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The Forum > Article Comments > Health and economics will unravel wind power > Comments

Health and economics will unravel wind power : Comments

By Max Rheese, published 5/7/2011

Being too expensive isn't the only problem for wind power - damaging the health of neighbours is another.

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@Shadow Minister: These tariffs are based on costs. The feed in cost are about euro 30c/kWhr

I wasn't doubting your European figures Shadow.

@Shadow Minister: If the same nature of loan guarantees were given for nuclear, the cost would rival coal or beat it.

Err, they are Shadow. From http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2010/02/16/obama-nuclear-loan.html :

"February 16, 2010 ... U.S. President announces $8.3 billion US in loan guarantees to build 2 plants in Georgia"

It's the only way they can get them built in the US. From http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&refer=home&sid=a68a7ruN.hy8 :

"'For the plants that are not regulated, the loan guarantees are essential,' says Morgan Stanley executive director Caren Byrd, a nuclear finance specialist."

It's not all good news for the solar plant. It needed around $7/Watt.hr in guarantees, the nuclear plants around $4/Watt.hr. And I presume nuclear will be able sell its power on the open market without forcing someone to buy it at $0.135/KW.hr.

But - the playing field isn't level. Nuclear still externalises its risks. Firstly, we have this worrying comment from the US Congressional Budget Office on nuclear guarantees http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/42xx/doc4206/s14.pdf :

"CBO considers the risk of default on such a loan guarantee to be very high—well above 50 percent."

And that's just the loan repayment. If the company has gone broke the taxpayer ends up wearing the cleanup costs as well, and currently the long term disposal problem will be at the US tax payers expense.

There are ideas for nuclear plant designs that don't externalise those risks, like the SSTAR and the 4S. Start building them and we will see what the comparison is on a level playing field.

That was the disappointing thing about Germany's announcement for me. Fine to no new GEN II or GEN III plants. Buy the world sorely needs its Germany's to develop GEN IV.
Posted by rstuart, Sunday, 10 July 2011 6:52:25 PM
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Rstuart,

Your own figures show that solar is more expensive than nuclear nearly 2x. On top of this, this is per watt of capacity. If this is taken on average generation, the cost per watt of solar nearly doubles, whilst nuclear increases slightly.

Also in the same report (dated 2003):

Assuming the nuclear plant is completed, we expect it would financially default soon after beginning operations, however, we expect that the plant would continue to operate and sell power at competitive market rates. Thus, over the plant’s expected operating lifetime, its creditors (which could be the federal government) could expect to recover a significant portion of the plant’s construction loan.
Posted by Shadow Minister, Monday, 11 July 2011 8:34:29 AM
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@Shadow Minister: If this is taken on average generation, the cost per watt of solar nearly doubles, whilst nuclear increases slightly.

Not quite as you paint it Shadow. The capacity factor of this particular solar thermal plant is apparently 50% as you say (from: http://techpulse360.com/2010/07/21/can-solarreserve-top-brightsource/ ), but I gather the capacity factor of nuclear is around 80%, if you don't allow for things like Japan shutting down most of its nuclear generation recently for inspections.

@Shadow Minister: Your own figures show that solar is more expensive than nuclear nearly 2x.

That same techpulse360 article says the capital costs for solar thermal are around $8/KW, with negligible fuel costs. The 1.1 GW nuclear reactors mentioned above cost $9 Billion (from: http://www.energybiz.com/article/11/07/georgia-power-braves-nuclear-headwinds ). Guess what - that is around $8/KW.

As you say solar looses on the capacity factor. But it doesn't externalise costs the way nuclear does. My guess is the real costs are in reality much closer than you are prepared to admit.

By the way, these solar thermal still deliver their contacted supply if the sun don't shine, and this ability is included in their capital costs. From http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/solar-storage-solarreserve-gets-737-million-guarantee-to-build-a-plant/ :

"The two-decades-old solar thermal plants in California's Mojave Desert "have not missed one hour of peak output in their lifetime," Morse told us once. "When Mt. Pinatubo blew ash into the sky, they just burned a little more gas."

Finally, much as you hate to admit it, right now adding capacity using wind is cheaper that either solar thermal or nuclear. See figure 11, in this IEEE Power & Energy magazine article: http://www.ieee-pes.org/images/pdf/open-access-milligan.pdf

It shows the capacity weighted wind price has never been higher than the wholesale power price in the US. I know this has triggered a long list of "buts" in your mind. Read the article before replying. It's not a big ask - it is a perspective from your mob, the power engineers. The bottom line is that until we reach 20% or so of total capacity, wind is the cheapest clean way to add generation capacity. At good sites it is even cheaper than coal.
Posted by rstuart, Tuesday, 12 July 2011 3:10:21 PM
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Health and economics. Nuclear, coal and so called natural gas on one side while renewables- solar, wind, geothermal like in Iceland, tidal like some countries are investigating-are on the other. i like what a commentator said about Australia being driven to stupidity by perception, posturing and self interest. Everybody in Victoria knows the landed gentry are behind the wind farms cause health problems line. Inconvenience, visual pollution, low level noise maybe.The anti wind farmer would have more cred if they had ever once supported city dwellers trying to prove the ill health link between high voltage power lines and cancer, a fact established in the scientific literature as far back as the 1950s. Still governments and their overpaid and over superannuated public servants deny it while the hospitals fill up with cancer patients.

The only useful purpose served by these rural anti-wind farmers is that their particular brand of nasty politics illustrates the steep learning curve Australians have ahead of us in the next twenty years. If you think that your biggest problem is to hang onto a picturesque view or contain the fallout from reduced real estate value, then you are in for a rude awakening. I find it very apt that one of the most famous songs of the twentieth century, Bob Dylan's 'Blowin in the wind' is a phophecy about who will survive the coming catastrophe of climate and economic collapse.
Posted by Hestia, Monday, 18 July 2011 2:05:05 PM
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Rstuart,

Nuclear energy 91.2% (2010 average of USA's plants) 80% is a conservative figure.

From your link, solar storage has a 34% capacity factor.

"The California plant, outfitted with a 150-megawatt turbine, is designed to generate peak-period power for PG&E. Running an average of 8.5 hours a day, it should achieve a capacity factor of 34 percent by heating and storing salt in the mornings and using it to deliver power well into the evening."

This would make it more than 2x as expensive, as nuclear.

Solar is about $8 per watt not kW or $8000 per kW,

"Construction costs are very difficult to quantify but dominate the cost of Nuclear Power. The main difficulty is that third generation power plants now proposed are claimed to be both substantially cheaper and faster to construct than the second generation power plants now in operation throughout the world. The Nuclear Industry says its learned the lessons of economy-of-volume demonstrated by the French Nuclear Program, and that these will be employed for the new power plants. In 2005 Westinghouse claimed its Advanced PWR reactor, the AP1000, will cost USD $1400 per KW for the first reactor and fall in price for subsequent reactors. A more technical description is here. Proponents of the CANDU ACR and Gas Cooled pebble bed reactors made similar or stronger claims. However the first wave of new plants in the USA are expected to cost over $3500 per KW of capacity. Additional costs increase the price even more."

The total costs incl provisions for decommissioning and waste disposal bring this up to $6500 in the USA and lower elsewhere.
Posted by Shadow Minister, Monday, 18 July 2011 2:57:52 PM
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