Comment by mlyle
2 days ago
> Power2gas+solar+wind is still cheaper than nuclear power even though it's quite expensive.
The costing mistake people always make is assuming p2g infrastructure can be operated at high duty cycle with an all renewable grid. If you need to amortize the infrastructure over a few hours per day it looks much less favorable. Of course, with a little more stable base generation in the mix, this assumption is less shaky. It doesn’t need to be a ridiculous amount.
More base generation simultaneously makes p2g more reasonable and reduces the total need for it (and total need to overprovision everything else)
And even if one disagrees that a small amount of additional nuclear reduces total system cost, it absolutely reduces systemic risk vs putting all of our eggs in the battery basket.
Pumped hydro is great for Australia, but the capability to increase hydro in most areas is much more limited. We are going to have to mostly do it with batteries and intermediate term storage with p2g.
The problem stems form new built western nuclear power costing $190/MWh if it can sell its power 24/7 all year around.
Adding that as a base input cost too all storage technology just makes the entire enterprise unfeasible.
You also have to answer why this P2G infrastructure should buy your extremely expensive nuclear electricity when renewables and storage delivers way cheaper electricity.
They should buy the electricity because it is better than leaving the electrolyzers idle when there is no surplus of renewable power alone, and higher utilization spreads capital costs over more production. It can be a tiny portion of the energy cost during the day, and a large part at night. Having a few percent of nameplate power being nuclear doesn’t push up costs too much when renewables are producing.
Having a few percent of nameplate power being nuclear means much less total nameplate power, and allows loads like p2g for longer term storage to run more of the day (and means you need to tap the p2g less often, so you can have a -lot- less electrolyzer infrastructure— better utilization and less need).
Diversity of approaches lower risks and may lower costs.
You seem to avoid discussing the actual nuclear cost and try to handwave it away? Why are you so hellbent on wasting our limited resources on a dead-end technology that have delivered negative learning by doing for the past 70 years?
Lets calculate running Vogtle at a 10-15% capacity factor like a traditional fossil gas peaker.
The electricity now costs $1-1.5/kWh. That is Texas grid meltdown prices. That is what you are yearning for.
The problem is anytime you try to force the nuclear costs on the consumers they will instead buy solar and storage and decouple themselves from the grid. There is no way you can try to "average" things out when distributed power production is involved.
The market is fundamentally a marginal cost one, no matter how you try to handwave with averages and what not.
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