KW. Thus the wind array required to fill the pump storage facility full would cost $3.150 billion. That would give us a figure of close to $7 Billion to be financed by the sale of peak electricity from the pumped storage facility. Seven billion dollars is a l;arge investment for electricity that would be only available for 10 hours a day. Since as reactor capable of producing a similar amount of electricity 24 hours a day could be had in 2008 for 2 billion dollars less, the reactor is the better deal.

Finally, I examined battery storage with wind. Battery storage appears to be the most expensive electrical reliability/storage systems. After producing an estimated cost of Wind + battery storage, i then looked at the cost of a non-storage backup system for wind, a conventional nuclear reactor. The reactor was actually less expensive than a combination windmill battery backup system In addition the nuclear system would be so reliable that wind generation could be dispensed with and the system rely entirely on nuclear power.

Post-carbon electrical generating systems require reliability. During the last few months I have produced 4 case studies of the cost of making wind generated electricity reliable through the use of different technologies. Renewable advocates often complain that nuclear power is too expensive. My assessments show that reliable wind capital costs would more expensive than the capital costs of nuclear generated electricity in any of the noted cases. Facility costs for PY and ST power would be considerably higher per KW than wind in any of the noted cases. Given that the capacity factor for Southwestern Solar is not much higher than .20, it seems likely that reliable solar would be even more expensive than reliable wind, however, since I have not studied the economies of solar storage systems this is impossible to confirm.

My current research has not focused on other hidden cost of renewables generation. These include the cost of new transmission lines that are required by renewable generation systems, to be born by rate payers, the cost of federal and states tax based subsidies, the cost of keeping grid voltage stable. None of my case studies would support the contention that the cost of reliable wind would be competitive with conventional nuclear as a source of reliable electricity.

My conclusions have been acknowledged by some of the more sober minded supporters of the renewables paradigm. It is my contention then conventional nuclear power will cost less than reliable renewable electricity in a post carbon grid, and that National energy priorities ought to be rethought in light of the evidence that conventional nuclear power is the lower cost option. If conventional nuclear power is too expensive, then renewables are even more expensive. Thus we need to find a lower cost electrical generation option.