These are the plants in the best locations. That comes to an average solar insolation of 3.12 full sun hours/day. If you had 5 hours you should have closer to 20% capacity factor. I'll let you think about why they don't see 20%, and why the average capacity factor overall is 9.5%, and try to reconcile it yourself. When you get stumped, I'll gladly explain.
I know you get it, just being a little more 'real world' with the numbers because a lot of folks don't realize how short the solar insolation day can be.
An interesting thing about tracking panels. You might see more of them if battery systems came in to play. Right now, there is no incentive to pay for tracking systems, but rather plunk that extra money into more capacity because feed in tariffs and production credits don't care what time of day the power is produced, so why bother. Just put in more panels and have them producing during the peak of the day.
$2B for 250 MW isn't that bad if it has a high capacity factor. Of course, equipment lifetime and maintenance costs become a big deal. Reliability as well, if the plant shuts down it takes a long heat up period before it can produce electricity again. It also appears to require gas backup, how often is uncertain. The biggest question is lifetime of major costly components. If they last 5 years, not a good deal. If they last 15, then its probably a wash. All those things fall in the unproven category in my book. I like to have some good, real world data before I claim we have a solution.
No, you have proven you didn't understand solar insolation vs daylight hours, even though I clearly gave you a link that explained it at high school level.
And, you fail to also read well documented fact that German solar capacity factor is less than 10% overall, equivalent of about 2.4 full sun hours.
Hold on there buddy. Those molten salt plants are still developmental projects. Extremely expensive and by nature very inefficient. Reliability is a big unknown as well. Lets let them get a few years under their belts before we count on them. And then consider that not everywhere has the ideal conditions that are found in Arizona.
Average solar insolation is more like 5 sun-hours/day, not 8, in good locations. Much less in places like Germany. If you want autonomy on the shortest day of the year, you may have less than 2 full sun hours, which means 12 MW of capacity, but that doesn't account for a cloudy day, in which case you may get less than 1 full sun hour insolation.
So, bottom line is there are a lot of ways to look at the numbers, but to be truly autonomous with no grid support, you need a lot of capacity.
Yeah, its would be a nightmare and an added overhead cost to bill that way. They could simply publish the numbers of what the average cost per customer is, but if that number winds up being very low on a per person basis, then it might lead to apathy on the matter.
Yes, there are some challenges the industry is facing getting geared back up for construction after many years. The first few plants are going to be more costly. But, we've proven in the past that once the infrastructure is running, those problems are minimized. Not all the projects are suffering from such significant problems, which, from what I understand, in Finland, a more wrapped up on contracting and regulatory disputes than actual construction problems.
And, you must also consider that this report uses those higher end estimates for nuclear already, and even with that nuclear comes out low cost.
You need to be more clear when you say "better for transmission", because that is not really true. There are good reasons our transmission infrastructure is mostly AC. DC can work well in point to point transmission, but you have to still must convert to AC to connect multiple lines together to build a true network. HVDC makes sense when you need to move a lot of power from point A to point B, over a long distance, with no intermediate interconnections.
HVDC breakers are very expensive and don't last very long compare to AC switching equipment. This is due to the much higher current interrupting requirements and resultant arching from breaking a DC circuit. AC current is easily interrupted due to its cyclic nature, which is often considered an inherent safety element as well.
Equipment to convert to AC is also expensive and is required at every node.
Even with all those costs, nuclear comes out better. Yes, its a huge amount of money, but the amount of power generated is huge as well. The subsidies, on a per MWh basis are still lower than solar and wind.
Yes, I agree hyrdo comes out the lowest cost. As for scalability, hydro really is very limited, there just aren't that many places to build new hydro, so I often leave it out of the conversation. I should be more clear.
The study was performed by Ecofys, a renewable energy consultancy, and the cover sheet comes with disclaimers about its accuracy.
The actual report is more interesting than the articles that hype its findings. The core results are seen on page 36 (PDF Sheet 53).
You will find that there are a lot of assumptions. In particular, they place a great cost factor on "depletion of energy resources". That single adder more than doubles their cost for nuclear. The explanation is that this is the cost of using up our uranium supplies. This is on top of the cost of uranium, already included elsewhere. If you read enough youll find that they just made a big assumption and don't yet really have a basis for it. Its quite convenient for them to make an assumption that magically brings nuclear up to their derived cost for solar. Of course, even as assumed, that cost could be mostly eliminated by reprocessing. They also place a cost on "heat production".
There are no cost considerations included for reliability, intermittancy and variablility. Nor direct infrastructure costs associated by technology, such as the need to add new transmission lines to accommodate wind. In fact, that is probably the biggest cost factor left out of the wind result. Section 3.4 talks about trasmission infrastructure. I'll paraphrase.. "we ignored it because it was too hard to figure out". Another nice convenience for them.
Taken at face value, if I'm a renewables guy looking at this report, I'd have to question why more money goes in to solar than wind.
Camels and other domesticated animals have been bred for years to do the tasks they do. They are not going to be 'happy animals' if they can't perform those tasks. If left to PITA, they would be cruelly denied what they are born to do.
Slashdot Mirror
Sigh.
The best solar PV plants in Germany have a capacity factor of about 13%.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
These are the plants in the best locations. That comes to an average solar insolation of 3.12 full sun hours/day. If you had 5 hours you should have closer to 20% capacity factor. I'll let you think about why they don't see 20%, and why the average capacity factor overall is 9.5%, and try to reconcile it yourself. When you get stumped, I'll gladly explain.
I think you are "insulating" yourself from reality.
I had this conversation with a-sphere before, even provided this link to try and help him understand;
http://www.solarpanelsplus.com...
He is just willfully ignoring it.
I know you get it, just being a little more 'real world' with the numbers because a lot of folks don't realize how short the solar insolation day can be.
An interesting thing about tracking panels. You might see more of them if battery systems came in to play. Right now, there is no incentive to pay for tracking systems, but rather plunk that extra money into more capacity because feed in tariffs and production credits don't care what time of day the power is produced, so why bother. Just put in more panels and have them producing during the peak of the day.
Don't mix price and cost.
$2B for 250 MW isn't that bad if it has a high capacity factor. Of course, equipment lifetime and maintenance costs become a big deal. Reliability as well, if the plant shuts down it takes a long heat up period before it can produce electricity again. It also appears to require gas backup, how often is uncertain. The biggest question is lifetime of major costly components. If they last 5 years, not a good deal. If they last 15, then its probably a wash. All those things fall in the unproven category in my book. I like to have some good, real world data before I claim we have a solution.
No, you have proven you didn't understand solar insolation vs daylight hours, even though I clearly gave you a link that explained it at high school level.
And, you fail to also read well documented fact that German solar capacity factor is less than 10% overall, equivalent of about 2.4 full sun hours.
http://euanmearns.com/german-p...
Your ignorance is intentional.
OK, show us the operating record then. Reliability, cost per kwh, etc. That info is available for mature technologies.
Hold on there buddy. Those molten salt plants are still developmental projects. Extremely expensive and by nature very inefficient. Reliability is a big unknown as well. Lets let them get a few years under their belts before we count on them. And then consider that not everywhere has the ideal conditions that are found in Arizona.
Average solar insolation is more like 5 sun-hours/day, not 8, in good locations. Much less in places like Germany. If you want autonomy on the shortest day of the year, you may have less than 2 full sun hours, which means 12 MW of capacity, but that doesn't account for a cloudy day, in which case you may get less than 1 full sun hour insolation.
So, bottom line is there are a lot of ways to look at the numbers, but to be truly autonomous with no grid support, you need a lot of capacity.
Lets just get this out of the way;
As soon as they come out with them super whamodyne batteries, our problems will be solved.
Proceed....
But total volume is not really a reasonable comparison, as what matters with subsidies is what you get in return. Which is why I responded to the OP.
Yeah, its would be a nightmare and an added overhead cost to bill that way. They could simply publish the numbers of what the average cost per customer is, but if that number winds up being very low on a per person basis, then it might lead to apathy on the matter.
Yes, there are some challenges the industry is facing getting geared back up for construction after many years. The first few plants are going to be more costly. But, we've proven in the past that once the infrastructure is running, those problems are minimized. Not all the projects are suffering from such significant problems, which, from what I understand, in Finland, a more wrapped up on contracting and regulatory disputes than actual construction problems.
And, you must also consider that this report uses those higher end estimates for nuclear already, and even with that nuclear comes out low cost.
You need to be more clear when you say "better for transmission", because that is not really true. There are good reasons our transmission infrastructure is mostly AC. DC can work well in point to point transmission, but you have to still must convert to AC to connect multiple lines together to build a true network. HVDC makes sense when you need to move a lot of power from point A to point B, over a long distance, with no intermediate interconnections.
HVDC breakers are very expensive and don't last very long compare to AC switching equipment. This is due to the much higher current interrupting requirements and resultant arching from breaking a DC circuit. AC current is easily interrupted due to its cyclic nature, which is often considered an inherent safety element as well.
Equipment to convert to AC is also expensive and is required at every node.
Not true. On a per KWh basis, solar and wind clearly get the highest subsidies.
I think that was posted here recently, and if you read the comments you'd soon realize it is a pipe dream.
Even with all those costs, nuclear comes out better. Yes, its a huge amount of money, but the amount of power generated is huge as well. The subsidies, on a per MWh basis are still lower than solar and wind.
Yes, I agree hyrdo comes out the lowest cost. As for scalability, hydro really is very limited, there just aren't that many places to build new hydro, so I often leave it out of the conversation. I should be more clear.
Well, remember, this report was "leaked". Its top secret stuff we aren't supposed to have, so they can include top secret assumptions.
Take away the absurdities, and they've shown that nuclear is by far the most economical solution.
Its also interesting to see that their cost estimate for offshore wind does not include the cost of the transmission to connect to shore.
You may be interested in the actual data from German wind production;
http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/e...
Slide 28 shows the wind variability by week, and slide 40 shows the variability by day.
The study was performed by Ecofys, a renewable energy consultancy, and the cover sheet comes with disclaimers about its accuracy.
The actual report is more interesting than the articles that hype its findings. The core results are seen on page 36 (PDF Sheet 53).
You will find that there are a lot of assumptions. In particular, they place a great cost factor on "depletion of energy resources". That single adder more than doubles their cost for nuclear. The explanation is that this is the cost of using up our uranium supplies. This is on top of the cost of uranium, already included elsewhere. If you read enough youll find that they just made a big assumption and don't yet really have a basis for it. Its quite convenient for them to make an assumption that magically brings nuclear up to their derived cost for solar. Of course, even as assumed, that cost could be mostly eliminated by reprocessing. They also place a cost on "heat production".
There are no cost considerations included for reliability, intermittancy and variablility. Nor direct infrastructure costs associated by technology, such as the need to add new transmission lines to accommodate wind. In fact, that is probably the biggest cost factor left out of the wind result. Section 3.4 talks about trasmission infrastructure. I'll paraphrase.. "we ignored it because it was too hard to figure out". Another nice convenience for them.
Taken at face value, if I'm a renewables guy looking at this report, I'd have to question why more money goes in to solar than wind.
Well, they did make a big deal about paying for the pill via O-Care. Folks can have some fun twisting that, I suppose.
Camels and other domesticated animals have been bred for years to do the tasks they do. They are not going to be 'happy animals' if they can't perform those tasks. If left to PITA, they would be cruelly denied what they are born to do.