Pylons

Birdnuts wrote: »

The Irony is that these pylons are being built to accomodate wind power which if the experience of Germany and Denmark is anything to go by will result in some of the most expensive power bills in Europe for Irish consumers. The whole thing is a giant white elephant in the making.

The German wholesale rate has dropped over recent years, it's about 3c/KWh

What makes the retail price expensive is the add-ons

Renewables don't make German power expensive, politicians do.

Case in point, most pumped storage facilities in Germany have ceased to operate unless they have a secondary function like leisure usage. And that's because renewables, especially solar have destroyed the price premium for peak electricity price vs. normal wholesale rate.

SeanW wrote: »

Last I checked the Toshiba 4S was still at NRC licensing phase.

That is true of the 10MW version, but the 50MW version may have certain economies of scale.

Like I said come back when they get one built.
50MW is 3% of the 1,600MW of a typical Gen III reactor. And again they are only economic for off grid locations which typically have 4x grid costs.

Which may make sense in the U.S, Southern Europe, Africa and parts of Asia where there is a strong correlation between power requirements and solar radiation (high temperatures and air conditioning, A.C. is an absolutely massive use of electricity in the 'States). It's been a rather dreadful idea in Germany where renewables subsidies have multiplied the electricity costs 2 or 3 fold while requiring lots of new pylons there

German wholesale prices are cheap. /Debate.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25623400

From a current installed capacity of 75 gigawatts (GW), the aim is to achieve a staggering 200GW by 2020.
...
Jiang Bo, an engineer with the manufacturer Goldwind, told me: "Seven years ago we could only do one wind turbine in about two days - but our current speed is that we can do two in one day."

Notice that, they are 4 times as efficient at erecting turbines as before which just has to translate into cost savings somewhere down the line. Renewables benefit from learning curves.

Nuclear power stations are taking longer and longer to build nowadays, so long that I'd argue that the economics used to justify them would no longer be applicable by the time they are commissioned.

200GW nameplate capacity probably only means 60GW on average, but that's just in China.

Jan last year there was 372GW of nuclear installed (including the Korean plants and US plants) Assume 80% uptime ( the US claim for over 90% was only for a 2 year period which was followed by lots of closures and downtime) and you are down to ~298GW global nuclear power.

Again a reminder that the prediction is for 49GW of solar in 2014

UK installed about 1GW PV last year. Germany installs about 7.5GW a year and it costs them less every year. PV prices are falling year on year, it will soon get to the stage that the cost of adding PV to roof tiles and windows will be a no-brainer.

China now gets more power from wind than Nuclear or anything other than coal or hydro , and they have lots of hydro. 200GW of wind by 2020 is the current target.


The Toshiba 4S doesn't use any new technologies. Sealed reactors have been in use on subs since the 1950's. Full size 300MW pebble bed reactors were decomissioned in the 80's because they just had too many problems.