Recent reports that solar capacity will soon exceed nuclear capacity reveal an important fact. They also hide a crucial distinction needed to understand the context of energy production, and use and consequences of choices among supply options for the future, writes Jatin Nathwani of the University of Waterloo. Courtesy The Conversation.
As executive director of the Waterloo Institute for Sustainable Energy(WISE) and lead author of the Equinox Blueprint Energy 2030, a technological roadmap for a low-carbon electrified future, I have investigated energy options, alternatives and their utility. I have also found that people get confused with terminology.
Capacity installed in kilowatts (kW) is not equal to energy produced in kilowatt hours (kWh) — and the energy services we demand and pay for (such as cooking, cooling, lighting, entertainment) is measured in kilowatt hours. For large-scale, industrial purposes, output is measured in megawatt hours (MWh) or gigawatt hours (GWh).
The technical capacity of any energy technology to deliver useful energy is measured as energy output. Because of the efficiency of energy conversion, solar energy output tends to be low.
Distributed energy resources can be best recognized as a positive force that will help reinforce and increase the reliability and resilience of the “big grid”
For example, the energy produced from a large number of solar arrays combined as 1,000 megawatts (MW) installed capacity will deliver, on average, an energy equivalent of 10 to 12 per cent of its capacity. In contrast, a nuclear plant delivers energy at 80 to 90 per cent of its rated capacity.
The current global installed capacity of 224,684 MW provides energy output of 253,593 GWh, equivalent to an annual capacity factor of 11 per cent. Similarly, Germany’s installed capacity of 39,784 MW results in energy output of 36,056 GWh at a capacity factor of 10.3 per cent.
So, for the same installed capacity, solar energy produced is eight to nine times less than nuclear. If you want the same amount of energy, then you would need to install an equivalent solar capacity that is higher by as large a margin — eight to nine times the number of additional solar arrays.
Less hype, more fact
The point here is not to diminish the value and positive contribution that solar can make towards reducing our dependence on fossil fuels to help achieve a global energy transition towards a low carbon energy future.
The hype needs to be tempered by a realistic assessment of the emerging energy demand at the global level and the effective capability of meeting growth in energy demand on a very large scale.
You don’t want to get conscripted to the view that one energy option — solar — is the sole answer, and it also happens to be an option that does not deliver large volumes of energy from the installed base.
Why is this relevant? The urgency for implementing effective low-carbon energy solutions is all but fully acknowledged and recognized by all the countries of the world (except the current U.S. administration).
Future of energy is diverse and distributed
The scope and scale of change required to meet climate change targets is anything but trivial. This suggests a complementary and reinforcing role for many different energy technologies with low-carbon attributes such as wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, nuclear and natural gas as an interim substitute for coal.
The approach is complementary because each technology has characteristics that require attention to its limitations and ensure it can function as part of an integrated energy system that delivers best value to the end user.
The emerging energy system of this century will not look anything like the energy system of the past century dominated by central power-generating stations transmitting energy over long distances to cities, towns and villages.
We are faced with an emerging global context that is shaped by a critical dependence on high quality energy services to a growing, richer population that faces more thermal stress than ever before
Distributed energy resources — best exemplified by solar as Exhibit A — combined with the power of information and communication technologies (ICT) will increasingly become relevant in our lives.
Imagine a household becomes both an energy generator (solar on the roof) with an electric vehicle capable of storing energy (from wind and solar) and selling the energy back to the wires when it is profitable to do so. All of this could be managed seamlessly through a virtual power network enabled by ICT. Thus, a consumer has now become a producer and a consumer — a “prosumer.”
Technology entrepreneur Elon Musk’s company, Tesla, Inc., is working to make that vision a reality today with its electric cars, solar-cell roof tiles, home energy storage, and networked, grid-connected battery systems currently being installed in Australia.
Decentralized power generation
Will distributed energy become truly disruptive and completely undermine both the business model of the existing utilities and the investments in the large centralized infrastructure?
In my view, distributed energy resources can be best recognized as a positive force that will help reinforce and increase the reliability and resilience of the “big grid.” They also bring an environmental emissions attribute that helps to amplify a positive trend towards a low carbon energy future.
Why do we need large, centralized generating stations at all? The global energy demand to 2050 will either double from current levels or triple. This is primarily driven by demographics and income shifts.
The world’s population is forecast to approach nine billion people in 2050 — with many to shift in income from extreme poverty to low- and middle income levels — which means an inexorable upward pressure on need for energy. A warming climate is another driver of growth in energy demand for cooling.
Improved economic well-being combined with an irreversible shift towards intense urbanization creates a scenario that is difficult to deflect: We are faced with an emerging global context that is shaped by a critical dependence on high quality energy services to a growing, richer population that faces more thermal stress than ever before.
The amounts of energy we need are large, not necessarily because we are energy hogs, but rather that we desire an improved quality of life. This will require a major fine-tuning of the existing energy system that can exploit the best features of all available energy sources in unison.
Editor’s Note
Jatin Nathwani is the founding Executive Director of the Waterloo Institute for Sustainable Energy (WISE) and holds the Ontario Research Chair in Public Policy for Sustainable Energy at the University of Waterloo in Canada. His current focus is on implementing a global change initiative: he is the Co-Director, with Professor Joachim Knebel (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany), of the consortium ‘Affordable Energy for Humanity (AE4H): A Global Change Initiative’ that comprises 130+ leading energy access researchers and practitioners from 30 institutions and 16 countries.
This article was first published on The Conversation and is republished here with permission.
[adrotate banner=”78″]
Bob Wallace says
Jatin, go peddle your nuclear energy to stupid people. Hurry, because there are less and less every day.
Capacity factors are not the important metric, it’s cost of electricity produced. It really doesn’t matter if nuclear can, in best conditions, produce at 90% of nameplate capacity and solar at only 30%. (Or wind at 60%.)
What is important is that the electricity that comes from a solar or wind farm will cost only a small fraction of the energy from a nuclear reactor.
And don’t try to sell your “only solar” junk. Anyone who understands a low carbon grid understands that a mix of renewable inputs offers the lowest cost supply of electricity.
Take a good look, Jatin, nuclear is basically dead in the ‘West’. Nuclear has failed to bring affordable electricity western grids and plans for new reactors are being canceled. Plants under construction are being terminated.
Now the East is beginning to awaken. South Korea is getting out of nuclear. China is setting higher wind and solar targets than nuclear targets and is lowering financial support for new nuclear plants.
Let’s review the recent history of nuclear construction in West.
Summer 2 and 3…
To date they’ve spent something like $9 billion and it will take a few more billion to put the project to bed. And not a single kWh of electricity will be produced. They started spending money on this project over a decade ago.
Vogtle 3 and 4…
Estimates for the finished price are over $25 billion. The permitting process started over a decade ago so major money was spent even earlier to do the design and site workup.
Olkiluoto 3…
Probably $10 billion or more by the time it’s finished. They got started on design work about two decades ago.
Flamanville…
Probably $10 billion or more when finished. Another nuclear project begun about two decades ago.
The installed cost of PV solar, single-axis tracking is now $1.08/watt (GTM). Onshore wind is $1.53/watt (DOE).
Installation of solar panels and wind turbines is quick. Very quick.
Think about all the coal and gas that could now be avoided had those billions been used for wind and solar. Think about all the low cost electricity we’d now have had those billions of dollars been spent on renewable energy.
John Cox says
I’m inclined to agree with Bob Wallace. It’s the cost per GWh produced that counts in the end.
And why necessarily “combined with an irreversible shift towards intense urbanization” As well as providing resilience to main grids, distributed generation and mini-grids are bringing electricity to remote areas, making the lives of those who live there better and avoiding the need to move to larger cities.
Intense urbanization in mega-cities is a large part of the problem, not the solution. Distributed-everything, including electricity generation, is a large part of the solution which means thousands of self-sufficient and sustainable smaller towns, cities and remote rural areas, all with electricity and communications.
Bob Wallace says
It’s going to be interesting to see how Puerto Rico rebuilds.
Right now it looks like they may move away from the ‘large central generation plant and distribution’ model to more of a micro-grid model where towns and communities repower with wind and solar.
Puerto Rico has a high electricity cost like many islands which have to import fuel to run generation plants. It looks like it would cost less to install renewables and storage for localized grids than to restring the island and continue to pay for imported diesel fuel.
John Cox says
About the only good thing that may come out of the disaster that struck Puerto Rico is that it could well become a model for distributed mini-grids everywhere. New battery technologies and lower solar costs mean that mini-grids are easier and faster to deploy. Diesel generators can still play a role but the need for those will decline as batteries become more compact and cheaper. Once you build the mini-grid, you can add solar and storage over time to replace diesel generators.
Distributed mini-grids will also make these communities more resilient in the face of future disastrous weather events.
Nigel West says
“It really doesn’t matter if nuclear can, in best conditions, produce at 90% of nameplate capacity and solar at only 30%. (Or wind at 60%.)”
New nuclear is 90% everywhere. Unlike your cherry picked US sunbelt locations in the 20% range, and even lower in northern Europe around 12% at best. Capacity factor absolutely does matter. If a system is short on capacity to meet demand adding just wind/solar is almost useless.
“What is important is that the electricity that comes from a solar or wind farm will cost only a small fraction of the energy from a nuclear reactor.”
When wind/solar is generating it just displaces firm generators, not replacing them. That means wind/solar has a lower value to a system compared to nuclear. A mix of renewables is not a solution either as there are lengthy periods when wind is negligible overnight.
“Nuclear has failed to bring affordable electricity western grids. ”
In Europe and Canada nukes produce at affordable prices.
“South Korea is getting out of nuclear. China is setting higher wind and solar targets than nuclear targets and is lowering financial support for new nuclear plants.”
S. Korea’s AP1400 has been approved for European export. China will be exporting their technology soon too.
The problems with Summer and Vogtle are essentially due to poor project management and regulatory driven design changes.
Olkiluoto will be commissioning shortly – 2019. Work has already started developing OL4. Flamanville 3 is due to commission in 2018.
“Think about all the coal and gas that could now be avoided had those billions been used for wind and solar.”
Think about all the coal that wouldn’t have been burnt producing tens of millions of tonnes of carbon over the last 25 years if illogical scaremongering antis and NGOs had not campaigned against and delayed nuclear new build.
Bob Wallace says
“New nuclear is 90% everywhere.”
China Nuclear
2014 CF = 75.7%
2015 CF = 72.0%
2016 CF = 72.3%
Nigel West says
Your info. is duff. China is 89% for 2016. US exceeds 90%. UK is around 75% because our gas cooled reactors need refuelling more often than PWRs.
https://www.iaea.org/PRIS/WorldStatistics/ThreeYrsEnergyAvailabilityFactor.aspx
The economic models for new nuclear are built on >90%. After a commissioning period of resolving construction defects when availability is low, they achieve 90% and more. Towards the end life when capital costs are paid off they can be part loaded economically as high load factors are no longer important.
New nuclear will achieve at least 90% anywhere in the world. You have quoted figures of 30% for solar and 60% for wind which are outliers in the very best weather/climate conditions. Much of northern Europe would never see those renewables capacity factors. Indeed UK offshore wind CF is 37%, and solar around 10%.
Bob Wallace says
In 2016 China had 33,640 MW of nuclear.
They generated 213,200 GWh of electricity with nuclear.
The numbers come from the Chinese Energy Portal.
https://chinaenergyportal.org/en/2016-detailed-electricity-statistics/
You do the math.
Now, it may be that the 6,120 MW of nuclear added in 2016 came online late in the year and PRIS did a daily CF which would adjust for those late arrivals.
Now, this –
” Towards the end life when capital costs are paid off they can be part loaded economically as high load factors are no longer important.”
Do you understand that 60% of US paid off nuclear plants are losing money even when operating as much as they are capable of operating?
Load-following, if they were capable, would drive them into bankruptcy even faster.
Bob Wallace says
Interesting.
If you take the 27,170 MW of nuclear that China had online at the end of 2015, the amount of electricity generated with nuclear in 2016, and use those numbers to calculate capacity factor then you end up with a 2016 CF of 89%.
Looks like the PRIS CF is high. It credits 2016 new production to only those reactors that were online on January 1, 2016.
The true CF likely is found somewhere between 76% and 89%.
Bob Wallace says
Digging some more….
The Word Nuclear Association list rough start dates (month/year) for China’s rectors. In 2016 here are the reactors, nameplate capacity and start month –
MW Start Date
Guangdong 1020 January
Guanxi 1020 January
Fujian 1018 July
Hainan 610 August
Liaoning 1060 September
Fujian 1020 October
Guanxi 1020 October
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/china-nuclear-power.aspx
(I imagine those columns will not line up after the site software chews on them.)
Anyway, it appears that two reactors came online early in 2016 and five more came online in the last half of the year.
PRIS folded the output of the 2016 reactors into ‘electricity produced by nuclear’ but ignored their existence in terms of capacity online in order to generate the 89% CF claim.
Nigel West says
I wouldn’t over analyse the numbers. China is building new plants using mature designs that can achieve >90%.
Modern PWRs can run for almost 2 years before a short outage to refuel. Inspections are planned to coincide with refuelling. This is planned work accounting for about 4% of lost output so can be timed to occur when system demand is not high and the reactor output will not be missed.
Over the long-term, unplanned outages are typically 4%. Only this number is relevant in terms of system reserve capacity.
Bob Wallace says
I’m not. What I am doing is demonstrating that the claim of 89% CF for Chinese reactors is incorrect.
Perhaps you’d rather we use inflated numbers?
Nigel West says
“……60% of US paid off nuclear plants are losing money even when operating as much as they are capable of operating?”
Cheap gas and renewables supported by PTCs are affecting half the nuclear fleet. They are merchant plants so rely on wholesale prices.
They need support to prevent them closing prematurely. Otherwise if they are forced to close, losing zero carbon gen. would only push up US carbon emissions.
Bob Wallace says
Yes, cheaper wind, solar, and natural gas is forcing over half of all US nuclear plants into economic failure.
You understand that the topic was cost and not CO2 emissions?
The US does not have a price on carbon.
Nigel West says
The wholesale market will struggle to recover the full costs of investments in any conventional plant
due to intermittent renewables. Renewables have lower short run marginal costs compared with conventional plant, and will as a result displace them when they run – when the wind blows and the sun shines. Because
they are intermittent, this displacement of conventional plant is intermittent too. The result is that
for gas plant in particular, fuel supplies have to be interruptible too, because gas power stations are
now rendered intermittent. These conventional gas plants can no longer rely on an early stage high
load factor. So intermittency raises the costs of conventional power, and its cost of capital. It also raises operating costs, e.g. the cost of gas through needing lower minimum take supply contracts.
Renewables are mostly zero marginal cost. Consequently revenues
from the wholesale market will increasingly fall short of the costs of new entrants in conventional
plant, and hence investment will be insufficient i.e. reliable plant will not be built to back-up renewables.
Also leaving conventional plant to fail economically is not acceptable because that would impact security of supply if left unchecked.
The way to deal with this is through a capacity support mechanism which rewards firm capacity provided by nukes and gas plant.
Much of the capacity support costs need to be paid by renewables which are unable to provide capacity in isolation.
Bob Wallace says
Combined cycle gas plants have low installed costs. During early transitional years they will be used more heavily and will generate substantial revenue.
After payoff their fixed operating costs will be low. Fuel will be by far the largest cost of running.
Once gas plants are running only a few hours/days a year their cost of operation be high but that will have little impact on wholesale electricity prices.
We now run our gas peakers about 5% of the time. Expensive when they do turn on because they need to recover all their fixed costs over a small amount of operation. But that’s how the grid works.
Bob Wallace says
Single axis tracking has raised CF about 50% from fixed mount racking.
Solar is not going to be the major electricity source for northern Europe. Wind will dominate there, as is happening.
The price of wind and solar continues to drop. The cost of nuclear rises.
Renewables are being installed in the US. Nuclear reactors are going bankrupt.
Olkiluoto 4 plans were canceled in 2015. Yes, someone said they might be reconsidered after Olkiluoto 3 comes online but you can find people saying almost anything.
China and South Korea may want to export their nuclear reactors but they will have a lot of trouble finding a customer. That is happening to Russia’s nuclear industry. Demand is drying up.
The reason that most countries quit building nuclear reactors has been that they cost too much. And now that renewables have become so expensive it becomes impossible to argue for a new reactor on any sort of financial basis.
Keep dreaming those sweet nuclear dreams.
Mike Fletcher says
The nuclear argument is mostly going to get settled on price. There are parts of the world where nuclear is affordable but that’s only with legacy plants where the development and construction costs have been long amortized or absorbed somewhere else. But as for new nuclear plants, the costs look prohibitive.
As the cost for the basket of all new renewables come down they look unstoppable. Once prices get low enough, they’ll bury the cost of intermittentcy. The solution to intermittentcy is not only fossil fuel back up. Bulk transmission grids that cover wide geographic areas are likely the lowest handing fruit in balancing fluctuations in demand and generation. It’s heartening that the transmission grid assets, originally built under a central generation model will now see another purpose bolstering distributed low carbon generation.
Adrienne says
It’s so true that we as a planet and civilization require a lot of energy resources simply because we are constantly improving upon the quality of life that was known to those who came before us. Because of this, it is critical that we are conscientious not to become energy “hogs”, as our planet can only give so much. By fine-tuning out energy system, we can live the lives we want to without depleting our resources completely.
Bob Wallace says
We have massive, massive amounts of energy free for the taking. We have billions of years of solar and wind energy. We can power anything we want to power.
Now we do have an immediate problem. We’ve burned too much solar energy that was stored in the form of coal and oil and made our climate all out of whack. We’ve got to stop using fossil fuels as quickly as possible.
We can make it easier to quit using fossil fuels if we attack the problem from two directions.
1) Install renewable energy technology quickly.
2) Reduce our energy use via efficiency so that we have less fossil fuel use to replace.
Once we get fossil fuels out of the mix, if we want, we can add more renewable generation and leave our lights on all the time..;o)