When used for peak management, it only needs to be cheaper than the alternative, which is typically gas powered generation.
It's not just the power that matters, it's the energy, and you can't just build pumped storage anywhere you feel like it - there needs to be a practical way of storing large quantities of water at two significantly different levels, or there needs to be a place near the sea where sea water can be stored at a significantly higher than sea level.
Sylvia
Waste incinerators ? A few years ago, there was a waste incinerator building boom in UK. Some of that burning waste is organic :-)
The annual capacity factor (CF) for fixed panels is about 0.3 on low latitudes and about 0.1 for high latitude countries. Thus the quoted
comparable costs with high CF production forms, such as nuclear or fossil fuels.
Solar panels can be quite competitive, if you also have plenty of hydro production, run on solar during th day and on water during the night. It makes sense to build solar capacity to similar numbers as you have existing hydro production. Noting the day/night consumption difference, it is possible to have slightly more solar production, perhaps 1.5 to 2 times the peak hydro power.
Solar power makes sense for charging EVs during the day and running air conditioning directly as well as making cold water to be used by air conditioning in late evening. But other than that there is hard to find profitable use of excessive solar power.
estimated current cost of the seriously late project is about double, but still a long way to $19 billion.
The problem with pumped storage is the low total efficiency as well as the lack of suitable places for the reservoirs. Building such reservoirs might also have significant environmental impact.
If there are deep old mines with large cavities, these could be used for short time peaks. In the best case with deep cavities well below sea level, the sea would be the upper storage and the mine cavity the lower reservoir. That would have very little environment impact.
At this time of year daytime UK solar peak output also tops Nuclear. It flatlines in winter for months at a time. See:
Today a fairly sunny midsummers day at lunchtime the mix was:
CCGT 40% Solar 20% Nuclear 15% Biomass 9% Wind 7% Coal 2%
Believe it or not the UK's biggest biomass plant Drax in Yorkshire makes its wood pellets in the Mississippi, USA and ships 16MT over each year!
See Table: Summary of Power stations in the UK: Coal/biomass >300MW
And the description of their wood pellet plant in the USA by Drax
It strikes me as madness to be shipping this stuff with relatively low energy density round the world in bulk but that is exactly what they do!
-- Regards, Martin Brown
Got numbers to demonstrate that? It was true a few years ago, but since the Chinese started manufacturing high yield solar cells in high volume the price seems to have got pretty competitive.
Depends on the price you can sell it at when you have got it to sell.
Works fine for wheat and wool. The Australian hydrogen freaks want to turn solar power into liquid hydrogen and ship it off to Japan and Korea, and they couldn't care less when it gets supplied.
If it's cheap enough, the customers will buy their own storage (the hydrogen freaks being a case in point).
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
l.
Unless you go in for pumped air storage, where large underground caverns ar e handy, but there's a lot of ground underfoot where you can dig caverns. O ften there are mines down there (if they aren't filled with water which you could pump out into artificial lakes - or real ones).
Pumped storage schemes do start out by exploiting situations that lend them selves easily to the job, but there's a lot more landscape around if you ne ed more.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
On Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 8:44:06 PM UTC+10, snipped-for-privacy@downunder.com wr ote:
r capacity and at times equals CCGT (gas) usage.
t that is, I guess making gas from plants and burning that?
When Nijmegen (in the Netherlands) started getting us to sort our garbage, the calorific value of the fraction that did get burnt went way up, and the y to rebuild the steam generators to take the higher temperatures (which fe d into the local power plant and district heating system).
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
At some times with a large production, the price will drop to zero. If no money is available at times, this will limit future investments including replacements.
With even a higher overproduction, some solar and wind plants must simply be disconnected from net . I bet the greenies are beating their heads, when a lot of wind turbines are stationary when there would be a nice wind :-)
On Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 9:28:51 PM UTC+10, snipped-for-privacy@downunder.com wr ote:
e
er
he North Anna reactor Dominion has received approval for will cost $19 bill ion! That's $0.06 per kW just for the capital without counting the interes t, operation, refueling, etc... and not counting the cost of waste handling .
he
le energy available 24/7. The UK has at least 1400 MW of pumped storage hy dro for a country that uses about 30 or 40 GW peak. Obviously it can't be so expensive.
Dinowig in Wales gives back about 75% of the energy stored. Batteries can g et up to 85%. As total efficiencies go, this isn't bad.
The hydrogen economy - electrolyse water and burn the hydrogen in gas turbi nes or fuel cells seems to offer about 25%.
Or you can pump air into the caverns with turbo-compressers and let it out again through the same turbines.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
They'd be more likely to beat on the politicians who weren't quick enough to install storage for the excess power.
South Australia already has Elon Musk's 100MW 129 MW.hour battery, and Malcom Turnbull got the ball rolling on Snowy 2, which is going to take longer to come on-line.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
And yet there seems to be quite a bit of it used in the UK. Maybe they aren't so backwards after all. :)
-- Rick C. ---++ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging ---++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209
On Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 7:01:49 AM UTC-4, snipped-for-privacy@downunder.com wro te:
eWhy pay more for energy from a harmful source? Do you just like to toss m oney out the window?
I believe if you define it as "excessive" then by definition it will be har d to find a use for.
I find it funny that people think it should all be done by competitive mark et forces. If things were left to that we would not currently have any sol ar and likely very little wind power. Instead we have a market that is boo ming and prices are falling and will continue to fall. We have energy stor age that is becoming cost effective on a large scale. By subsidizing renew able energy we will reach a point where it is economically the best solutio n as well as being a solution that doesn't cause all the problems of curren t energy sources.
I think we need to get over it and accept that we need to make this work. So why banter about all the tradeoffs which are well understood and mitigat ed. It's just a matter of getting things into high enough production rates that the costs fall to advantageous numbers. Then we can end the subsidie s on the mainstream technologies and see if there are other renewable sourc es that are worth exploring.
I still like the idea of beaming energy from satellites. I can't imagine t hat we can't make such an arrangement as least as safe as damns and various power generation. I suppose weather is still an issue... well, in the UK anyway. lol
-- Rick C. --+-- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging --+-- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209
On Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 7:28:51 AM UTC-4, snipped-for-privacy@downunder.com wro te:
he North Anna reactor Dominion has received approval for will cost $19 bill ion! That's $0.06 per kW just for the capital without counting the interes t, operation, refueling, etc... and not counting the cost of waste handling .
he
What is the projected cost per kWh? What are the uncounted costs? Nuclear is not unlike fossil fuels, significant costs are not counted because they are not current costs.
le energy available 24/7. The UK has at least 1400 MW of pumped storage hy dro for a country that uses about 30 or 40 GW peak. Obviously it can't be so expensive.
"The round-trip energy efficiency of PSH varies between 70%?80%, wi th some sources claiming up to 87%."
Pumped hydro is currently used because it saves money. How can you claim " low efficiency" is a problem? Sounds to me like it can be very efficient. What's the efficiency of letting generation sit idle or tossing kWh from r enewables because we don't need them at that moment?
-- Rick C. --+-+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging --+-+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209
On Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 7:28:51 AM UTC-4, snipped-for-privacy@downunder.com wro te:
he North Anna reactor Dominion has received approval for will cost $19 bill ion! That's $0.06 per kW just for the capital without counting the interes t, operation, refueling, etc... and not counting the cost of waste handling .
he
Wow! I did a little reading on the EPR and it was HUGELY over budget and w ay late. $3.5 Billion and 5 years turned into $10 Billion and 14 years and it's still not online!!! If they had known the actual budget and schedule up front, would they have even started this project?
This is exactly why nuclear power plant construction has virtually come to a stand still in the US.
Remember, these are investments intended to make a profit. Companies are w illing to take such huge risks. Heck a pair of reactors in South Carolina were killed after spending $2 Billion when it became obvious they would not be able to pay for the actual costs. Two billions dollars wasted trying t o build a nuclear plant with no return!!!
Yeah, nuclear is definitely the way to go...
-- Rick C. --++- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging --++- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209
rote:
The North Anna reactor Dominion has received approval for will cost $19 bi llion! That's $0.06 per kW just for the capital without counting the inter est, operation, refueling, etc... and not counting the cost of waste handli ng.
The
way late. $3.5 Billion and 5 years turned into $10 Billion and 14 years a nd it's still not online!!! If they had known the actual budget and schedu le up front, would they have even started this project?
o a stand still in the US.
willing to take such huge risks. Heck a pair of reactors in South Carolin a were killed after spending $2 Billion when it became obvious they would n ot be able to pay for the actual costs. Two billions dollars wasted trying to build a nuclear plant with no return!!!
I read further in the article and found another plant that has a similar hi story.
"Areva?s second EPR, being built at the Flamanville Nuclear Power P lant in France, has not fared much better. Construction started at the end of 2007 and was slated to end in 2012, at a cost of ?3.3 billion ($
3.8 billion). On current estimates it will cost ?10.9 billion ($12. 6 billion)."Sorry, the $19 billion projection for the North Anna reactor doesn't sound so out of line to me! Sounds to me like they are being very realistic know ing how nuclear projects typically happen...
-- Rick C. --+++ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging --+++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209
have
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Madness??? Shipping is not a large cost I hope you realize. In the grand scheme of things shipping is pretty cheap. One of the advantages of econom y of scale.
-- Rick C. -+--- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging -+--- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209
I can only find reference to four, all in the mountainous parts of Scotland and Wales. Their storage capacity is limited. They get pumped at night, using electricity from coal or nuclear.
Sylvia.
I rather doubt that the source of the electricity matters. Wind works perfectly well at night (if the wind is blowing). The pumps would work fine during the day if there was any need to use them
Dinowig has a storage capacity of 9.1 GW.hours, which is finite, and thus limited, but quite a bit more than the 129 MW.hour Tesla batter in South Australia which is already big enough to be useful.
Snowy 2 seems to be aimed at 350 GW.hours of capacity, which is quite a bit larger.
-- Bill Sloman, Sydney
Correct.
The difference between kW and kWh was pointed out to Rick C. A couple of hours before he posted his message above, he responded to that kW/kWh message, not denying his error but trying to swivel the conversation onto an irrelevant point.
Draw your own conclusion.
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