r/EnergyAndPower • u/hillty • 12d ago
Solar Plus Four Hours of Storage Costs $127/MWh to $133.40/MWh in Hawaii
https://www.utilitydive.com/news/hawaii-kiuc-puc-solar-plus-storage-aes/742965/17
u/Fiction-for-fun2 12d ago
So you can nearly build a cheaper nuclear power plant? According to Lazard. Wild.
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u/chmeee2314 12d ago
Kauai has an average load of 60MW. So your looking at Micro reactors because even something like X-energy's XE-100 produces more than the grid needs. You would probably end up with something like a hand full of eVinci's, and those reactors will never produce cheap nuclear energy.
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u/Fiction-for-fun2 12d ago
Ya, tiny grids. The Hawaiian islands could be a good candidate for the BWRX-300 and some underground high voltage DC cables. If Ontario manages to build them cheaply. Tough nut to crack to get off burning fossils completely and cheaply.
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u/chmeee2314 12d ago
BWRX is quite litterlaraly 5x the capacity kauai needs, and probably also oversized for Oahu. I don't think that underground cables are possible with Hawaii's geography.
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u/External_Produce7781 11d ago
Possible? Sure. Price? Astronomical. Literally blasting runs through volcanic rock. Every single foot.
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u/ProLifePanda 8d ago
Price? Astronomical.
Not to mention the plant would need to be designed against significant earthquakes, tsunamis, and lava flow. And likely acquire their own Fukushima emergency response equipment, since it is too far to rely on the existing equipment in the lower 48.
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u/cybercuzco 11d ago
That’s in the continental us. Building a nuclear plant in Hawaii would be insanely expensive
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u/androgenius 12d ago
Not at this scale you can't.
35-MW ... and the 43-MW
That's more like a small Small Modular Rector, which in practice get larger as the design inches closer to reality to make the sums work.
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u/Fishtoart 12d ago
The number of nuclear power plants that have been built for their estimated cost is… (checks notes) 0.
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u/CatalyticDragon 12d ago
Unlikely. Lazard's figure of $142-$222 is an average whereas this figure of $127 is for a single project in Hawaii.
I doubt you could build nuclear reactors in Hawaii cheaper than the US average and I doubt you would end up near the low end of that range.
This figure for solar+storage on the other hand is in the middle of the US average ($60-$210) and if we compare that to the mid-range nuclear cost and solar+storage undercuts nuclear by about 22%. That's if we take in no other considerations but we should probably do that.
Factors like Hawaii being prone to natural disasters such as earthquakes or tsunamis. Needing to maintain a fuel supply chain which must be imported, which is volatile in price, and which can be disrupted. Needing to manage waste which probably can't be stored locally adding to cost.
Then we get into other problems. Water temperatures can hit 27-29C in summer which reduces efficiency of the plant, plus abundant solar generation during the day requires curtailment or negative pricing.
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u/hillty 12d ago
Indeed, Nuclear is expensive but solar and a modest amount of batteries is even worse (plus they still need the diesel generators & oil).
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u/butts-kapinsky 11d ago
What are you going to do with the other 800 MW of capacity that Hawaii doesn't need?
Nuclear is expensive even when the full capacity is being used. It's downright stupid if you're only going to use a fifth of it's total production
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u/Alexander459FTW 12d ago
Nuclear is expensive
Nuclear is expensive only when you stack the whole board in favor of solar/wind. When you start considering the reality of the situation, nuclear becomes infinitely cheaper than solar/wind.
- Lifespan
- Land usage
- Raw resources usage
- Constant and consistent energy production
- Thermal energy production (which nuclear is more efficient at producing)
- Energy storage is far more efficient when you pair it with base load. The amount of storage you require goes down dramatically.
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u/DevelopmentSad2303 12d ago
It's extremely cheap. The expensive part is the initial funding, which no one wants to do when we have renewables credits.
Also for some reason public opinion is so against nuclear. Well, not "some" reason, but still, uneducated reasons.
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u/sykemol 10d ago
New nuclear gets the same production price credits as wind and solar. Existing nuclear under the IRA gets the Zero-Emission Nuclear Power Production Credit.
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u/DevelopmentSad2303 10d ago
Yeah, no one wants to do nuclear whenever those same credits apply to sources of energy with way cheaper build costs
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u/hysys_whisperer 11d ago
Question on bullet 5, what are you using thermal energy for on Kauai?
On Oahu, you could pair it to the oil refinery, but there isn't shit on Kauai that needs heat unless you plan to build a giant absorption chiller for district A/C (which doesn't math out on dollars).
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u/Alexander459FTW 11d ago
Question on bullet 5, what are you using thermal energy for on Kauai?
Where in my comment did I mention Kauai or Hawaii in general?
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u/hysys_whisperer 11d ago
This whole discussion is about cost effective solutions for the 60 MW grid of Kauai in particular.
Nothing about any of the conversations should be generalized to anywhere that is not Kauai, because the price we are talking about here is specifically for Kauai.
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u/Alexander459FTW 11d ago
This whole discussion is about cost effective solutions for the 60 MW grid of Kauai in particular.
Nope. You come into a conversation completely ignoring the frame of the situation, wanting to implement your strict standards to try to justify your position.
I was clearly replying to OP claiming that nuclear is expensive. My point is that nuclear is considered expensive because in these cost analysis, a lot of important factors are either completely ignored or glossed over.
Question on bullet 5, what are you using thermal energy for on Kauai?
Desalination plants and hydrogen production plants can still benefit from thermal energy and constant energy production. Constant energy production allows the dramatic reduction of storage capacity to exert the same effect.
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u/youwerewrongagainoop 12d ago
the lifespan and raw resources are obviously reflected in the cost calculation. it's fine if you want to consider them outside of that question but pretending they're some ignored input that changes the financial calculus re:"cheaper" is just willful stupidity.
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u/Alexander459FTW 12d ago edited 11d ago
the lifespan and raw resources are obviously reflected in the cost calculation.
They aren't properly calculated, though. They are calculated as if you are going to build a limited project the next day. The scale of resources you need to build a reliable grid on a national scale with a decent buffer is astronomical. Imagine half the world is scrambling to build out solar/wind on the scale at the same time. I doubt there are enough raw resources to even accomplish half of their estimates. This is also not taking into account the replacement ratio. Solar panels literally break due to weather conditions. Shoddy placement can wear them down way faster than usual. For example, partial shading on a solar panel is unacceptable. It's going to cause the panel to overheat, which in turn wears down the durability of the panel really fast.
On the contrary, nuclear doesn't have those issues. Even when it comes to diversification, you can still accomplish it through reactors needing different levels of enrichment. For instance, CANDU reactors don't need the same enrichment level as other reactors. Just different designs with the same kind of fuel are enough to diversify your grid. At the same time, the larger the grid, the more efficient nuclear reactors become. The daily and seasonal variations can be handled far better when you have 1000 reactors compared to having 100 reactors. If you lower the energy output of 1000 reactors, it is equivalent to lowering 10% of the output of 100 reactors. On top of that, nuclear reactors stand to better handle the decentralization of the grid compared to solar/wind. They can produce stably and constantly. So, even if you can only fulfill 80% of the total demand, you can do so 24/7. While with solar/wind, you stand to have no output for several hours or even days.
pretending they're some ignored input that changes the financial calculus re:"cheaper" is just willful stupidity.
The considerations private investors take in account compared to the considerations a government takes into account are completely different when considering basic utilities. A government will supply the utility 24/7 while the private investor will try to supply as worse of a service as he can get away with at the highest price as possible.
Lazard doesn't care if your hospitals and supermarkets have energy 24/7. They don't care if people die during a blizzard. They care that government money enters their pockets. There is a reason all the data centers didn't even bother considering solar/wind for their energy supply. The same kind of people that are investing in solar/wind to supply energy to the public are unwilling to rely on for their own business. If solar/wind was so awesome, you would be seeing all those data center companies flocking to it. On the contrary, data centers sparked an even more fervent interest in nuclear energy.
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u/youwerewrongagainoop 11d ago
This is also not taking into account the replacement ratio.
Every remotely serious effort to price a PV system's electricity incorporates equipment failure rate and related insurance costs.
These essays about intermittency that conveniently never cite any technical modeling on the costs/timeline of various pathways for mitigating emissions (which overwhelmingly find that renewables massively contribute to any reasonable approach) are very tedious. Sure, the actual costs of a given generation profile need to be evaluated in sum. You can just skip to that instead of nonsense like "people pricing electricity from pv have forgotten panels don't last forever".
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u/nitePhyyre 12d ago edited 12d ago
Decommissioning nuclear power plants is included in the
initial build pricelcoe estimates for new build nuclear. Decommissioning solar fields is still unplanned for and is going to be an expensive ecological disaster.No?
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u/chmeee2314 12d ago
Decommissioning nuclear power is not included in the initial price, and costs a lot more than decommissioning solar.
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u/nitePhyyre 12d ago
Right. I meant how nuclear decommissioning & waste is included in the lcoe estimates for new build nuclear. I worded myself incorrectly.
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u/chmeee2314 12d ago
Lazard makes the assumption that the scrap value of the other power plants is equivalent to the decommissioning cost. I don't think that that is that unreasonable.
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u/nitePhyyre 11d ago
Where are you getting that? I'm only seeing:
(3) Reflects the average of the high and low LCOE marginal cost of operating fully depreciated gas peaking, gas combined cycle, coal and nuclear facilities, inclusive of decommissioning costs for nuclear facilities. Analysis assumes that the salvage value for a decommissioned gas or coal asset is equivalent to its decommissioning and site restoration costs.
So decommissioning costs are included in the LCOE of nuclear and nothing else. Scrapping vs decommissioning is a wash for gas and coal. And completely uncounted cost for everything else. Which page refers to them assuming that wind and PV scrapping will equal decommissioning costs?
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u/chmeee2314 11d ago
Analysis assumes that the salvage value for a decommissioned gas or coal asset is equivalent to its decommissioning and site restoration costs.
Its in your quote. Your right that it doesn't mention PV or Wind specifically, however considering that Wind has significant ammounts of steel, and rear eaths, copper, the same probably applies. Similarly Solar pannels have a lot of Aluminum, copper, and some silver that is definitely worth something.
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u/CatalyticDragon 12d ago
Nuclear is expensive but solar and a modest amount of batteries is even worse
Super weird that no study has ever found that to be the case. I guess they were all wrong?
plus they still need the diesel generators & oil)
They don't. You do not need a diesel generator for a solar plant. Nor do you require oil for a PV panel or battery.
Meanwhile every nuclear plant ever made does have a diesel generator attached to it.
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u/BugRevolution 12d ago
The same solar and storage likely costs less elsewhere, and the same nuclear is going to be more expensive locally.
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u/Fiction-for-fun2 12d ago
Canoes are less expensive than icebreakers as well.
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u/hysys_whisperer 11d ago
If you've seen Hawaii prices, I'm not so sure a Hawaii built canoe costs less than a Georgia built icebreaker.
(Slight exaggeration, but only slight)
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u/BugRevolution 11d ago
This implies the electricity from nuclear is somehow better than solar.
It's the same electricity
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u/Fiction-for-fun2 11d ago
Sir, that is not how the grid works.
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u/BugRevolution 11d ago
...what are you even talking about?
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u/Fiction-for-fun2 11d ago
Generation that can be turned off by cloud occlusion, snow, and the rotation of the earth and generation that's down for scheduled maintenance do not have the same value to the grid.
Please stop being absurd.
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u/BugRevolution 11d ago
Still cheaper and more reliable than trying to produce a few dozen MW energy using nuclear.
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u/nodrogyasmar 11d ago
How do you figure that? All I saw in the article was ~$.12 per kWh dropping to about a penny with a better loan. Nothing in there said let’s go buy nukes instead.
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u/beders 12d ago
You are missing the opportunity cost part of the equation
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u/Fiction-for-fun2 12d ago
Maybe, but the opportunity to be turning gas back on after more than 4 hours of darkness and no wind is priceless.
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u/zolikk 12d ago
The thing is, it's especially these kinds of grids where solar+battery makes some sense. As the article states, and I don't doubt it, this is cheaper than the existing oil-fired solution.
It's a remote small scale grid of a few dozen MW. On Open Inframap I see two main conventional stations plus a few MW-sized micro hydro. There's a 100 MW diesel plant and a 40 MW turbine + steam plant. These are certainly not very cost-effective at this scale. But for now they were the only option.
Unless we get enough truly small SMR production globally to drive down SMR prices, it will be difficult to beat solar+battery at this scale.
But this is not a large grid-scale example. Conventional sources will be cheaper there. Solar+battery generally will cost similar as here, at least the hardware you're installing, since both solar PV as well as batteries are globally large scale production you're benefiting from, regardless of installation scale.
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u/DavidThi303 12d ago
I grew up in Hawaii. No one outside the islands really understands how small the human footprint there is.
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u/External_Produce7781 11d ago
My wife and i bought property on Hawai’i in Mountsin View a few years back. We were trying to explain to friends how few people there are. They couldnt grasp it. Like ”Island so big, what do you mean there are less people than a small midwest city on the whole island?””
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u/Ill_Butterscotch1248 8d ago
Coal plant I worked at was $20-22/Mwhr. Gas plants ran at $70-80/Mwhr. Green is needed but it’s got to come down.
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u/bpeck451 11d ago
I love everyone talking about nuclear on a volcanically active archipelago of islands that don’t have really have the space to support it except 1 or 2 of the larger islands.
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u/stewartm0205 12d ago
The figure seem high. It should only be about $60/Mwh. It will get cheaper every year.
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u/hysys_whisperer 11d ago
This is Hawaii. My rule of thumb is to 5x a reasonable mainland price for anything, and that'll get you a ballpark cost in Hawaii after transport and higher install labor.
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u/chmeee2314 12d ago
Most Hawaiian storage projects seem to define 4h as 4h of peak capacity. So we are looking at enough storrage capacity (312MWh) to cover the Islands average demand for 5 hours.