How do you make it worthwhile for someone to have a natural gas peaker plant ready to run at any time for only 1% of hours in a year? Where does that cost figure in the tradeoff between renewables + batteries vs nuclear?
We have really good insight into week-ahead curves for wind and solar, and high quality prediction for day-ahead production, so it wouldn't need to be ready "at any time" like its usage would be a surprise. And you incentivize it like anything else, providing either a $/kwh figure that makes it economical for them to capture their costs or subsidize the construction and standby nature of them like we currently do with black start generators (https://www.kut.org/energy-environment/2021-08-05/if-the-tex...).
It's hard to make a reliable cost prediction comparing nuclear vs. wind/solar + batteries since we don't know how to build nuclear any more.
Vogtle 3/4 are going to cost maybe $40 billion when all's said and done? With OpEx, you get to something like $0.18/kwh. That's more than 5x the cost of unsubsidized wind or solar installations which would buy you a bunch of storage.
I agree the reserve mechanisms provide the incentive to pay generators to exist with an entire gas turbine, generator, switchgear, operations staff, health and safety staff, maintenance staff, transformer, interconnection, land, environmental permits, hr and accounting departments to be “available” but not generate except in the time that renewables can’t. The only difference in cost for the plant to exist and not run but be ready and to run is the cost of the fuel.
So we still have to pay for dispatchable generation if we want to have power on a calm cloudy day week. We can add that cost to the cost of the storage and overbuilding of capacity that allows solar or wind to deliver rated power overnight. Or live with blackouts
> The only difference in cost for the plant to exist and not run but be ready and to run is the cost of the fuel.
Which is over 50% of the cost of running a combined cycle plant (page 12: https://www.lazard.com/media/sptlfats/lazards-levelized-cost...) -- but also misses that you'd need far fewer plants if you build renewable + storage generation to match the 99% use case so the total cost spend on peakers would drop dramatically even if some were still needed to provide backup generation.
Also has the added benefit of almost entirely decarbonizing power generation.
It's hard to make a reliable cost prediction comparing nuclear vs. wind/solar + batteries since we don't know how to build nuclear any more.
Vogtle 3/4 are going to cost maybe $40 billion when all's said and done? With OpEx, you get to something like $0.18/kwh. That's more than 5x the cost of unsubsidized wind or solar installations which would buy you a bunch of storage.