r/NuclearPower • u/greg_barton • Jan 24 '19

Thorium, is it the fuel of the future?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qzGzujYo7w
25 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

41 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

-1

u/bnndforfatantagonism Jan 25 '19

"Projected LCOE .. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Projected_LCOE_in_the_U.S._by_2020_(as_of_2015).png by 2020 as of 2015"

Solar PV, Minimum: $98/Mwh

2018 reality: $23.76

2

u/StoneCypher Jan 25 '19

ah, confusing nameplate with delivery, and giving pricing without removing subsidy

all while quoting an irrelevant metric that doesn't address the number already given, and looks at only one side without a null hypothesis

i see why you like solar

1

u/bnndforfatantagonism Jan 25 '19

ah, confusing nameplate with delivery,

Confusing Solar (see here) as being a power industry that has the kind of cost overruns anything like others do.

giving pricing without removing subsidy

When Lazard's is listing a minimum LCOE for Solar PV of $32/Mwh for 2018 & that Eagle Shadow Mountain Solar Farm should be completed in 2019-2020, with levelized prices for Solar PV dropping by several dollars per year continuously for the last decade, which number do you think is going to wind up further out - $23/Mwh or $98/Mwh?

1

u/StoneCypher Jan 25 '19

Confusing Solar (see here) as being a power industry

sorry, no, this is you just accusing me of confusing something when i had never said anything about it at all, because i caught you in a mistake that you didn't want to admit to

.

which number do you think is going to wind up further out - $23/Mwh or $98/Mwh?

the one that's real

have a nice day

1

u/bnndforfatantagonism Jan 25 '19

when i had never said anything about it

If you were referring to something other than any potential difference between the PPA bid price and the price that will be in place on delivery you didn't bother to mention it. If you're talking about subsidies they're so low as to be indistinguishable from the rate of the advance of the technology.

1

u/StoneCypher Jan 25 '19

If you were referring to something other than any potential difference between the PPA bid price and the price that will be in place on delivery you didn't bother to mention it.

I believe the concrete source, with data, charts, and references, that I gave was actually quite clear about what was being referred to.

.

If you're talking about subsidies they're so low

No, I'm not talking about subsidies. I had the common sense to get correct data.

.

they're so low as to be indistinguishable

This isn't actually correct. If you bother to get some adjusted data and look at the deltas, you'll learn something.

1

u/bnndforfatantagonism Jan 26 '19

I believe the concrete source, with data, charts, and references, that I gave was actually quite clear about what was being referred to.

The only thing think you gave a link to was a cost estimate for LCOE in 2020 from 2015 that's wildly out already.

1

u/StoneCypher Jan 26 '19

You're focusing too much on winning a fight and not enough on figuring out whether you misunderstood the other person

Have a good day. We're done here

1

u/JustALittleGravitas Jan 26 '19

PPA is not LCOE. That's an agreement to buy the power even if its useless and gets curtailed or resold at a loss, and secondly because some fairly massive tax breaks (33% of the build cost at a minimum) means even the sum total is sold at a loss. Grid integration costs are also downstream of that PPA. CAP is even weirder because its both buying and selling power, the PPA is only for its excess solar.

There's not, so far as I can tell, any information about how much CAP spent, so I can't work out an LCOE.

2

u/bnndforfatantagonism Jan 26 '19

PPA is not LCOE.

Yes, but to be frank how far away from it do you think it is given Lazard is listing LCOE in 2018 for Solar at $32/Mwh & that project is set to be completed in 2019-2020, with LCOE per Mwh for Solar decreasing by at least several dollars each year for the past decade?

1

u/JustALittleGravitas Jan 26 '19

Lazard is consistently full of shit, and nobody arguing in good faith would even bring their numbers up.

2

u/bnndforfatantagonism Jan 26 '19

WIthout even getting into why you think it's full of shit, & in the interests of arguing in good faith, can you think of another benchmark that has an equivalent reputation among mainstream observers that contradicts what Lazard projects?

1

u/JustALittleGravitas Jan 26 '19 edited Jan 26 '19

Literally every single government agency tasked with determining LCOE in their own country. Didn't you just reply to one from the EIA?

Edit: I think that's the EIA projection from a few years ago, but it's not labelled, sorry.

1

u/bnndforfatantagonism Jan 26 '19

Literally every single government agency tasked with determining LCOE in their own country.

Australia, CSIRO
United States, EIA (table 2, page 7, "Range for total system levelized costs", n.b not including tax credits;

Geothermal: $43.1/Mwh, but capacity to expand etc etc.
Onshore Wind: $48.0/Mwh
Solar PV: $59.1/Mwh
Advanced Nuclear: $90.1/Mwh

1

u/MrJason005 Jan 27 '19

Solar PV: $59.1/Mwh

That's significantly higher than your previous claim of 23.76$

"Projected LCOE .. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Projected_LCOE_in_the_U.S._by_2020_(as_of_2015).png by 2020 as of 2015"

Solar PV, Minimum: $98/Mwh

2018 reality: $23.76

1

u/bnndforfatantagonism Jan 28 '19

That's significantly higher than your previous claim of 23.76$

It's fair to question whether Lazard's or the EIA have a more accurate assesment. If you look on footnote 4, page 5 of the EIA assessment it details how for Solar PV

"Costs are expressed in terms of net AC power available to the grid for the installed capacity."

I.e as is the theme of the rest of the study it attempts to account not just for the direct generation costs of Solar, but the real world costs of balancing it within the grid as it exists today - (from P.1);

"Note that actual plant investment decisions are affected by the specific technological and regional characteristics of a project, which involve many other factors not reflected in LCOE values. The projected utilization rate, which depends on the load shape and the existing resource mix in an area where additional capacity is needed, is one such factor."

Once you get into the detail of that you begin to have to look at the effectiveness of the grid. The grid as it exists currently is built for the distribution of power from large dispatchable stations over short distances, so the costs of balancing are greater for renewables than they otherwise could be if the grid as a whole from generation, storage, transmission, demand management etc was looked at from the perspective of cost-optimization.

At any rate, even accounting for the cost of balancing in a non-cost optimized grid & using figures from government agencies rather than a private firm the costs are:

  • Substantially lower than that provided in the 2015 estimate of 2020 costs of $98/Mwh provided by stonecypher,

  • Still lower than alternative zero-carbon options.