Are Renewables Actually the Cheaper Option?
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- Опубликовано: 1 июл 2024
- What’s the best energy source? At the end of 2021 I set out to answer that question in a video on how to calculate the cost of energy from different sources. And I used a car race metaphor to illustrate the different components that make up the cost: construction, financing, fuel and operations and maintenance. I got a tonne of comments asking me to include more information. And this is that update.
By popular request I’ve added nuclear and geothermal power, in addition to coal, gas, solar and wind that were in the original video. And we’ll rerun the car race using data from Lazard’s latest levelized cost of energy report, to see which of the six generation types comes out cheapest.
Then in the second half of the video we’ll look at another topic that came up a lot in the comments of the previous video: what are the assumptions behind the cost calculations? Do they include subsidies, the cost of firming renewables with energy storage, or transmission that would need to be added?
Thanks to John Poljak from www.keynumbers.com for doing the calculations. Join us on January 20 for a livestream where we'll run the LCOE calculations with different assumptions. • The True Cost of Renew...
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Bookmarks:
00:00 Intro
01:20 Starting Grid Positions - Nameplate Capacity
02:28 First Corner - Overnight Construction Cost
03:37 Second Corner - Financing Costs
03:59 Pit Stop - Fuel Costs
04:39 Third Corner - Operations and Maintenance Costs
05:00 Finish Line - LCOE
05:23 LCOE for different countries and VALCOE
06:42 Subsidies assumptions in LCOE calculations
07:25 Storage requirements for different technologies
07:50 The cost of transmission
08:13 Other factors that affect LCOE - Electricity mix, integration costs
10:09 Australia’s 82% Renewables Plan
10:55 Upcoming Livestream with John Poljak from Keynumbers
11:41 Outro
Sources:
Lazard’s LCOE Version 15
www.lazard.com/media/451881/l...
www.csiro.au/-/media/News-rel... 
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Join us on January 20 for a livestream where guest John Poljack will rerun the calculations live with your suggestions for different assumptions: ruclips.net/video/Kx5hLwHoq0A/видео.html
What about SMR & MSR? These future tech used with solar & wind drastically reduce the storage needed for wind & solar and a GW is estimated typically under a $Billion. They are always preassembled, never assembled on site. Maintenance costs are weird. Sometimes they figure they'll ship them back to the factory & sometimes they figure you'll refuel on site & expect half century lifetimes. The MSR's major claim to fame is there is so little spent fuel produced. Is it even possible to estimate LCOE before even pilots are built? I'm fond of liquid metal batteries because they last 200,000 cycles instead of the typical battery's 2,000 cycles. I'm also a fan of peakers because here in US we fart a lot so gas is cheap and peakers barely run if you have 4 hrs storage.
Anthropogenic Global Warming is a fraud.
RUclips video: A Novel Perspective on the Greenhouse Effect (Tom Shula)
1) RUclips video: Markus Ott: Questioning the greenhouse effect
The greenhouse effect is the primordial sacrament of modern climate science. It is.
* * *
The dystopian, one-party, Orwellian, preached from kindergarten to the nursing home. The simple name of this effect and its ubiquity in culture and mainstream media leave no doubt that we are dealing here with solid and fully understood Natural Science. But how does this actually effect work?
2) RUclips video: Markus Ott: Atmospheric greenhouse effect ~0? (Applying IPCC formulas to the no-atmosphere moon. Conclusion: there is no greenhouse effect on earth.)
Min 6:xx. "Abuse of the Stefan-Boltzmann model..."
3) RUclips video: Markus Ott: Saturation of the CO2-IR-Absorption
(Min 0:10) The alleged greenhouse effect of 33 degrees centigrade is the result of an improper use of the Stefan-Boltzmann Law (black-body radiation), and that a less abusive application of this law makes the greenhouse effect almost disappear.
4) RUclips video: Markus Ott: Convection and Thermalisation Kill The Greenhouse Effect
RUclips video: In-Depth Comments on Sabine Hossenfelder's Talk: Greenhouse Effect
"Heat transport in the atmosphere... IT'S CALLED WEATHER."
RUclips Channel: Climate Discussion Nexus.
267 videos on climate fraud, hustle, and superstition mongering
As an engineer scientist with a background in metrics and measures, I can agree how hard it is to develop compound measures. Every decision is subjective.
It is a lot easier when you have a hypothesis you're trying to test. If you presume, for example, that one source of energy is cheapest, then you can make all those subjective choices so they are biased against it. If you still get a result supporting your hypothesis, it might just be true... Otherwise you can't say much.
I designed production process and specialty process equipment for 35 years. No. Measurement doesn't have to be subjective. Objectivity is directly related to the number of repetitions made by trained observers. With respect to well known factors like time, force, mass, electric charge etc. an effective system of predictive measurements is easily created.. When subjective measures are needed, it's possible to create standards which consistently measure those effects. What's shocking is how easily Engineers have accepted the Economist's nonsense.
Thank you . We can calculate the cost to build manufacture, install , run, decommission bare bones without tariffs or subsidies . It isn't so hard . Then we must ask the question how fragile is the system to environment possibilities like a volcanic explosion. Solar flaring floods etc.
AGW is a load of it.
Decarbonization is 21st century pyramid building.
Just burn coal.
Thank you Rosie, what a great, approachable, look at a VERY complex topic. As you pointed out, much of the subsidy value is not easily teased out. Because of that we will always be in the position of having to educate and persuade. Your videos are a great tool for that. Thanks again.
Wonderful series of videos. What is woefully lacking in the costing are 2 major components that are frequently disregarded. One is decommissioning costs at the end of life, including disposal/reusing components and waste. The other is all of the external costs, including but not limited to, CO2 emissions and its effects on climate events, pollution and its environmental and health effects, waste management (e.g. coal ash and nuclear waste), etc. In the world goal of getting to a circular economy in the energy sector these costs need to be dealt with up front, so that the engineers design in ease of decommissioning and minimizing external costs..
Nuclear waste is no big deal in reality. And relatively there is so little of it. it just needs to get done.
@@justgivemethetruth such nonsense... yea if we include the ever expanding cost of nuclear waste storage and the fact its paid for hundreds and in some HLW for thousands of years... the nuclear car won't ever cross the finish line!
@@path4659 add also the costs of geo-political-military games to secure the provisions of uranium (ask the French with the recent war in Niger/Mali, etc), then nuclear is way way back on the track 😂
add 1 trillion for Yucca Mountain Nuclear nuclear waste disposal site divided by 100 power plants in the US = 10 Billion per power plant. Not sure if that includes transporting.
@@Sean_neaS
The problems you and many mention are due to nuclear not really getting a chance to grow and mature into an economy of scale and develop best practices. A cold objective consideration puts nuclear at the top when you balance all the needs of the whole planet and all people. The criticisms of nuclear are calculated to pile and in order to prevent anyone from actually weighing them. Cut to the chase ... it's either nuclear, climate and habitat destruction, or massive energy shortages and a F-you to the developing world. Since the environment and limited resources are the constraint, recycling conomic growth and development must turn to massive cheap energy to desalinate water and pump it around the world to green dying brown areas, recycling metals to avoid having to tear up the planet, and information technology which runs on energy to provide new kinds of jobs. I don't call anyone names, or demand their ideas are nonsense, or attack other methods of electricity generation, but nuclear solves all the problem - except the stupidity of humans ... and I never claimed that was a minor annoyance.
It's so satisfying to watch somebody handle this subject who knows precisely what they're talking about. Thanks 😁
Rosie is a nuclear engineer..... She brushes over the fact that nuclear plants have been delivered for about $1.25 billion for 500MWe in today's money. Also interest rates are to a degree a choice, a range should be used.
The effect of V2G vehicle to grid can have a massive effect on grid stability.
One report stated EV charging at off hours evens out demand and makes base load power generation more effective.
Things are changing.
Most EV charging is highly flexible so is ideal for use with highly variable renewable energy. The concept of base load power is largely dead in modern power grids with even 20% RE consumption.
Hey Dan! I’ve done some searching since I was thinking about getting an ID4 which has V2G capability, and I couldn’t find a company that had an off the shelf charger/V2G option. Maybe someone can chime in and give some advice.
@@therookienomore88 there are options for this with Fermata and Wallbox but really requires a compliant utility and then software to make it compatible
@@therookienomore88 CCS/V2G protocols is just being finalized in Europe and North America... "Volkswagen partners with Elia group to explore vehicle-to-grid (V2G) services" But Volkswagen in general has had software issues with their EVs.
CCS/V2G We'll become a common option, In the next few years. So you want to make sure you install a bidirectional charger, that can be used with various models and brands of EVs. Since they tend to be much more expensive than a common EVSE.
V2G is still very expensive for the DC to AC inverter.
Our charger is on a controlled load and generally operates between 11pm until 7am. We've had a few days last year here in Queensland Australia where the temperature has been very mild, causing low demand and an excess of solar and wind. Off peak power was still available until after midday.
We'll see more of this as renewables increase.
Thank you for your excellent work. What a great way of illustrating the data.
Thank you for your effort, this is such a complex and emotive subject. As an engineer working in electrical generation for 40 years I would like to suggest another factor for your car race. Reliability of supply is surely a major issue, cities can't come to a standstill because its nightime and there has been no wind for a week!. Keeping electricity on the bars was always our main concern a factor that is often overlooked in recent times.
Agree, but that's what storage is for. Battery prices have come down 90% since 2010 and they will only come down further with the economies of scale. An unprecedented amount of money and research is going into energy storage for both cars and utilities which will drive further generational cost reductions. One car battery, for example, can power a house for days and that vehicle to grid tech still hasn't been unlocked yet. We're in the midst of a clean energy revolution. This is just the beginning!
@@brianrcVids
i've got to agree it seems as if every single egghead that says wind doesn';t blow or the sun doesn't;'t shine is blissfully or deliberately IGNORANT of the extremely simple solution for this cyclicity.
Agreed. There is a difference between day-to-day storage and backup capacity for worst case scenarios. These need to be treated differently.
As an electrical engineer you should know better. Candidate pumped hydro storage sites exists every where. Here in Oz there is an estimated 2500 candidate sites. You should also know that Germany now have a large under sea connector to Norway, and lease pumped hydro storage facility from Norway. Fyi, Norway have 900 hydro power stations.
@@nordic5490
Pumped hydro is very efficient for sure,...its Capture by the UNIONS and Contractors makes it excessively expensive just like Nuclear. Let's not discount the incredible damage "pumped" and Dammed" hydro has done to China, its NOT cheap friend by any metric.
One thing that is continually overlooked in the Energy field, is the fact that renewables are:
A. Relatively new, and so very much a developing technology.
B. They can also be decentralized.
This second point is very important in my opinion.
To illustrate what that can mean I would like to point to a company in the Netherlands, (IBIS power) that combines both solar and wind in a rooftop module that would work for many buildings. Combine those with some form of battery in the basement and you have very reliable electricity for the building.
I'm sure there will be other innovations too.
Anyway thanks for a very interesting video.
From what I have read there is a big problem with nuclear in that many countries build different plants every time so that every one of them is a huge learning experience which is then lost when they don't build the next one exactly the same. I read that they also get built mostly on-site and the geology etc of the sites make each one slightly different even when they're the same basic technology. It seems to me that there's scope for remedying some of this.
Good comment, a lot of this will be taken care of with SMR technology, it's one of the reasons NuScale is taking so long to get out of the gate. They are trying to make it so most of the licensing for the plant is already complete, so only a geological survey and operations and training license will still have to be applied for, but these processes won't be nearly as involved as it is for the bespoke plants we have now. The first few projects will be expensive, but once the lessons learned are incorporated further projects should go much more smoothly. The AP1000 concept in China is a good example of this, the AP1000 concept in USA is a nightmare example of this where greedy local regulators and unions almost pecked it to death.
@@anydaynow01 I was pro-nuclear (ideologically I'm still for it) but economically the costs seem unfavourable. Whose fault (regulation, etc...) doesn't matter in the end when people are financing and running the plants. Currently unsubsidised solar often costs less than 1/5th of new nuclear, per MWh of generated energy and running within 1 year of construction, rather than 5 - 10 years.
A grid with 50%+ nuclear would require as much gas peaker and storage as renewables, as the original reason pumped hydro was created (to support nuclear / thermal over the day / night cycle)
@@zeealpal it does matter, if we can build more nuclear and make it more standardised then the prices can go down significantly enough
Another fantastic video from Rosie!
Double bonus points for mentioning the need for storage with nuclear, a factor frequently no mentioned.
Other factors that need to be considered with nuclear fission plants are:
- insurance, as it is now (post Fukushima) almost impossible to obtain purely commercial insurance for a nuclear fission power plant, no matter the size or technology. Even prior to Fukushima it was typical for governments to underwrite some of the insurance risks.
-high cost of transmission lines as typically nuclear plants are located far from major population centres.
- decommissioning costs and long term storage of waste. In Australia governments always seem keen to follow their colonial forebears by trying build a storage site on first nations land (recognised or otherwise).
- location, it would be very difficult to even find any locations suitable for a nuclear fission plant in Australia as they need to be built near a significant reliable source of water, which essentially means the ocean. None of the locations that were proposed by the SECV (Victoria Australia) when the last formal report was provided to parliament in the 1980's would be suitable anymore. Even at the time they would have been highly contested.
@mr wpg In the Eastern Australian grid (NEM) new wind and solar is cheaper than existing fossil gas and black coal plant without subsidies. Look at the reports from CSIRO and AEMO.
What are your qualification in the field of climate change? I mean surely you have at least Masters degree in the field.
I do geotechnical surveys for offshore wind and one thing I'd like to say is that at the end of a wind turbine's life cycle, you can just replace the turbine without having the cost of surveying the site, building the foundations, or running the cables, so this will reduce the price of replacing the assets. Also, what if Max Verstappen was driving wind? It would be a clear win for wind then 🙃
Of course exactly the same insight applies to solar and batteries. At replacement time no need for Environmental Impact Statements, land acquisition, navigating the NIMBYs, etc. The replacement costs for wind, solar and batteries are lower (and just as importantly far quicker) than replacement costs for coal or nuclear or hydro (including pumped storage). This means depreciation costs for these renewables are currently grossly overestimated compared to depreciation costs for other forms.
Great analysis, as far as it goes, as your presentation is very base load oriented. Your discussion about transmission costs gets closer to the issue. Their are two additional race cars I would add to your track: Conservation and decentralized generation. We need better building codes to make structure's more energy efficient. Where appropriate roof top solar will make a big contribution.
bingo
Of course. Solar farms should be a measure of last resort. Let’s cover all the suitable roofs first.
@@Nikoo033 Yes, big box solar farms. There is a difference between agriculture and horticulture. Many of our more sensitive crops require shade. For example ferns require shade cloth. There is quite an effort to combine solar panels above and horticultural crops below. Also, irrigation canals can be covered with panels. I like the idea of floating solar farms.
@@Nikoo033 I agree with you. Here in France, 3000 km2 of solar panels (+ storage) would cover the entire needs of the country. And, by shear coincidence, the sum of what is called "large roofs" (factories, warehouses, large apartment buildings, etc, excluding private houses) in French statistics is ... 3000 km2. Of course, solar ALONE is not the solution, but it's just to say that solar farms are not indispensable. The potential for what is called agri-solar is even larger! Furthermore, decentralized solar go a long way toward solving the transportation issue.
@@st-ex8506 absolutely. I read somewhere that thanks to a new law regarding car parks, France is aiming for 11GWp of solar PV installed within 3-5 years. That is 70% of the solar capacity that is currently installed in the UK…
Fantastic videobas usual. Very balanced approach. Keep it up.
@@mrwpg6286 WTF you going on about?
I am surprised places like Indonesia doesn't use more Geothermal. I know Kenya is getting involved in Geothermal as their RE back up.
Video on geothermal coming up sometime in the next few months! How cool would it be if I could film it in Kenya and Iceland?! One day I'll have the travel budget to afford that and an electric aeroplane to allow me to not feel like a climate hypocrite.
Rosie, across the planet, without exception, those countries and states that have the highest proportion of wind and solar have the highest consumer electricity prices.
In Australia, SA has the highest proportion of renewables and the highest consumer costs.
Germany with a staggering 130GW of wind and solar, has amongst the highest electricity costs on the planet which is double French electricity costs which is mainly nuclear generated.
Also the grids the countries with high wind and solar are becoming more and more unstable and the costs of stabilisation are skyrocketing.
South Australia has 4 syncons and most battery capacity used for stabilising rather than storage. The cost of this is over $500 million p
Us yearly costs.
Fascinating! Fantastic analysis, thanks for sharing!
And I love the race car analogy
I think I detect a bias towards CCG generation in both of your studies cited. I do understand why. My own utility from which I am charging my Tesla as I write has such a plant a few miles away here in California. The roughly 60% thermal efficiency of such a plant is compelling, I must admit.
But left out of what you present here, is one of the major issues with it fuel provenance. Natural gas leakages in what are rather long pipelines for the one nearest to me. Of course money leaks along with the gas, so incentive is there to control for that. But here in Southern California, not so different from Australia in sunshine availability, we have no real problem with the leakage of that energy source. That control and monetization of the energy source that passes through their facilities is what the energy providers find so lucrative, and which in turn provides the funding for studies like the ones you cite, alas. Maybe adding in some of the other externalities will put a better spin on the long term analysis.
Very true. I have plans to make a video on blue hydrogen and one of the major points in that analysis is how much methane leakage you include.
I love the dutch project where they heat water in an old mine with solar for winter district heating. Here in Germany heating is quite a big use of energy in the home. Some kind of economical seasonal heat storage would be super interesting.
I believe there is a company doing large scale heat storage using sand in super insulated silos, very interesting stuff!
Great video, as always. Simple explanation, of a complex topic.
This was an absolutely fantastic video, Rosie!
Love to see NuScales SMR's competing in this race especially after they get to production scale.
I support nuclear energy ideologically, but if they take 10+ years and $$$ more, then economically they don't make sense vs Solar or Wind + storage.
As an Australian, what I find frustrating is that many people consider the cost of existing coal generation vs new renewables, ignoring that new coal generation is much more expensive.
If solar keeps it's price trajectory, then economically it doesn't make sense for Australia to go nuclear, especially as we have no legislation around it. Conversly, it would make sense to utilise nuclear reactors for 50% of generation if that is the most cost and pollution effective.
I hope NuScale's reactor can compete with $1 USD per nameplate Watt cost to construct and that they can be throttled back when market conditions show that their cost to produce is more expensive than other sources. People in the generating biz will tell you: "It's all about the lowest cost for the next hour." Present-day nukes need to run at 100% power 24 hours a day, which is a major flaw in a market that has variable demand and now with renewables, variable supply.
Great video! Have you done a video about 100 percent renewable energy systems yet? Not just for australia, but also for places like europe or the US? After all there are quite a lot of studies about this and the results are quite interesting and not a lot of people seem to know the results of those studies.
Thanks for doing this analysis. Its good to inform myself. Apreciate sharing your knowledge.
Thank you for the super comprehensive analysis, it's so so important to know all the factors and the impacts
Something that no one seems to look at is the cost of decommissioning of these plants and the rehabilitation/reuse of the land. I have never heard of any nation completely decommissioning a nuclear facility and i imaging the costs would be extensive if you have to take into account the storage of waste material and the security of the plant after shut down. I mean you got to stop people dragging radioactive bits around the place and dumping it in areas that would cause harm to populations and the environment. Nice vid
The waste material storage is mostly a solved problem. Deep holes with oil drilling rigs.
Maine Yankee nuclear power plant has been totally decommissioned almost 20 years ago.
@@nicosil870 From wikipedia Maine Yankee Nuclear Power Plant was a nuclear power plant built at an 820-acre site on Bailey Peninsula of Wiscasset, Maine, in the United States. It operated from 1972 until 1996, when problems at the plant became too expensive to fix.[1] It was decommissioned and dismantled between 1997 and 2005, though some of the plant's nuclear waste is still stored on site, pending final disposal. So no not "Totally" decommissioned yet. And a long way from the land being repurposed
@@schrodingerscat6437 The nuclear waste could be stored anywhere. The site is radiologically clean. It is today in an identical state as any temporary storage site. You could argue that you have now a storage facility to decommision, that is true. But the power plant by itself is 100% decommissioned. And we know the cost for decommissioning a storage facility.
The high volume of storage is mostly related to high costs of reprocessing the fuel and extremely slow and expensive regulations. There's no political will to change that. Tech already exists to deal with storage better, and cheaper, but regulations are just too restrictive in most countries.
I'm a bit surprised Nuclear was so poor. But when I think about it. solar panel is all you need for that to work, while nuclear needs a building and expensive workers. I do wonder if scaling or other configurations could improve it.
One of the issues with nuclear is construction time. Lazard has it as 6 years to construct but can easily blow out to 10 plus years. The compounded interest costs during this time can significantly add to the final cost. We'll look to discuss this during the livestream. thanks, john
Dave Borlace of Just Have A Think sent me. 🙂 This was very useful and clear.
Thanks Rosie, fabulous way of describing a really important point.
While costs shouldn't be a factor when trying to solve problems like saving the planet, we know that getting people and governments onboard to initiate these changes will be more palatable if the costs are lower. I think you are spot on in your comments about the huge variables for cold climates, particularly in extreme northern latitudes where solar is pretty lean in the winter, and temperatures are brutal for wind generators lifespans. Thanks for this very interesting video!
It's not so much about palatability - we have a fixed amount of effort we can deploy - so many engineers, so many skilled workers. Nuclear engineers are going to look at nuclear solutions probably but the rough conclusion from this video is that everyone who can look at wind, solar and storage probably should be spending their time on those.
Not to mention clearing off hectares of solar panels after a snow storm in the winter. Maybe if there was seasonal energy storage and they way overbuilt their climate based power production to make up for the lower annual capacity factor. Few models put those considerations or the cost of disposal of the immense amount of waste every twenty to thirty years at end of life in the cost analysis though. Climate based power production is a capitalist's dream.
@@anydaynow01 I think climate appropriate energy production is going to be the answer. Also, I've seen some testing on recycling of newer material PV cells that looks promising. Petroleum is a guaranteed dead end, but will be a bridge for a number of years until something perfect comes along.
The planet has been around for ~4.5 billion years, & will survive anything we puny humans can throw at it. "Saving the planet" is a shibboleth that is mostly about virtue-signalling rather than actual problem solving. Costs matter more than anything else. If you can discover an energy source that is cheaper & more reliable than the best we have now, then you have a winner. Expensive energy sources {solar + big storage batteries, for instance} will break the bank if we're not careful. I live in British Columbia, Canada, where we are blessed, like Norway, with enormous hydro-electric resources which can easily buffer the intermittent output of solar & wind sources. But our hydro energy is sufficiently inexpensive that no sane person here would invest their money in solar/wind/geothermal when the payback period is likely to exceed 20 years. Different strokes for different folks...
@@anydaynow01 shakers could do it if it's worth it - a motor with an unbalanced load.
Erm.You factored in a 40 year lifecycle for Nuclear …… except the new plants being built in Europe are aiming for 60 years….that’s a huge difference.Put that into your calculations and you’ll get a more reasonable answer.
Addendums
Nuclear base loads reduce the need for fossil fuelled ( gas) power stations.This too should be factored in.
They also don't factor in constant replacement of solar panels and wind turbines.
She did acknowledge that they didn't include the storage of her energy.
This was so well explained! thanks so much, keep this content up!
Hi Rosie!
Thanks for another interesting video on energy cost.
It's clear that nuclear is no way near price competitive.
But there is another reason why nuclear is a dead end.
Nuclear produces around 4% of the globally produced electricity and the currently known, economical exploitable, uranium ore reserves are good to sustain that production for about 100 years. Now imagine that the part of nuclear in the global energy production could somehow be enlarged in an competitive way to, let's say, 40%, then the available, economically exploitable, reserves would be enough for only one decade. Nobody is going to invest in nuclear power plants which ought to last 40 years, when there is only fuel for 10 years available.
I wonder if the new-ish small reactors are better.
There is enough fuel, 100 years is extrapolated from currently mined reserves (not all available) and without considering breeder reactors... Actually there is enough nuclear fuel for not thousands but milions of years counting Thorium.
@@samuelgomola9097 Stop spreading falsities.
According to the US Gov Energy site, the global, economical exploitable, uranium ore reserves are good to sustain the current electricity production (400 GWe or 4%-5% of the global electrical energy produced) for about 100 years.These numbers are confirmed by the world nuclear association (which represents the global nuclear industry).
Nobody with half a brain is (still) taking breeder reactors serious. The last (semi-) commercially operated plant in Japan was closed in 2010. Furthermore, the development of the tech has been stopped because of the very poor yields that were achieved at astronomical costs and therefore with a negative ROI.
Thorium: aha another dead end, pie in the sky, technology, please stop the spread of these nonsense.
Please refrain from any response that is not funded in facts and logic.
Is the cost of the emitted CO2 included in the fuel cost? If so, what cost is assumed? Are the cost for disposal of high radioactive waste included in the cost for nuclear power? If so, what cost are assumed?
Rosie stated that GHG emissions weren't included and that could be considered a subsidy. Indeed a major one I would say.
@@CraigFryer sorry did not catch that. do you have a time stamp.
I think you make an excellent point.
However, I suppose that part of the point of this video is to illustrate the point that even without treating environmental damage as a “freebie” that renewable energy is still competitive.
To what extent, however, ought also to be enhanced (or mitigated) with respect to longer term effects/risks. Such are not so easily measured or even (in many cases) estimated.
Anyway, the less CO2 we produce the better, but a rational debate about how to optimise such reduction is far better than other, more excited, hand waving alternatives.
@@aweescotsdog8358 That rational debate includes the question for the price we put on the emissions of CO2.
I was thinking the cost of carbon capture and storage should be added to the coal and natural gas energy options.
Really nice addition to last video, thank you.
As a civil engineer I'm curious of offshore wind in the near future. That Lazard specifies as median $84/MWh, but we are seeing a fast pace technology breakthrough with a few 15MW offshore windmills and capacity factors at 60%, tested now and in production 2024, V236 or Halliade X for example. Will we see lower LCOE for offshore wind and how does it depend on depth and distance from shore?
Here in Sweden we have a lot of requests (>300TWh) to build offshore wind in our shallow seas because of rising power demand with for example Hybrit.
Doubled power demand can basically be met by lots of wind and solar (with our.70TWh hydro as backup).. or the conservative nuclear dreams..
The right-wing government that won the election did so on a subsidiary of nuclear power and nimby-hate of windpower. I fear that this will cost Sweden a lot.
I will be doing future videos on offshore wind where we can go into that in depth. But I'll try to make time for a short section on offshore wind in this upcoming livestream.
I also keep hearing from Swedes concerned about the outcome of the recent election. I am thinking I ought to get a couple of Svenske on a show to discuss that. What I'm hearing sounds like a real shame. I spent a lot of time working on projects in northern Sweden until a few years ago and was so impressed by how you were managing the opportunities of the energy transition there. Wishing Australia would follow your lead! So it will be a huge waste if that all stops now.
And I gotta get back to Sweden soon. I miss it 😊
It's funny how power generation has become politicized when common sense should prevail. Certain areas will benefit from different forms of power production, trying to shoehorn the solution that gives people a warm fuzzy into every situation will just lead to problems in the long run.
Why not both nuclear and wind? Not enough budget for both, or just political considerations?
60% LF for any wind farm is extraordinary - can you please provide a reference?
Really clear and easy to grasp. Many thanks!
Hello Rosie! Excellent video, well explained to the non specialist!
I am an engineer myself (chemical), involved in bio-sourced chemistry AND renewable energies. So, I have a great professional, as well as personal interest in the matter.
I am also a great Tesla fan, and listened to Elon Musk saying that 200 tWh of worldwide storage capacity was necessary for a 100% renewable energy transition; storage to be installed over 20 years, i.e. 10 tWh a year on average. But, as you alluded to yourself in that video, the installation of that storage capacity is very much tail-ended. He also said that Tesla was planning to produce 3 tWh/year of storage capacity, roughly 1/3 geared towards their EV production, and 2/3 towards grid balancing (my calculation). It made me super optimistic for Tesla's future energy business.
HOWEVER, I recently read a few articles on the potential for pumped hydro storage (I give you two links below). Being Swiss, I am well aware of that technology (one of the largest such installation in Switzerland is even partially on the territory of my native alpine village), but I was under the impression that the capacity potential of that storage technology was very limited by site availability. But, those papers are giving a totally different message: there is enough such sites to cover the worldwide requirement for electricity 100 times over! Only the best 1% of possible sites have to be developed to reach the roughly 200 tWh of capacity needs (yes, they came with an estimation of 18-20 GWh of capacity per million inhabitants, a number almost identical to the one of Elon!). Furthermore, pumped storage offers presently the lowest cost of storage for the next two decades (battery storage costs will catch up with time as the two technologies are on very different cost reduction curves), as well as the possibility to economically store energy over much longer periods (weeks and months, rather then hours or a couple of days). They also state how much pumped hydro and batteriy storage are complimentary of each others. I was impressed by that revelation!
One more thing: one of the paper in reference below estimates the LCOE of pumped-hydro stored energy at $16-60/MWh, depending on the quality of the sites, and the earth-moving costs in the concerned countries . Assuming only 1/3 of the generated power has to be stored, while 2/3 is used directly, it makes the cost of pumped-hydro storage, on top of the generation costs, a most acceptable $5-20 per MWh!
If you haven't already done so, you should look into that!
PS: SORRY ROSIE, I FOUND OUT, AFTER WRITING THIS COMMENT, THAT YOU HAVE ALREADY COVERED THE TOPIC, AND EVEN KNEW ABOUT THE SOURCES I CITED. GOOD JOB, KUDOS!
Two references among others: (1) a paper from the journal Nature( www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-14555-y ),
(2) a paper available on the well-known site Sciencedirect (www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542435120305596)
I really want to see two axis floating solar on water reservoirs like lake Mead and lake Powell. This would greatly reduce evaporation and be perfectly located to connect to the grid. There are hydraulic and pneumatic solar tilt control systems that could work for this concept. Big groups of panels could be formed into a lily pad shape and rotated to get the directional axis control. I think it's been tested somewhere.
Great video.. What about pollution clean up costs of operation, costs of nuclear waste storage, nuclear decommission costs etc (and who pays for it)?
Nuclear waste in the US is stored on site at the power plant. According to the World Nuclear Association, power plant operators pay into a fund at plant construction which pays for the decommissioning. Currently enough has been paid into the fund to decommission 2/3 of the US fleet.
Good question. In addition to nuclear storage and decommissioning, is the small question of (irony) ‘nuclear waste disposal.’ Getting rid of the stuff… permanently. Nuclear waste disposal is NEVER factored into the price of nuclear power. The reason? Because it fantastically expensive to build the long-term deep geological repositories. There is one facility recently completed in Finland for commercial waste, and that is it. The US has a facility for their military waste. Nothing else exists in the world. Think of all that nuclear waste sitting in pools in nuclear power plants around the world (such as Fukushima), waiting for someone to do something about it. Once a long-term deep geological repository is constructed and the waste is disposed therein, the question is, how much will it cost to maintain and safeguard the waste (approximately until hell freezes over) and who will pay?
The idea of racing cars is absolutely brilliant for making things understandable.
Thanks for putting this together. It was very helpful. FYI I was recommended to watch your video earlier today by Dave at Just Have a Think in his latest post.
Many Thanks Rosie, excellent as ever. I may have missed it but is there any costing for ‘the polluter paying’ relating particularly to lifetime CO2 load of different generators? On assumption that the goal is to keep to 1.5C increase in global temperature v pre industrialisation. Regards Richard
Seasonal changes: in Europe there is huge weather difference between December and July, and that means we need long-term storage for solar energy (months).
Storage is not the only solution. You have also overbuilding, interconnections and demand response. On EU-wide scale, wind and solar tend to be pretty well alternating.
I like seasonal thermal storage as you may be aware since I am constantly talking about it! I'm not sure if we can fit that in to this livestream, but next time I do a video on 100% renewable grids would be a good time to talk about that in more depth, and see what solutions countries are actually planning on.
The wind is generally a lot stronger in winter though, so that compensates for lower solar production
It will also be interesting to see how climate change will affect power production, though that changes slow enough where any reduced capacity factory may be able to be kept up with by overbuilding. I just wonder who is going to clear all those panels after a blizzard when people need heat the most, I guess that is when wind will take up the slack in the grid until the snow melts.
Here in the UK both demand and wind generation are higher in Winter, we still have periods of lighter winds that can persist - we had a week of low wind generation back in December, so alternative sources are still required. I think we can probably escape the need for season storage, first thing to focus on will be having enough storage to avoid the need for expensive gas peaker plants, then we can start working towards making days of storage economically viable.
Thanks for another interesting video, Rosie! 😊
Thanks for watching!
In the UK, we had 63GW, installed coal didn't need to build any more power stations,. But the government dynamited all but three stations. Most coal power stations were built in the 1960s and would have lasted for another 40 years, As for transmission, most of the wind turbines are built in Windy Scotland and there is insufficient capacity in the interconnectors to transmit the electric energy to England. This results in Constraint payments of £100s of millions being paid for not generating.
Forty years is the minimum for nuclear plants, a lot are capable of having their license renewed for twenty and forty more years. Our company has a forty year extension on one plant and is having the rest of the plants in the fleet go through license renewals also, so eighty years is more like the lifetime of a plant baring market constraints (cheap but short lived combined cycle plants). Then there are the SMRs but the real numbers for those won't be available for quite some time. They will offer even cheaper licensing, construction, operational, maintenance and insurance costs.
But for the cost of a few things often not included
Waste disposal and cleanup £b's
Lack of full insurance £b's tax payers insurance like the banks get!
Military defence from 9/11 event £m's
Fission is a dead end technology. No way it can provide as much power as wind and solar.
@@andyhodchild8 Those are all accounted for, at least in the US.
Glad to see this experiment get expanded. Though a bit sad you left out hydro, oil, and bioenergy. Also, in the US nuclear is nearly 20% while hydro is some 6 to 8%.
Hydro isn't really applicable as every project is very different and there are very few locations where it would be considered suitable to build a dam specifically for hydro. Of course climate change is undermining the reliability of existing hydro projects.
What sort of bioenergy projects were you thinking about? Many countries or regions are now phasing out the use of wood "waste" as it frequently wasn't waste and wasn't truly renewable.
@Craig Fryer considering that hydropower makes up over 15% of the global electricity supply it seems necessary to make the effort to keep it in the discussion. Bioenergy is a very diverse sort of energy family it's true, between wood, waste, biogas from sanitary landfills, biogas from other sources, biodeisel, Hydrothermal carbonization, and more... either way, perhaps an average... it is probably the trickiest. Still, would have liked to see it.
geothermal isn't really applicable as every project is very different and there are very few locations where it would be considered suitable.... to a far less, degree than hydro....
but to be fair most large hydro sites in developed countries have already been exploited.... And a line had to be drawn in terms of what was going to include and what wasn't....
@N C she applied it just fine here as an average for the old conventional tech. It's crucial to recognize that the old conventional geothermal is still utilized in less than 10% of the available sites, so the growth here needs to be discussed. Then we have modern EGS enhanced geothermal systems which vastly expand the range of geothermal viable site, though I'm unsure if this was factored into her average figures (to say nothing of current developing Advanced geothermal systems which expand it even further than that, potentially nearly everywhere).
Hydrothermal has still not been built out in the developing world. Indeed, modern hydro declared we can still expand hydropower another 50% of where it is today without vast environmental degredation.
Bioenergy is complex though as listed above and probably the hardest to calculate because it covers so many varied niche systems.
@@gehrigornelas6317 My point with hydro is that most hydro generation projects in developed economies were developed a long time ago. There will be very few new hydro projects in developed economies due to the environmental impact.
Locations like South Australia have no suitable sites for new pure hydro generation. Even Pumped Hydro Storage doesn't seem to be viable in that location. I mention South Australia as it is a large grid which obtains about 70% of its energy from wind and solar.
Really worthwhile. Thank you
Thank you for doing what you do with those you do it with.
I worked as a policy wonk in this field for ~35 y. I was expecting to yell at my screen during your presentation but instead I found myself nodding a lot! :-) Brava!
But I think the worst problem with your modified LCOEs is that you used actual CAPACITY factors, when the more meaningful metric is CAPABILITY factor. E.g., many flexible ("dispatchable") generators are intentionally placed low in the stacking order and shut down when other GENERATORS (with lower INCREMENTAL costs) are available. That includes many coal and gas generators, some hydroelectric stations, virtually no nuclear stations, and NO wind or solar generators. Those flexible generators, which can sit idle when the grid has lots of wind and sun and the Spring freshet is spinning the hydro generators, are MUCH MORE valuable per MWh than the inflexible generators like wind and solar and nuclear and run-of-the-river HYDRO. Any metric that penalizes them for not generating when they are held in reserve is nonsense.
Here in Ontario, the designers and builders of hydroelectric stations have often spent more than twice as much to build a flexible "peaking" hydro station instead of a baseload run-of-the-river station with the SAME energy (MWh) output. Comparing the two on the basis of LCOEs, or averaging the two into one "hydroelectric" category, generates meaningless nonsense.
Your explanation of why nuclear plants need batteries just as wind and solar generators do, got you close to solving this riddle. So did your explanation of why simple cycle gas plants are better than more efficient combined-cycle gas plants in a real-world grid that needs flexibility.
The desirability of storage technologies like pumped storage, which combines high capital cost with disappointing turnaround efficiency (often ~50%, including here near Niagara Falls) gives another clue to the enormous value of dispatchability - a value that may be hard to calculate accurately, but is clearly higher than LCOE fans understand, and rises sharply as the proportion of intermittent and/or "take or pay" baseload rises on the grid.
I believe that a good rule of thumb is that any study that finds that solar electricity is the most cost-effective addition to the grid, even at 90% penetration, is not credible.
Most of the analysis that I have seen from utilities discount generation modes as more of that particular mode is placed online to address the different dispatchability characteristics. One thing that I haven't seen is the way the need of base load generation may change in importance as more storage and time of use arbitrage is brought online. I am interested in learning more about how we should be adjusting historical base load strategy as, for example, more EVs with V2G come online and make both the demand and supply of electricity less dependent on fixed demands and supplies. California is providing an early case study of how just a few households with local supply and storage can dramatically change historical use and generation patterns.
@@krakken- Do you have a link to documentation of that "early case study"? Last I heard, California was asking BEV owners NOT to plug in overnight for fear of crashing the grid while the sun was down.
great insights, thanks !
especially true for solar/wind, they quickly become impractical around 50% share let alone a hypothetical 90%
Norm, I am very curious as to why pumped storage is 50% efficient...is that because of the energy needed to pump water up hill and physical losses on the way back down?
Also curious why flexible generators that sit idle are much more valuable than wind and solar. You have presented both in a believable tone so I am genuinely interested in your responses to my questions. Thanks
@@richardlangley90, I don't know WHY the large (1600MW) pumped storage station at Sir Adam Beck (Niagara Falls, ON), but I was a consultant in at least two rate hearings before the Ontario Energy Board when the details, costs, and benefits of the station's operations were discussed at length by experts under oath. My memory is a bit fuzzy on whether the turnaround efficiency was 49% or 51%. I think it was the latter, but I wouldn't bet much on it.
Given the high value of the station's output in a grid troubled by significant quantities of UBG (Unallocated Baseload Generation), I think it's pretty clear that OPG would be working feverishly to improve that efficiency if they could.
RethinkX say that worst case anywhere on the planet, you need to cover about 4,5 days of production from a solar/wind mix to be able to fully rely on renewables. Part of the calculus is the overcapacity (factor of 2-3 which they call superpower) they use in their models.
Would be interesting to see how that would turn out financially in your model - and yes, the Australia example will surely 'outshine' that worst case. Thanks for the great work !
Check out the livestream I did with David Osmond on a 99% renewable grid, he talks about a lot of that!
@@EngineeringwithRosie Thanks Rosie, I just did. Fascinating stuff and I now wish I lived in Australia 🙂
I asked ChatGPT about it for The Netherlands (we have a lot of wind and no hydro to speak of, solar is feasible too):
'how long would the Netherlands need to buffer power when running for 100 % renewable energy year round ? use a mix of 60 % wind and 40 % solar'
CGPT: It is difficult to provide an exact answer as it depends on several factors such as weather conditions, the size and capacity of the wind and solar power plants, and the demand for energy. However, some estimates suggest that the Netherlands would need to buffer power for several hours to a few days per year to ensure a steady supply of renewable energy. This is because wind and solar energy are dependent on weather conditions, and there may be periods of low wind and low sunlight that would need to be compensated for by stored energy. Additionally, the mix of 60% wind and 40% solar would also affect the duration of power buffering required.
@@justforthehackofit There is one way to minimize the requirement for stored power that is not often mentioned: organized voluntary curtailment. Industries that are particularly voracious in power, BUT which can wind down operations rapidly (I shall mention many electrochemical processes as a prime example... I work in the field) would be paid (are paid, as the concept is already being implemented... let's rather say piloted) to reduce their consumption to an agreed-upon level if required. These industries are generally paid a flat yearly fee per MW of curtailment for just volunteering in the program, and a variable fee for all the MWh they would have to have curtail.
Such a system is cheaper than batteries, and not limited in time, should windless days in the middle of a harsh winter last longer than planned.
@@st-ex8506 Who says that those industries can not make their own energy? Here in Austria they very much plan for that. Some even have started generating their own energy decades ago. Most are just starting to use the natural ressources without burning them in their furnaces or cars. And yes, some industries will move elsewhere. To China or India where energy ist still cheap. Farethewell dear BASF. Never wanted you Nazi Collaborators around.
@@wolfgangpreier9160 Such industries can indeed produce their own energy... provided they are located accordingly. If your factory is in Iowa, no problem getting your own, cheap renewable power. It may be more difficult if you are historically located in the industrial suburbs of a European city!
That is part of the mission of the company I co-founded to find the most beneficial solutions to such dilemma.
Moving to another country because energy is "still cheap" there is a very short-sighted strategy. The situation may reverse one year over the other.
Finally, don't mix Nazis in an issue that has nothing to do with them... especially when Austrian!
Thanks Rosie, that's great information.
Thanks for your work. Helping me to learn about this stuff. Thumbs up and subscribed.
Welcome aboard!
@@EngineeringwithRosie Thank you!
Unfortunately, Nuclear Power has been made intentionally expensive.
Each has been made like a swiss watch, individual and custom, and there's been innovations for 50+ years that could have maintained safety and reduced cost.
Mass production of smaller, standardised or different technology of nuclear fission reactors still won't significantly reduce the costs of nuclear fission energy. Your suggestions about safety and reduced costs have been made for over 50 years, but design and operational errors still occurred at Fukushima. The design issues should have been seen in Japan as they had excellent written records of tsunami and earthquakes going back almost 1,000 years. Not to mention the very obvious geology in the region, yet cost pressures meant these issues were overlooked.
@@CraigFryer the technology has been there but not implemented. Fukushima doesn't prove anything
Standardized designs and failsafes, like with some of the Molton salt reactors, passive safety devices.
Fukushima used a much older design method using custom parts and required active cooling.
My whole life I've read about 4th and 5th generation reactors which would have been safer and more useful. There would have been an established supply chain, prices would have come down significantly.
Nuclear still.has fewer deaths and less poor health outcomes per megawatt compared to any other power generation type.
@@philipvecchio3292 The fundamental problem with nuclear fission is the failure of those designing, building, operating and regulating the systems. The technology used in Fukushima was not the problem. The problem was the fundamental design of the plant, then the failure of the operators to act in time to mitigate the failed systems and then the regulator to ensure that the operator was requesting assistance and provide additional contingencies.
@@CraigFryer That's always likely to happen when Nuclear is Fascist I'm stead of Free Market. The State wants to control Nuclear so tight that there's no innovations towards fail safes.
It's what's wrong with running Nuclear as a Socialist public Good rather than a market product.
Fantastic as always. Living in the uk, I’m curious what the optimal mix will end up being. Overcast wet weather a lot of the time, lots of off-shore wind would favour wind turbines, but is that correct? What about other countries? What about global export of Australia’s solar energy to the rest of the world? Fascinating stuff. 🇬🇧
Wind, nuclear, solar, falling back to gas when the weather's not favourable. Considerable energy storage may be needed in the future (grid-connected EVs maybe?). Run a search for 'grid iamkate' for a nice overview of the current mix.
I guess another tool is overbuilding wind and solar and using it for something you can turn off. Aluminium manufacturing, Hydrogen production etc. Getting rid of the last gas peaker plants will be difficult, because of the 2 or 3 weeks a year when there is no wind in the winter.
There are several different plans to generate lots of solar in Australia and export the excess power. The two biggest ones are a huge solar farm in the northern territory exporting to Singapore via Indonesia using a subsea HVDC cable, and a similar generation plan in Western Australia but hooked up to big electrolysers and exporting hydrogen, mostly to Japan.
Yes, an optimal UK grid has a lot more wind than solar in order to meet winter demand. I did see a study a few years ago, which came to some definite conclusions on the ratio, but can't remember where, nor find it again. High latitude countries are tricky because we get loads of solar in the summer but very little in winter, when the heating loads are large. It was something like 8:1 wind:solar. Ideally you'd just fix all the houses, so the heating load was tiny (
@@xxwookey by the heating load being less than 3kW, do you mean 3kW average or 3kWhr/day?
I guess you mean kWhr as our 40s ex council semi was averaging about 2.3kW in the cold snap including electricity and working from home with machine tools.
Thank you for this really interesting video!
Thanks Rosie, a really good video.
Using the same financing cost of 7.7% for all tech seems flawed. Securing FF finance is getting harder - both due to lenders withdrawing from such financing for PR reasons and because even those who will lend now have to build in assumptions that that climate legislation will curtail running hours or strand FF assets in their working lifetime.
Lenders are growing hesitant to finance fossil fuel or nuclear plants for a number of reasons: 1) the cost of fossil fuels is exploding, making the plants uncompetitive with existing renewables 2) nuclear plants worldwide are experiencing massive cost overruns (the new French plants are a billion Euros over-budget each...and growing) and 3) the cost of renewables - and battery storage - continues to plummet, meaning there's some likelihood that most new nuclear and fossil fuel plants will never be able to pay off the loans in their (likely shortened) operational lifetimes.
Thanks for this, my main concern is the storage assumptions, the CSIRO report section 5.2 provides an uncheckable overview of the assumptions. They simply state that they need 20% to 30% of the capacity in KW. The issue is not just the maximum output rating but the scale of the storage and what happens when there is a long drop out. What is the minimum reliability requirement for the AUZ grid? In the UK I think it is 99.9995% or something silly (aka a very small number of drop outs a decade). With wind that can mean a daft amount of storage to make the requirment when the wind really drops. Would love to hear how they got such low storage numbers. Thanks again.
Good point, and we can discuss this in the livestream. My understanding is that they maintain the current reliability standard. I don't know what they is, so I will dig it up ahead of the livestream. Note that the GenCost report doesn't calculate for a 100% variable renewable grid, so they don't need to worry about those very rare, very extreme weather events. Those can still be handled by fossil fuels.
Read RethinkX Energy Report, they address this issue, and simulate it with real-world historic data for several regions (all US though).
Germany has a total gas reserve of 220 TWh. If you keep the energy inefficient gas power plants and heaters the demand for reserves must include transportation and all other energy generation. Lets say 400 TWh of reserves for the „Dunkelflaute“ (i love that word).
But if you replace all heating with heat pumps and transportation with EVs you can remove nearly all refineries and reduce the energy consumption for the „Dunkelflaute“ to less then 100 TWh. How do you store that amount? P2G is one way but very expensive - i calculate with about 25 cent/kWh (today). Battery storage would cost around 8 cent/kWh if bought from Tesla, today.
If the germans make their own battery cell factories they could do it for 4-6 cent/kWh. I am sure someone will tell me thats not possible. Then i say we have to make it possible or stay dependent on Saudi slavers, Russian mass murderers and Qatari Mafiosi.
100 TWh net capacity means at least 250 TWh gross capacity or about 30-40 TWh new battery cells each year. Again i am hearing „impossible“! My answer: We have no alternatives.
@@wolfgangpreier9160 How much of these gas storage can be replaced with renewable natural gas? If the RNG industry is subsidized and a most of agricultural waste (plant and animal), municipal waste (food and sanitation), landfill gas, and actual wood waste from saw mills (not clear cutting trees for just fuel, farmed or otherwise) there will be plenty of RNG to supplement NG from reputable sources for lean times. Of course transport of such waste should be with low and zero emission vehicles.
@@EngineeringwithRosie in which case maintenance of those gas plants is also an ongoing cost of that renewables grid, a not insignificant one I'd guess given how Texas operators didn't want to maintain their plants even while running. Certain industries need completely reliable power, so if that's not a given then there's going to be some minor economic damage too. Possible those could all move near existing nuclear and hydro plants I suppose, but that is a substantial cost to move and also to the localities they'd be leaving.
Thanks so much it’s so hard to get this information in an easy to understand format
Very nice presentation, the energy form race is so understandable for everyone.
Sorry Rose but your wrong
Actually, *you're wrong
rosie, this video is great, excellent job!
Glad you liked it!!
Very well explained analysis. thanks!
I enjoy many of your videos, but sorry to be contrary, even though I am not an energy expert, it does not take deep thinking to understand that comparing the LCOE of unreliable, non dispatchable renewable electricity generation to that of reliable and dispatchable forms is meaningless if you do not include the full cost of back up to make wind and solar 24 hrs reliable over the long term. Yes I am aware that the generation industry uses LCOE, but the real world does not care and real world costs demonstrate adding unreliable renewables increases not only the cost of electricity but increases the unreliability of the supply. Just ask the 246 to 702 Texans who died during their 2021 winter blackout because they spent billions adding unreliable renewables without ensuring reliable backup. And this -10oC temperatures in Texas versus where I live in Alberta, Canada at -40oC and we did not see the least blimp in electricity generation because we primarily use natural gas and coal; our substantial wind and solar resources produced essentially no electrify during this time, just like Texas - because it was cold and cloudy with snow falling. And the Texas disaster resulted in an estimated $200B in infrastructure damage. I am sure Texans were happy that their LCOE was lower than Albertans!
I would be interested if you can find a single jurisdiction in the world that has seen their electricity prices fall as they add wind and solar? Europe, which has some of the highest unreliable renewable generation penetration in the world, also has the highest electricity prices in the world - Denmark, Germany, Spain, UK (Australia is in that category as well). Exceptions are Sweden and France which have much lower electricity costs but they use nuclear and hydro (in the case of Sweden)
In my local in Canada, the generator offers to charge me more for supposedly "green" electrons they cannot separate from the non green electrons on the grid, and yet they cannot even guarantee.thar wind and solar electricity are actually being generated at any given time!
Germany has their "Dunkelflaute" named for the several weeks of dark, windless and cold weather they get every winter. Their studies indicate they need from about 15 to 30 days of backup electricity storage for wind and solar to get through this time of year. No such back up is required for coal, gas or nuclear.
Try operating a hospital or any manufacturing business on just unreliable renewable! The unreliable, non dispatchable renewables cannot power modern society without at least 100% backup. If back up is from batteries, then as in Germany's Dunkelflaute, one needs to massively overbuild the renewable capacity to charge the storage system prior to this period, and ensure massive battery storage capacity.
This is one of the better descriptions of real life adaptations I have seen. Thank you. I live in a state in the US where wind energy produced is an equivalent to 66% of our usage (the wording is key), but my statement from my utility after much digging through it comes up with about 32% of my electricity is from wind. As the percentage of my bill attributed to wind has increased so have my rates. There are many complicating factors in real world conditions and no simple analysis is going unravel them all.
Just as a matter of fact, renewables performed better during the Texas winter failure than fossil fuels.If the Texas grid had no renewables and more fossil fuels, more people would have died.
It's very complicated and needs to be done in a location specific way. I included the GenCost report which addresses those issues for the Australian grid. I don't know if there is something similar for other locations. If there is, it's not easy to find because I did try.
@@SocialDownclimber as I said, you need to cost in reliable backup supply for unreliable renewables. The numbers I have seen are that Texas spent between $55B and $66B building up renewables, primarily wind. When the cold weather came in, solar essentially went to zero because the panels were covered in snow. Wind dropped to 17% of capacity. So you can do one of three things to account for the lack of wind energy when you need it most during a freezing cold storm - 1) over build to 6 times the wind capacity - 6 x $55B = $330B - or ensure the rest of the grid can act as a reliable backup for the 83% "missing" wind, and in the case of Texas that would have meant spending another $200 to $400M to winterize the natural gas system which froze in because it was not winterized. Remember me here in Canada; Texas's minus 10 celsius is a typical winter day - not a storm - we have no issues operating any of our electricity generating systems at such temperatures because we reliablabke operate them at far lower temperatures (-40oC is common) and we understand they always need to be winterized. Option 3 is to have spent far less $ adding slightly more of the reliable, dispatchable forms of electricity generation and ensuring they were winterized just like we do all the time in Canada. It should be obvious to one and all - when there is no wind, there is no wind generated electricity and the reliable backup electricity system much kick in to make up for it. If you do not spend the $ for at least 100% reliable backup and keep it in idle mode, ready to step in when bad weather hits, then you will get blackouts just like in Texas.
@@EngineeringwithRosie I do not see it as complicated. There is nowhere on planet earth where you will get name plate capacity for wind and solar all the time, in fact it is pretty rare in most places. Therefore the vast majority of wind or solar based renewable electricity system must have a reliable backup,equivalent to the capacity of the wind and/or solar and it must be designed for the worst case scenario for that local - which for many places will be zero wind and solar - otherwise at some point you will with certainty get a blackout because there will always be times everywhere where there is substantially less wind and solar than name plate capacity, and in most locals there will times, rare or otherwise, when there is essentially no wind or solar. These are weather dependent systems. We moved away from them a 100 years ago because they are unreliable, and even though hydrocarbons have allowed these systems to be engineered better, they still remain weather dependent, unreliable and non dispatchable systems.
Need To include reliability otherwise this is B.S.
Excellent video, Rosie.
Excellent work, thank you. I recently watched a Tony Seba video,where he comments that most economic analyst make the mistake of assuming full capacity for the life of the plant, nuclear or coal while solar, wind and battery costs drop and their capacity increases. The mainstream analyst don’t seem to see the s curve in renewables.
Thanks for this video👍🏼
good stuff. One thing that would be good to mix in would be the daily fluctuation in cost. you touched on in it for gas turbine vs combined cycle. But this is the critical thing that drives battery adoption at an individual consumer level. And also makes the economics of grid scale storage (like pumped storage ).
Thanks for another fact filled video. Sitting in the Brisbane airport right now having spent the last 16 days in your wonderful country. Thanks for including geothermal. Unfortunately it was limited to previous versions of geothermal. Would love to see numbers which include Eavor 3rd generation technology. Also transmission lines using carbon fiber are up to 30% more efficient.
With renewables you either need considerably more capacity, transmission, storage, or a combination to ensure 24/7/365 availability. That is the complex question especially when the costs are changing so rapidly and these facilities last so long.
Although it would be very complex, I would like to see the calculations include the cost of negative externalities. What do a warming planet, droughts, fires, floods, loss of agriculture, climate migration cost to humans and to the natural world? It is heartening to see that even without these costs, renewables come out ahead. Investors of fossil fuel generation should also consider the problem of stranded assets when they invest in a plant that expect a certain price of energy, but renewable competition energy prices keep falling.
From GenCost 2022/23 Appendix Table B.8
Generator Life(years) Capacity factor
Black coal 30 60-80%
Onshore wind 25 35-44%
1. Typical lifetimes for coal plants are 40-50 years (NOT 30)
2. A coal generator which is operating in baseload mode (without restraint) typically has a 90% capacity factor (NOT 60-80%)
3. Onshore wind farms typically have lasted about 20 years before being decommissioned. (NOT 25 years)
4. The average capacity factor of Australian windfarms is 30-35% (ANERO, WIKI) (NOT 35-44%)
So all 4 specifications are biased to make wind look better.
Great stuff. Can you include dismantling and clean up/storage costs to your extensive assumptions?
Just came back to this video when I showed it to some friends. Rosie, this is great information, and I think this could be a huge opportunity for you and for green energy in general. Team up with Fully Charged and turn this race into a big, annual event/celebration/educational opportunity, with pre race hype, predictions, green energy talks and conferences, etc. Leave the staging and hype to the Everything Electric folks, they enjoy that. You can then concentrate on staying in your serious and professional engineering wheelhouse, analyzing and presenting the economic and technical aspects of the race.
Rosie, the value in this annual race would come from you and your professionalism and technical expertise. You could also add home heating (gas ranges, home and water heaters v electric), and EVs v. ICE v. Hybrid vehicles! This would be huge!
Very informative video, keep it up.
Can you add your calculation
1. the cost for by products during the operation (nuclear)
2. recycling cost after the end of the life (solar and wind),
There is a University that made a video back in 2018 about the MISO power grid (spanning several states in the middle of America). Their conclusion is that with a mixture of wind and solar power, and some batteries, they can meet 95% renewable power needs. By adding in 5% from other sources, they can reduce the amount of solar and wind power by a few billion dollars. That 5% can come from hydropower too. I don't think they thought about the hydropower available in America. In Canada, they do have a lot more hydropower.
Thanks for the update from your first comparison. Two things. One, and this is a can of worms, is factoring in the health costs associated with burning coal and gas. It is a real cost, even if not direct- but the savings in better health will still be real dollars saved by consumers. Second, and this is probably premature- for nuclear see where, potentially, Thorium molten salt reactors would fall in this race- though it may take a lot more assumptions for that scenario.
I live on a boat.
I purchased old solar panels for $20 each.
My wind generator cost $650.
The BIG cost is batteries.
I started with a few $200 batteries.
Recently I purchased 6 2volt batteries that store 500 amp hours. Connected they provide 500 AH x 12 volts
What interests me is the total system cost comparisons. Ie If we had only solar we would need storage to carry us through the evening peak and night + a cost of resilience (backups for failures, downtime). If nuclear we'd still need storage etc + cost of resilience.
The car race was a great visual aid!😊
Thanks! That was John's idea 😊
An expense of oil and gas which is very difficult to quantify, but possibly quite large, is their distorting effect on foreign policy decisions and military expense. The cost of empowering corrupt or dictatorial regimes is often mentioned but not reflected in the price of these fuels. Also not in the fuel price is the cost of environmental cleanup after spills, and of course the cost of climate change caused by greenhouse gasses, which is so expensive that it has become the main motivation for the energy transition that is under way.
Really interesting thanks. Can you look at offshore wind? Specifically in the North Sea?
this particular calculation is the Single best discussion Humans can have.
If you think Climate change is real , then the external threats to continuity also come into play, as the transmission method will suffer and drought might possibly affect the fixed structures that rely on it.
Extreme winds also come into play when dealing with transmission and panels, so lets not forget snow .
Jeeze Rosie,..it's hard.
I am grateful for your efforts to explore Our options.
I will use and Source your efforts for my campaign for Canadians to move successfully into the 21stCentury.
In Sweden it is more and more obvious that most newly added consumption is very very flexible. And that gels very well with adding more renewables. Now keeping old generators online forever will not work, but it does afford a very smooth transition.
I'm optimistic about thermal storage. Heating up a big pile of rocks is simple, can scale practically without limit, and should be cheap.
I'm also optimistic about the cost of solar and wind continuing to fall, to the point where the cost of energy itself is a small part of the cost of pretty much anything, even very energy-intensive things like turning bauxite into aluminum plus O2, or turning water and CO2 into hydrocarbon fuel plus O2.
its actually extremely inefficient and expensive everytime its been tried.
Merci Rosie, great explanation!
Thanks!
Great video , just have a think sent me here, well worth it.
I really wish we had better time of use pricing for electricity. This would encourage energy hungry industries to use energy when solar is strongest. And would cause them to move away from areas with low winter solar.
I'm curious, what industry has such targetable energy use? There are usually substantial costs to not running a production line at full capacity as much as possible for instance, AFAIK. Local storage at the plant would help but then that's just decentralized grid storage.
@szurketaltos2693 The easy ones are new technologies like crypto mining and electric school busses. But existing industries do a lot with heat below 400 degrees Celsius. Drying of wood, heating of buildings, heating of water, heating of houses, distillation, ect. Storing of Heat energy is easy. It is done locally by heating ceramic bricks then running air or water over those bricks to use the heat.
On the city level you can create a sand pit, the bigger the more efficient, surrounded in insulation, you heat up the sand with electric heaters, then you run a fluid through to use the heat later. That can be days later or months later. Many cities have hot water pipes run through out the city to Heat buildings. You can use that same heat for curing of wood, drying of materials.
Glass artists only work a couple hours each day with an active furnace. Once the energy prices are stable and low the engineers will start designing to take advantage of that.
@@ecospider5 - school buses may work but you probably can't charge them all that fast unless you build a ton of charging infra; glass makes sense; and crypto mining is both a huge waste of electricity and also something where the hardware costs are greater than energy costs, like with an assembly line.
I'd like you to reconsider the assumption of lifespan for nuclear. 40 years is outdated. It was a number that was made up when the industry first began but we are already seeing licences renewed to allow plants to operate upto 60-80 years. It's very likely that modern plants built today will last 100 years.
Awesome discussion of challenges facing the changes needed including health effects. It would be good to have more data on that such as calculations of respiratory ailments and cost of global warming. We have short term needs for the makeup with Gas, but transmission and storage are the stuff of debate, and especially we will need clear winners. Storage should see some innovation and price drops over time that make solar panels look slow.
Fair & informative analysis of LCoE and intermittent nature of PV & Wind. Without cheap efficient energy dense battery storage technologies PV & Wind alone will struggle on their own to generate enough on demand Grid Power in UK. Ideology is driving transition from simple linear Grid system to a complex De-centralised Renewable sourced Grid. Costs can only increase as intermittency must be mitigated(if yuo want 24/7 on demand power). How do we factor in land use, environmental impact(mining, visual, noise ...) to LCoE? Its complex! But bottom line is costs will escalate. 10 years ago in UK 15p per kWh Today 45p Fuel cost increase is a minor factor. Cost of Renewable infrastructure is the major component. Its has to be paid for and its the end consumer who foot the bill! Its about Power demand not necessarily energy pa For example in UK 25M cars If all EV then plugging in just 1M cars at one time will demand 60GW (60kW charger 1Hour) More than double existing Grid capacity of UK
I’d really like to see the production assumptions for the gas and solar given their intermittency
Rosie, thanks for the entertaining and enlightening videos. Some additional context may help.
It's usually cheaper to reduce load than to increase supply. LED lights and home insulation come to mind.
The sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow, but
the sun does shine when the wind isn't blowing and the wind does blow when the sun isn't shinning.
Add to that a Vehicle to Grid (V2G) Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) and a generator with renewable fuel.
Not all solar needs to be PV. Currently solar thermal is cheaper and quite useful in winter.
Not all storage needs to be electrical. With Vacuum Insulated Panels (VIP) thermal storage can be effective.
Simple Reflectors can be a cheap way to increase supply. Not in summer sunshine but in winter and possibly during cloudy days.
Batteries are also good for power line conditioning (voltage and frequency). Depending on the tariff.
Tariffs that pass the cost of peak power to consumers encourage creative solutions.
Self-sufficiency is also an issue. Ask Texans after the winter blackout. Solar + battery took off.
Rosie, could you rerun the race with calculations for 1. Cost of harm to human health, which is a few hundred billion dollars for coal. 2. Cost of water pollution, cleaning up coal ash and coal mines, capping abandoned gas wells, etc. 3. Cost of damage from global warming? Rosie, Thanks for your work, very informative and useful!
Another aspect is that solar and maybe wind/geothermal have a lot of potential at the endpoint instead of grid scale.
Slightly less economies of scale, but less land use, less transmission, more redundancy and less middle distributors in between the generation and load adding costs and profit margin. Also the smaller nature of endpoint generation means it is easier to finance, and spreads out future costs like decommissioning and refresh to be less impactful.
It would be quite easy to power cities with endpoint generation instead of grid scale generation, if the government and grid generation oligopoly would allow this loss of revenue for themselves. The just have less grid scale base load generators like nuclear and hydro, supplemented by gas peaker/battery.
If we could pass the obstructionist objections and loss of revenue for the huge corporations, then endpoint generation could become a large and very cost effective part of the plan.
Of course it is fairly easy to predict that all the small government, regulations hating parties will suddenly love regulating the crap out of endpoint generation making it impossible or impractical while loosening regulations on grid scale projects plus billions in subsidies to ensure the citizens never get cheap solutions. The wealth elite will keep getting all the money in this new energy market. But we can hope.
In the video, Rosie refers to gencost saying the extra costs to support wind and solar is $16-$28 but I couldn’t find any supporting information for this in the gencost report and it is quite easy to shoot this figure down in flames just doing a couple of simple calculations.
This is figure is supposed to be for the total cost of backup, storage, transmission lines and grid FCAS. In January 2022, the CSIRO also published another report saying the transition to renewables would be at least $500 billion which many think is a gross understatement.
If there is going to be no gas generator backup, then the cost of providing battery pumped hydro backup would probably be $500 billion alone.
Some estimate the cost of extra transmission lines to be $80 billion and as grid instability decreases (because of renewables) so do FCAS costs. SA has already spent about $500 million on FCAS hardware and the ongoing costs are skyrocketing and of course the consumer has to pay.
Living in Victoria two thing don't make sense to me:
1: If renewable electricity is cheaper to produce why is the retail price higher if a customer chooses 100% renewable power.
2: In the last federal election voters saw climate as a real issue (Green, Teal 'Independents' vote). I have asked many people who voted that way if they opt to pay the higher price for 100% renewable to help save us from doom. So far none of them have said yes.
I'd like to know the answer to #1 as well. The best explanation I can come up with is there's some funny business happening with power purchase agreements and/or intermittency.
For #2, I voted greens in Vic. I will pay more for power if it means transitioning to low carbon generation sooner, but I'm not going to shoulder that cost alone - we should all chip in and put up with some higher prices now to minimise the economic damage to come from climate change.
In pre Victorian London the middle class were affected by the illness of the poor. The answer, piped potable water and sewers. The original postion foul water pumps and sewage in the streets. Which was the cheaper, throwing shit out of the window or a network of underground pipes? Sometimes the best option is not the cheapest.