Mark,

I have to humbly disagree with you on this point: "Unsubsidised wind power can compete, on a cost-per-output basis, with the likes of coal and gas, while the other forms of green power - photovoltaics and solar thermal - trail the field by a fair margin."

That is not correct. Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCOE) is for the generator only. It does not include the additional system costs of integrating unreliable, intermittent generators like wind and solar. Nor the many hidden costs that are transferred to the generators that must ramp their power up and down and cycle (shut down and start up) to back up for these intermittent technologies.

This shows a simple estimate of system costs for the NEM fo a system that reduces emissions intensity by 905 (to the same as France's emissions intensity) using either mostly renewables versus mostly nuclear (like France): http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.363.7838&rep=rep1&type=pdf

If wind was competitive, it would not need subsidies of $40/MWh plus a whole hos of other hidden subsidies to make it competitive. But without those subsidies, guaranteed for 20 years or more, there'd be no more wind power built.

Mark,

I posted my comment based on the quote in the email. My apologies. I posted it too early. Your articles is excellent.

Readers may be interested to compare prices for Australia from two CSIRO calculators: MyPower and EFuture. Both use the BREE AETA LCOE and Emissions Intensities as inputs. Neither includes the costs of transmission and the other hidden costs. Both show that, even without these other costs (which are much higher for wind than for nuclear), nuclear is by far the cheapest option and E Future also shows that nuclear would reduce emissions much more than renewables.

E Future: http://efuture.csiro.au/#scenarios

My Power: http://www.csiro.au/Outcomes/Energy/MyPower.aspx

By coincidence another article came out today cautioning against high expectations for SMRs
http://theenergycollective.com/dan-yurman/2199841/be-careful-about-rose-colored-glasses-when-viewing-future-smrs
It seems to me that SMRs would excel when jointly located with desalination plants that could use either all-electrical reverse osmosis or the thermal flash distillation process or some hybrid. For example at one stage is was proposed to have a 280 megalitre a day desal plant at Whyalla SA that would pump water some 320 km to Olympic Dam mine. It was cancelled among other reasons because the SA grid couldn't spare the power.

I believe that between 2025 and 2040 all the large baseload coal fired power stations in the NSW Hunter Valley and Vic Latrobe Valley will need to be replaced. Even without full capacity replacement at the very least you'd think it would come to 10 GW. That's a lot, perhaps requiring dozens of small units which is hard to envisage. Perhaps by then lessons learnt from prefabrication and fast assembly of SMRs could apply to gigawatt sized reactors.

An interesting article, but ultimately inadequate. The central generation model is already dead to all intents and purposes. Moreover, there are many other useful technologies than wind or even solar PV. Concentrating solar thermal, gas turbine, micro thermal storage, etc, as well as the rapid reduction in demand through improved efficiencies is going to see the central generation model come to a screaming halt within a decade or two.

On a slightly longer time frame, the decentralisation of manufacturing will see the need for high power reticulation to industrial areas decline to almost zero.

Talk of nuclear is like discussing the virtues of the dodo as a table bird.

Mark Lawson here.

Peter - as I know you are an ex nuclear power person I am duly flattered by your second post.. I know there have been attempts to compare intermittent and dispatchable costs but its all way too complicated for an article such as this. As you know dispatchable and intermittent sources are just in two different camps.

Using such sources cost extra and that's that..

Taswegian - thanks for that.. I'll look at that link..

The power generators deal with intermittent supply since generation became modern. There is a bank of gas fired turbines of small scale to do just that. Power regulation is a 24 hour a day job. Supply and demand regulation. You have your base generators which take time to regulate, so short time regulation is done with small turbines which look like jet engines which are turned on and off constantly by a centralized regulator person. So there is no difference in regulation for solar or wind or any other sort of generation.