[ephbit]

> Power grids operate like marginal cost markets. Why would I as a consumer buy more expensive nuclear power when abundant renewables are available?

I think this is an incomplete description of the system.

The missing element here is the fact that independently of what an individual electricity customer (private/commercial/..) chooses to do, the government/burocracy still ultimately mandates for grid operators, utilities and power companies to operate their technology in such a way that the grid can remain stable and deliver enough electricity to power (practically) all uses, whatever they might be at a certain point in time, even when renewable generation is at only say 15 % of max capacity.

This makes companies build/maintain (and get paid for) backup powerplants. They're needed and maintained for stability reasons, (pretty much) regardless of their cost of electricity generation per kWh. The market price is not really relevant, since grid stability is hugely more important to everyone (individual persons, businesses, political parties) than spot market price.

> Given the possibility of cheap distributed generation today what will happen if you force nuclear costs on consumers is that they will build local renewable generation and lower their grid utilization.

Applauding cheap distributed generation of fluctuating renewables (note: I'm in favour of their deployment) without mentioning that there are times when they simply don't deliver, so that other (flexible, reliable) sources have to fill in paints an incomplete picture. Without the fossil/nuclear backup plants the spot price would skyrocket to a degree such that everyone in posession of a smart meter and flexible price contract (and withouts state subsidized electricity) would just stop consuming because a kWh might suddenly cost a few $/€.

The market might be the market. But the grid is a technical system and its stability is a parameter which most prioritize higher than cost/kWh, which is why it's a hidden cost, that's not directly attributable to renewables and so as long as the grid cannot deliver 100 % renewables at _all_ times, "cheap renewable electricity", that's cheaper than fossil/nuclear is a somewhat naive take.

Imagine customers getting to choose between 2 different electricity contracts:

A) 100 % renewable electricity; subject to availability; gets delivered according to current generation; if demand exceeds generation, every customer gets curtailed to a fraction of their actual demand, according to their usual consumption so that demand=generation

B) 24/7 electricity; varying percentage of renewables; some nuclear/gas/coal in the mix

How low would you have to set the price/kWh of A relative to B for getting say even just 1 % of customers? 1/5? 1/10?

Now would any company running such a 100 % renewable fleet and offering A contracts have an easy time running their business with economic success, because "renewable generation is so much cheaper than fossil/nuclear"?

Yes, marginal cost/kWh of nuclear/fossil might be higher than wind/solar. The reason is obvious: they provide stability/reliability for the grid, so until the grid is 100 % renewable, 1 nuclear/fossil kWh is simply more valuable than 1 renewable kWh.

What do people do who "build local renewable generation and lower their grid utilization", when their own generation doesn't meet their demand because it's winter? Right, they draw power from the grid, from some gas/coal/nuclear plant.

[Gwypaas]

> The missing element here is the fact that independently of what an individual electricity customer (private/commercial/..) chooses to do, the government/burocracy still ultimately mandates for grid operators, utilities and power companies to operate their technology in such a way that the grid can remain stable and deliver enough electricity to power (practically) all uses, whatever they might be at a certain point in time, even when renewable generation is at only say 15 % of max capacity.

> This makes companies build/maintain (and get paid for) backup powerplants. They're needed and maintained for stability reasons, (pretty much) regardless of their cost of electricity generation per kWh. The market price is not really relevant, since grid stability is hugely more important to everyone (individual persons, businesses, political parties) than spot market price.

Yes, in for example Sweden these extra costs borne by all consumers for reserves and balancing markets are in the range of $0.0X cents/kWh delivered. You are not financing a nuclear plant with that.

> Applauding cheap distributed generation of fluctuating renewables (note: I'm in favour of their deployment) without mentioning that there are times when they simply don't deliver, so that other (flexible, reliable) sources have to fill in paints an incomplete picture. Without the fossil/nuclear backup plants the spot price would skyrocket to a degree such that everyone in posession of a smart meter and flexible price contract (and withouts state subsidized electricity) would just stop consuming because a kWh might suddenly cost a few $/€.

Why would a consumer that decided to sidestep the grid care? They care about the average price of all their consumed energy, not the fluctuations. Peak shaving is already a market. Although mostly to sidestep infrastructure costs related to upgrading grid size.

> A) 100 % renewable electricity; subject to availability; gets delivered according to current generation; if demand exceeds generation, every customer gets curtailed to a fraction of their actual demand, according to their usual consumption so that demand=generation

> B) 24/7 electricity; varying percentage of renewables; some nuclear/gas/coal in the mix

Consumers choose a mixture of A and B, because the grid is not only renewables. We will likely need gas backup for another decade or so. Perfect is the enemy of good. Your view of the grid is from the 70s, when "baseload" was the god. That is not the case anymore.

Grids are dynamic and driven by price signals. All price fluctuations are business opportunities. With the marginal pricing model we have today, nuclear requires the whole sale average prices over a year to be ~$120-200/MWh, I and everyone except people advocating for nuclear find such prices unacceptable. That is Ukrainian war gas crisis prices locked in until the plant is paid off, who wants that?

Thus the discussion inevitably spirals into "grid costs", "backups" and what else. Because lets through government actions force nuclear to exist to get a better number on your pet metric of "actual price". All while the world moves on.

I think you haven't had a read, it was linked in the comment you replied to but I can give it to you again:

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910

Read and come back, stop thinking we live in the 70s.

[ephbit]

> Yes, in for example Sweden these extra costs borne by all consumers for reserves and balancing markets are in the range of $0.0X cents/kWh delivered. You are not financing a nuclear plant with that.

Whatever the ascribed fee/kWh for financing backup power plants that's written on some electric power bill might be, (whether it's 0.05 $/kWh or 0.20 $/kWh) it's completely irrelevant. If there's a backup plant being maintained and run somewhere in your country (or the neighbouring), the people are somehow paying for it. If the fee on the electricity bill is too low to actually cover all the costs, then it's still payed for by the people, through taxes or other fees or whatever. Doesn't matter at all. The backup plant, be it nuclear or fossil, is being financed. Why is that? Because people don't want rolling blackouts and politicians know that.

> Why would a consumer that decided to sidestep the grid care? They care about the average price of all their consumed energy, not the fluctuations. Peak shaving is already a market. Although mostly to sidestep infrastructure costs related to upgrading grid size.

If by sidestepping the grid you mean an almost/entirely self-sufficient household (all year, not just summer), then we're talking about which percentage of households of the northern hemisphere? Is it 1 % or 0.1 % or 0.01 %? These aren't the people who'd care, true. But the issue is obviously not with them but with the other ~ 99.x %.

My impression is, you're failing to see, just how high spot prices and thus peaks in a flexibly priced contract would jump, if your grid were underpowered by let's say 30 % of actual demand. The only reason you're not seeing such high prices, is because those fossil/nuclear plants are somewhere (either in your country or in some neighbouring) ready to run. Nobody knows just how high the price/kWh would spike, were there a few days with just 70 % of electricity available compared to the usual demand curve (in some country where heating is electricity based). But it would either need to settle damn high, so that only consumers who're willing to pay a lot, still actually consume while enough others are effectively deterred from consuming by the high price so that reduced demand=generation. Either that, or you'll have rolling blackouts or some other intervention to reduce demand, which effectively violates the way that people/businesses in prospering countries are used to operating, i.e. drawing as much power as they see fit, whenever they see fit.

I'm happy to learn about other ways of meeting consumers needs, when dealing with a "significantly less renewable electricity available than urgent demand and regrettably no backup power plants" situation.

I very much doubt people would settle with regularly being in the situation of either (A) being priced out of using electricity or (B) having to turn off their heat pumps or aircon and not use their kitchen stoves during certain hours. No, they'd tell their politicians to (C) bring those fossil/nuclear plants online "chop-chop".

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> Consumers choose a mixture of A and B, because the grid is not only renewables.

No. Noone is actually choosing or would choose A, not even partially. Or can you name an instance when someone did not do XY (drive their EV, go by train, heat/AC their home, cook some food, ..) which they really wanted to do, because there wasn't enough electricity available in that moment? And no, when someone chooses to charge their EV a little less or accepts a waiting time for their EV to be charged to then make their trip doesn't count, because they were obviously flexible enough. Sure, many industries now closely watch electricity prices and sometimes throttle/halt production. Doesn't count either, when choosing operating times according to electricity prices is part of the business model.

> We will likely need gas backup for another decade or so.

Absolutely. It simply wouldn't work without them, or rather: people will vote whoever would get enough such plants running again, were there any shortage and they wouldn't care about their state spending billions to get it done.

> Your view of the grid is from the 70s, when "baseload" was the god. That is not the case anymore.

Not really, I think. Baseload is not the god, it never was. Stability is, and always was. My view of the grid is about stability and the simple fact, that people just wouldn't accept if the gaps that renewable sources leave (until they're overbuilt 3x .. 4x ..? and there's enough storage) weren't filled in by fossil/nuclear generation.

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> With the marginal pricing model we have today, nuclear requires the whole sale average prices over a year to be ~$120-200/MWh, I and everyone except people advocating for nuclear find such prices unacceptable. That is Ukrainian war gas crisis prices locked in until the plant is paid off, who wants that?

I doubt we'll see electricity prices fall in the next 10 years.

Looks like in Germany people won't be able to blame it on "nuclear generation clogging the net" then.

> Thus the discussion inevitably spirals into "grid costs", "backups" and what else. Because lets through government actions force nuclear to exist to get a better number on your pet metric of "actual price". All while the world moves on.

As to "world moves on". Well, you wrote it yourself: "We will likely need gas backup for another decade or so."

I think our grids will cling to gas powered plants for quite a bit longer than that.

Interestingly, according to some institute, "researchers found that new gas-fired power plants with an installed capacity of 23 GW must be built by 2030."

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germanys-new-energy-tar...

Newly built gas plants ... I don't think they'll only be run for ten years.

> Read and come back, stop thinking we live in the 70s.

> https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910

Thanks for reminding me. Quite a few pages there. Did you read them all?

I like this nicely cushioned quote from the chapter "D. RAW MATERIAL DEMAND FOR 100% RENEWABLE ENERGY SYSTEMS" (p. 78191):

> All in all, there appears to be reason for moderate optimism that material criticalities will not represent an unsurmountable roadblock towards the transition to 100% RE systems. However, it is also clear that it will be a formidable challenge to ensure the timely availability of resources while simultaneously minimizing the negative impacts of extraction on humans and the environment. This needs to be a focus of upcoming research.

Reminds me of all the stubborn renewable optimists who IMO do the world a disservice by neglecting the inevitability of degrowth.

[Gwypaas]

$5M a year, to be in standby during the winter, easily converted to synthetic oil if carbon prices ever becomes prohibitive:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlshamn_Power_Station

Which nuclear plant did you want to finance for $5M a year?

[ephbit]

Seriously? This comparison of cost to a NPP is obviously flawed.

Why?

Because a NPP wouldn't be run just for backup but continuously. Let's assume the 1 GW fossil plant runs a mere 3 weeks per year. That's a capacity factor of 0.058 and it'd generate 504 GWh per year.

The NPP would run with a capacity factor of say 0.90 so at 1 GW it'd deliver 7.9 TWh.

That's a factor of 15.5 more electricity delivered than the fossil plant.

Consequently, to have the same cost/KWh, the NPP could cost 15.5 x $5M = $77.5M per year. Electricity cost would be: $0.01/KWh

I don't know your source for the operating costs of the oil plant, but I assume it's in USD.

According to [1] in the US, the NPPs generated electricity at a cost of (note how I didn't even pick the much lower number of 21 USD/MWh in recent years): 37 USD/MWh = 0.037 USD/KWh

Comparison

Fossil: $0.01/KWh

Nuclear: $0.037/KWh (or more recently $0.021/KWh)

So the cost wouldn't be dramatically higher with the nuclear plant and it'd still leave a huge margin to Swedish household electricity prices of > $0.20/KWh.

Also the nuclear plant would emit much less CO2 per KWh than the oil plant, and who knows how long we'll wait to see efuels be used for this purpose.

The point I wanted to make is not: "Backup plants have to be nuclear plants."

But rather: "As long as there is a certain base load on the grid, that's requested by consumers all year round (which will always be the case), it is a viable option to partially provide this with nuclear power plants."

And to me it makes more sense than what Germany is doing right now, basically replacing nuclear generation with a little bit of wind and lots of coal in the winter. Even if Germany had had double the wind generation in 2022, from Jan-Mar & Oct-Dec, renewables would only have delivered ~ 100 % of demand during 2 weeks. 2 weeks out of 26. They'll have to continue burning gas/coal for some time to come. Especially with progressing electrification and increasing demand.

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As to:

> .. if carbon prices ever becomes prohibitive:

CO2 prices are laughable and even the planned progression is. And with all the exceptions for big industry even more so.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/184754/cost-of-nuclear-e...

[Gwypaas]

> Because a NPP wouldn't be run just for backup but continuously. Let's assume the 1 GW fossil plant runs a mere 3 weeks per year. That's a capacity factor of 0.058 and it'd generate 504 GWh per year.

But then the nuclear power needs dispatchable power to cover the gaps! Just like renewables do, while also getting undercut by renewables. Which means it is getting priced out of the market, because as you just said, the measly $5M a year to be in standby is laughable compared to nuclear costs.

That is why dispatchable plants are usually gas plants, low capital costs, high running costs.

> So the cost wouldn't be dramatically higher with the nuclear plant and it'd still leave a huge margin to Swedish household electricity prices of > $0.20/KWh.

That includes the transmission grid and energy tax, wholesale prices before the pandemic and gas crisis were $0.02-0.04/kWh. The Swedish prices are now back down to $0.04-0.08/kWh, mostly driven by gas prices in continental Europe.

> But rather: "As long as there is a certain base load on the grid, that's requested by consumers all year round (which will always be the case), it is a viable option to partially provide this with nuclear power plants."

Which will get priced out of the market every single time renewables can fill the need, which is easily above 70% of the time, add some hydro and we are easily above 95%.

It is extra telling that you use marginal costs of paid off plants. Of course we should run those as long as possible!

The costs for new built nuclear are $0.12 - 0.2/kWh. Do me a favor and compare that to the current whole sale prices in Sweden at the tail end of an energy crisis. Does that look favorably? Or do you suppose that a new built nuclear power plant will appear out of thin air? "It's cheap when it's done!!!!" Well, someone gotta pay to build it.

That measly $5M ain't gonna save you here!

Edit - A post appeared on the front page:

The duck in the room - the end of baseload

> And what do you do then with baseload plants? By their very nature, they are supposed never to stop generating… But what if they are no longer needed for 6, 8 or 12 hours every day for 6 to 9 months of the year? Some of the base load plants (like French nuclear) have some flexibility to vary their generation, but definitely not from 0 to 100% every day! And their economic model will be shot to pieces if they make no money whatsoever half, or even a quarter of the time.

https://jeromeaparis.substack.com/p/the-duck-in-the-room-the...

[ephbit]

> But then the nuclear power needs dispatchable power to cover the gaps! Just like renewables do, while also getting undercut by renewables.

Of course it does. But no, not "just like renewables do".

Why? Because unlike with wind (calm) and solar (clouds) where the gaps are not known months ahead, most of the (1.00 - 0.90 = 0.10) outage time of a nuclear plant will be known beforehand and planned for accordingly. Yes, even when the rivers are too warm or carry too little water, that'll be known quite some time beforehand.

If you don't see the difference there, you don't want to see it.

> Which means it is getting priced out of the market, ..

Let's see how long we're going to have to wait until we see France's NPPs being priced out of the market by wind/solar/gas in the winter. Because as long as these NPPs are being needed urgently some time of the year (which is mostly going to be winter), they might well be priced out of the market in summer or whenever there's lots of wind, but they'll still be kept running.

I think we're going to need quite some patience to witness France's NPPs being shut down and decommissioned for reasons other than safety/EOL.

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> That includes the transmission grid and energy tax, wholesale prices before the pandemic and gas crisis were $0.02-0.04/kWh. The Swedish prices are now back down to $0.04-0.08/kWh, mostly driven by gas prices in continental Europe.

Not sure if we're talking about the same prices here. I was referring to end consumer/household prices [1] (range € 0.17-0.24), not the prices at the commercial market.

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> Which will get priced out of the market every single time renewables can fill the need, which is easily above 70% of the time, add some hydro and we are easily above 95%.

The criterion for keeping a NPP ready to run likely isn't if the NPP is being priced out of the market for x < 100 % of time/year but rather 100 % plus safety margin. If officials can't guarantee enough electricity 100 % of time when they shut down a NPP, they won't do it (unless they're reckless).

As to "add some hydro" .. yeah, it's so easy. You just need to say the magic words and "poof", here's your dam and hydro powerplant.

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> It is extra telling that you use marginal costs of paid off plants. Of course we should run those as long as possible!

Agree. So maybe we were indeed writing past eachother.

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> The costs for new built nuclear are $0.12 - 0.2/kWh. Do me a favor and compare that to the current whole sale prices in Sweden at the tail end of an energy crisis. Does that look favorably?

It might not look favorable right now. I would not bet on electricity prices staying where they are. I'd rather bet on them catching up (at least to some degree) with nuclear over the next few years.

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From your linked article:

> Solar capacity is growing by leaps and bounds, and it’s not going to stop anytime soon.

That remains to be seen. One can already observe that in some cases fixed installations (on buildings) are prioritized to be mounted vertically (instead of at an optimum angle for noon), and facing not south but rather east and west to generate less electricity at noon and more in the morning/evening.

We'll be seeing more of that I guess.

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> if you have an easily accessible surplus of a highly useful resource (energy), can you find any use for it that can generate a profit? There is absolutely no doubt that the answer is yes. Storage and hydrogen are just the simplest, most centralized answers, but I have no doubt that entrepreneurs will find zillions of ways to use energy available, even if for short periods, to make something valuable of it.

The author doesn't seem to be versed with the hydrogen/electrolysis tech. If the "duck" at noon lasts for 5 hours that's 5/24 = 0.21, not a capacity factor to run almost any kind of industrial process economically where you need quite some capex to set it up.

Storing electricity is just difficult. Otherwise it'd have been solved in a cheap way for ages.

And just using gigantic amounts of energy when it's available isn't easy either. It means partially sacrificing other goals a person/business might want to achieve.

When there are more EVs, those might charge mostly during "duck" time. But that means you can't drive during that time. We'll see to what degree people are willing to plan their day around charging their EVs when they have lots of other plans and things to do.

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In case you didn't read the comments below the article by "Dan G", they contain good counter arguments to the author's points, thankfully the latter even admits this.

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[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/418124/electricity-price...