Hurry someone forgot to give South Korea the "nuclear is dead" memo.

[Statistical]

South Korea, which is heavily dependent on oil and gas imports, plans to add about 18 nuclear power reactors by 2030 to its existing 20 reactors to reduce its energy imports and carbon emissions.

LOCAL NUCLEAR REACTORS IN OPERATION
Asia's fourth-largest economy has been running 16 pressurized water reactors and 4 pressurized heavy water reactors since the country started nuclear power generation about 30 years ago. Nuclear power reactors accounted for 26 percent, or 17,716 MW, of South Korea's total power generation facilities of 68,268 MW in 2007. Nuclear accounted for 36 percent, or 142.9 billion KW/hour of total power generation of 403.1 billion KW/hour.

The world's No.6 nuclear power generator -- after the United States, France, Japan, Russia and Germany -- has no record of nuclear accidents, and its 2008 reactor utilization rate of 93.3 percent was the highest in the world. Globally, the average utilisation rate was 79.4 percent.

...

It is building 6 nuclear power reactors with combined capacity of 6,800 MW, and preparing to construct two reactors with a combined 2,800 MW -- all to be ready by 2016. By 2022, it plans to add 4 more with a total capacity of 5,600 MW, and another 6 by 2030.

By 2030, South Korea predicts total power generation facilities of 105,195 MW, with nuclear accounting for 41 percent, or 42,716 mega watts. Nuclear power generation will account for 59 percent, or 333.6 billion KW/hour of total power generation of 565.2 billion KW/hr by 2030.

...

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTOE64602320100513?type=marketsNews

In operation - 20 reactors (with 93.3% capacity factor and no accidents - impossible according to Kris)
Under construction now - 6 more
Planning to build - 2 more
Building by 2022 - 4 more
Build by 2030 - 6 more

Yup sure looks dead to me.

What do the Koreans know about nuclear power anyways?
I mean they only have the best international safety record and higher capacity factor. They have gone from nuclear importer to nuclear self sufficient to nuclear exporter in 30 years.

[jpak]

1. wow someone repeated an NEI meme

:D

[BrightKnight]

2. eliminating about 2 billion tons of CO2 per year

At about 2 pounds of CO2 per KWh they will be eliminating about 2 billion tons of CO2 per year.

Millions of tons per year of toxic an radioactive coal ash will not be generated. Heavy metals do not biodegrade with time. What will the mercury levels in tuna be by 2030? The effects of acid rain and climate change are not temporary.

The largest wind projects are about 500MW and the largest solar projects are about half that. Renewables can not get close to the 100+GW range that they are building.

[Statistical]

3. Also remember capacity factor

At
Nuclear - 90%+ capacity factor.
Offshore wind 37% capacity factor.
Onshore wind 26% capacity factor
PV solar 15%-20% capacity factor

1 GW of nuclear capacity generates roughly the same amount of power in 1 years as:
2.5 to 3 GW of offshore wind
3 to 5 GW of onshore wind
5 to 7 GW of PV solar.

[kristopher]

5. Capacity factor is a red herring - comparisons are based on delivered electricity

[Nederland]

6. Ignoring capacity factor is idiotic

Why do you think capacity factor is tracked, if it is irrelevant? Do utilities calculate capacity factors simply for the joy of it?

[kristopher]

8. Capacity factor is a useful tool that nuclear proponents attempt to exaggerate the significance of.

[Nederland]

10. Capacity Factor pre-dates nuclear

It has always been useful to calculate capacity factors because it helps you design a stable, reliable grid.

[kristopher]

11. I said it was a useful tool that the nuclear fans misuse.

It is a useful tool. It is only one consideration among many, however. The way the right wing nuclear fans employ it in an inappropriate manner is twofold; by equating high capacity factor for an individual plant with overall grid reliability - there is no equivalency; and by implying CF is an ultimate arbiter of lower end cost for the electricity produced - a false implication.

In fact capacity factor is one element to consider among many. It is no more nor less important than any of the other elements in a projects cost structure such as how much it costs or how long it takes to build a KW of capacity in any given technology.

[Statistical]

15. Nobody made that strawman claim except you. What I said was....

At
Nuclear - 90%+ capacity factor.
Offshore wind 37% capacity factor.
Onshore wind 26% capacity factor
PV solar 15%-20% capacity factor

1 GW of nuclear capacity generates roughly the same amount of power in 1 years as:
2.5 to 3 GW of offshore wind
3 to 5 GW of onshore wind
5 to 7 GW of PV solar.

---------------------

Thus to replace a 1GW nuclear plant would require 3 to 5 GW of wind capacity or 5 to 7 GW of PV solar capacity. There is nothing incorrect about that statement.

[Nederland]

16. Simply wrong

by equating high capacity factor for an individual plant with overall grid reliability - there is no equivalency

That is simply not true. Answer two questions:

1) When considering grid reliability, is it important to distinguish between planned outages and unplanned outages?
2) When comparing power sources, it is important to compare connected sources to connected sources?

[kristopher]

18. You are peddling bullshit.

Public discussions of nuclear power, and a surprising number of articles in peer-reviewed
journals, are increasingly based on four notions unfounded in fact or logic: that

1. variable renewable sources of electricity (windpower and photovoltaics) can provide little
or no reliable electricity because they are not “baseload”—able to run all the time;
2. those renewable sources require such enormous amounts of land, hundreds of times more
than nuclear power does, that they’re environmentally unacceptable;
3. all options, including nuclear power, are needed to combat climate change; and
4. nuclear power’s economics matter little because governments must use it anyway to
protect the climate.

For specificity, this review of these four notions focuses on the nuclear chapter of Stewart
Brand’s 2009 book Whole Earth Discipline, which encapsulates similar views widely expressed
and cross-cited by organizations and individuals advocating expansion of nuclear power. It’s
therefore timely to subject them to closer scrutiny than they have received in most public media.

This review relies chiefly on five papers, which I gave Brand over the past few years but on
which he has been unwilling to engage in substantive discussion. They document6 why
expanding nuclear power is uneconomic, is unnecessary, is not undergoing the claimed
renaissance in the global marketplace (because it fails the basic test of cost-effectiveness ever
more robustly), and, most importantly, will reduce and retard climate protection. That’s
because—the empirical cost and installation data show—new nuclear power is so costly and
slow that, based on empirical U.S. market data, it will save about 2–20 times less carbon per
dollar, and about 20–40 times less carbon per year, than investing instead in the market
winners—efficient use of electricity and what The Economist calls “micropower,”...


The “baseload” myth

Brand rejects the most important and successful renewable sources of electricity for one key
reason stated on p. 80 and p. 101. On p. 80, he quotes novelist and author Gwyneth Cravens’s
definition of “baseload” power as “the minimum amount of proven, consistent, around-the-clock,
rain-or-shine power that utilities must supply to meet the demands of their millions of
customers.”21 (Thus it describes a pattern of aggregated customer demand.) Two sentences
later, he asserts: “So far comes from only three sources: fossil fuels, hydro, and
nuclear.” Two paragraphs later, he explains this dramatic leap from a description of demand to a
restriction of supply: “Wind and solar, desirable as they are, aren’t part of baseload because they
are intermittent—productive only when the wind blows or the sun shines. If some sort of massive
energy storage is devised, then they can participate in baseload; without it, they remain
supplemental, usually to gas-fired plants.”

That widely heard claim is fallacious. The manifest need for some amount of steady, reliable
power is met by generating plants collectively, not individually. That is, reliability is a statistic-
al attribute of all the plants on the grid combined. If steady 24/7 operation or operation at any
desired moment were instead a required capability of each individual power plant, then the grid
couldn’t meet modern needs, because no kind of power plant is perfectly reliable. For example,
in the U.S. during 2003–07, coal capacity was shut down an average of 12.3% of the time (4.2%
without warning); nuclear, 10.6% (2.5%); gas-fired, 11.8% (2.8%). Worldwide through 2008,
nuclear units were unexpectedly unable to produce 6.4% of their energy output.26 This inherent
intermittency of nuclear and fossil-fueled power plants requires many different plants to back
each other up through the grid. This has been utility operators’ strategy for reliable supply
throughout the industry’s history. Every utility operator knows that power plants provide energy
to the grid, which serves load. The simplistic mental model of one plant serving one load is valid
only on a very small desert island. The standard remedy for failed plants is other interconnected
plants that are working—not “some sort of massive energy storage devised.”

Modern solar and wind power are more technically reliable than coal and nuclear plants; their
technical failure rates are typically around 1–2%. However, they are also variable resources
because their output depends on local weather, forecastable days in advance with fair accuracy
and an hour ahead with impressive precision. But their inherent variability can be managed by
proper resource choice, siting, and operation. Weather affects different renewable resources
differently; for example, storms are good for small hydro and often for windpower, while flat
calm weather is bad for them but good for solar power. Weather is also different in different
places: across a few hundred miles, windpower is scarcely correlated, so weather risks can be
diversified. A Stanford study found that properly interconnecting at least ten windfarms can
enable an average of one-third of their output to provide firm baseload power. Similarly, within
each of the three power pools from Texas to the Canadian border, combining uncorrelated
windfarm sites can reduce required wind capacity by more than half for the same firm output,
thereby yielding fewer needed turbines, far fewer zero-output hours, and easier integration.

A broader assessment of reliability tends not to favor nuclear power. Of all 132 U.S. nuclear
plants built—just over half of the 253 originally ordered—21% were permanently and
prematurely closed due to reliability or cost problems. Another 27% have completely failed for a
year or more at least once. The surviving U.S. nuclear plants have lately averaged ~90% of their
full-load full-time potential—a major improvement31 for which the industry deserves much
credit—but they are still not fully dependable. Even reliably-running nuclear plants must shut
down, on average, for ~39 days every ~17 months for refueling and maintenance. Unexpected
failures occur too, shutting down upwards of a billion watts in milliseconds, often for weeks to
months. Solar cells and windpower don’t fail so ungracefully.

Power plants can fail for reasons other than mechanical breakdown, and those reasons can affect
many plants at once. As France and Japan have learned to their cost, heavily nuclear-dependent
regions are particularly at risk because drought, earthquake, a serious safety problem, or a
terrorist incident could close many plants simultaneously. And nuclear power plants have a
unique further disadvantage: for neutron-physics reasons, they can’t quickly restart after an
emergency shutdown, such as occurs automatically in a grid power failure...

From Amory Lovins
Four Nuclear Myths: A Commentary on Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Discipline and on Similar Writings

Journal or Magazine Article, 2009

Available for download: http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/2009-09_FourNuclearMyths

Some nuclear-power advocates claim that wind and solar power can’t provide much if any reliable power because they’re not “baseload,” that they use too much land, that all energy options including new nuclear build are needed to combat climate change, and that nuclear power’s economics don’t matter because climate change will force governments to dictate energy choices and pay for whatever is necessary. None of these claims can withstand analytic scrutiny.

[Nederland]

19. Answer the questions

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=247379&mesg_id=247581

[kristopher]

20. You answer the questions.

I responded with an appropriate answer that addresses your false claims. If you don't like the answer that's too bad.

Public discussions of nuclear power, and a surprising number of articles in peer-reviewed journals, are increasingly based on four notions unfounded in fact or logic: that

1. variable renewable sources of electricity (windpower and photovoltaics) can provide little or no reliable electricity because they are not “baseload”—able to run all the time;
2. those renewable sources require such enormous amounts of land, hundreds of times more than nuclear power does, that they’re environmentally unacceptable;
3. all options, including nuclear power, are needed to combat climate change; and
4. nuclear power’s economics matter little because governments must use it anyway to protect the climate.

For specificity, this review of these four notions focuses on the nuclear chapter of Stewart Brand’s 2009 book Whole Earth Discipline, which encapsulates similar views widely expressed and cross-cited by organizations and individuals advocating expansion of nuclear power. It’s therefore timely to subject them to closer scrutiny than they have received in most public media.

This review relies chiefly on five papers, which I gave Brand over the past few years but on which he has been unwilling to engage in substantive discussion. They document6 why expanding nuclear power is uneconomic, is unnecessary, is not undergoing the claimed renaissance in the global marketplace (because it fails the basic test of cost-effectiveness ever more robustly), and, most importantly, will reduce and retard climate protection. That’s because—the empirical cost and installation data show—new nuclear power is so costly and slow that, based on empirical U.S. market data, it will save about 2–20 times less carbon per dollar, and about 20–40 times less carbon per year, than investing instead in the market winners—efficient use of electricity and what The Economist calls “micropower,”...


The “baseload” myth

Brand rejects the most important and successful renewable sources of electricity for one key reason stated on p. 80 and p. 101. On p. 80, he quotes novelist and author Gwyneth Cravens’s definition of “baseload” power as “the minimum amount of proven, consistent, around-the-clock, rain-or-shine power that utilities must supply to meet the demands of their millions of customers.”21 (Thus it describes a pattern of aggregated customer demand.) Two sentences later, he asserts: “So far comes from only three sources: fossil fuels, hydro, and nuclear.” Two paragraphs later, he explains this dramatic leap from a description of demand to a restriction of supply: “Wind and solar, desirable as they are, aren’t part of baseload because they are intermittent—productive only when the wind blows or the sun shines. If some sort of massive energy storage is devised, then they can participate in baseload; without it, they remain supplemental, usually to gas-fired plants.”

That widely heard claim is fallacious. The manifest need for some amount of steady, reliable power is met by generating plants collectively, not individually. That is, reliability is a statistical attribute of all the plants on the grid combined. If steady 24/7 operation or operation at any desired moment were instead a required capability of each individual power plant, then the grid couldn’t meet modern needs, because no kind of power plant is perfectly reliable. For example, in the U.S. during 2003–07, coal capacity was shut down an average of 12.3% of the time (4.2% without warning); nuclear, 10.6% (2.5%); gas-fired, 11.8% (2.8%). Worldwide through 2008, nuclear units were unexpectedly unable to produce 6.4% of their energy output.26 This inherent intermittency of nuclear and fossil-fueled power plants requires many different plants to back each other up through the grid. This has been utility operators’ strategy for reliable supply throughout the industry’s history. Every utility operator knows that power plants provide energy to the grid, which serves load. The simplistic mental model of one plant serving one load is valid only on a very small desert island. The standard remedy for failed plants is other interconnected plants that are working—not “some sort of massive energy storage devised.”

Modern solar and wind power are more technically reliable than coal and nuclear plants; their technical failure rates are typically around 1–2%. However, they are also variable resources because their output depends on local weather, forecastable days in advance with fair accuracy and an hour ahead with impressive precision. But their inherent variability can be managed by proper resource choice, siting, and operation. Weather affects different renewable resources differently; for example, storms are good for small hydro and often for windpower, while flat calm weather is bad for them but good for solar power. Weather is also different in different places: across a few hundred miles, windpower is scarcely correlated, so weather risks can be diversified. A Stanford study found that properly interconnecting at least ten windfarms can enable an average of one-third of their output to provide firm baseload power. Similarly, within each of the three power pools from Texas to the Canadian border, combining uncorrelated windfarm sites can reduce required wind capacity by more than half for the same firm output, thereby yielding fewer needed turbines, far fewer zero-output hours, and easier integration.

A broader assessment of reliability tends not to favor nuclear power. Of all 132 U.S. nuclear plants built—just over half of the 253 originally ordered—21% were permanently and prematurely closed due to reliability or cost problems. Another 27% have completely failed for a year or more at least once. The surviving U.S. nuclear plants have lately averaged ~90% of their full-load full-time potential—a major improvement31 for which the industry deserves much credit—but they are still not fully dependable. Even reliably-running nuclear plants must shut down, on average, for ~39 days every ~17 months for refueling and maintenance. Unexpected failures occur too, shutting down upwards of a billion watts in milliseconds, often for weeks to months. Solar cells and windpower don’t fail so ungracefully.

Power plants can fail for reasons other than mechanical breakdown, and those reasons can affect many plants at once. As France and Japan have learned to their cost, heavily nuclear-dependent regions are particularly at risk because drought, earthquake, a serious safety problem, or a terrorist incident could close many plants simultaneously. And nuclear power plants have a unique further disadvantage: for neutron-physics reasons, they can’t quickly restart after an emergency shutdown, such as occurs automatically in a grid power failure...

From Amory Lovins
Four Nuclear Myths: A Commentary on Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Discipline and on Similar Writings

Journal or Magazine Article, 2009

Available for download: http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/2009-09_FourNuclearMyths

Some nuclear-power advocates claim that wind and solar power can’t provide much if any reliable power because they’re not “baseload,” that they use too much land, that all energy options including new nuclear build are needed to combat climate change, and that nuclear power’s economics don’t matter because climate change will force governments to dictate energy choices and pay for whatever is necessary. None of these claims can withstand analytic scrutiny.

Amory Lovins, a MacArthur Fellow and consultant physicist, is among the world’s leading innovators in energy and its links with resources, security, development and the environment. He has advised energy and many other industries for more than three decades, as well as the U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense. A former Oxford don, Amory Lovins advises major firms and governments worldwide and has briefed 19 heads of state.

Lovins’ work focuses on transforming hydrocarbon, automobile, real estate, electricity, water, semiconductor, and several other sectors toward advanced resource productivity. Amory Lovins co-founded and is Chairman and Chief Scientist of Rocky Mountain Institute, an independent, market-oriented, entrepreneurial, nonprofit, nonpartisan think-and-do tank, that creates abundance by design. RMI has served or been invited by more than 80 Fortune 500 firms, redesigning more than $30 billion worth of facilities in 29 sectors, with much of its path-finding work involving advanced resource productivity (typically with expanding returns to investment) and innovative business strategies.

Amory has held several visiting academic chairs, most recently as MAP/Ming Professor in Stanford’s School of Engineering, offering the university’s first course on advanced energy efficiency. He has also authored or co-authored hundreds of papers and twenty-nine books including: Small Is Profitable: The Hidden Economic Benefits of Making Electrical Resources the Right Size - an Economist “book of the year” blending financial economics with electrical engineering, and the Pentagon co-sponsored Winning the Oil Endgame, a roadmap for eliminating U.S. oil use by the 2040s, led by business for profit.

(His) work in over 50 countries has been recognized by the “Alternative Nobel,” Blue Planet, Volvo, Onassis, Nissan, Shingo, Goff Smith, and Mitchell Prizes, the Benjamin Franklin and Happold Medals, ten honorary doctorates, honorary membership of the American Institute of Architects, Foreign Membership of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, honorary Senior Fellowship of the Design Futures Council, and the Heinz, Lindbergh, Jean Meyer, Time Hero for the Planet, Time International Hero of the Environment, Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Leadership, and World Technology Awards.

The Wall Street Journal named Amory Lovins one of thirty-nine people worldwide "most likely to change the course of business.” Newsweek has praised him as "one of the Western world's most influential energy thinkers" and Car magazine ranked him the “twenty-second most powerful person in the global automotive industry.”

[Nederland]

21. There are no question marks in your post

So I do not understand why you think you have asked any questions.

[kristopher]

22. And I have previously addressed your questions.

Your insistence that I "answer the question" is a juvenile game where you think you have some right to structure the dialog. Such a belief is false and as vacuous as my insistence you answer a question never asked.

You are trying to make a point and I've demonstrated that point is false. If you want to present a comprehensive reasoned rebuttal of that evidence then feel free to do so, but give your rhetorical games back to your friend Sean Hannity - it is his favorite way to engage in sophistry.

[Nederland]

23. Refresh my memory then, Kristopher

Isn't it easier to simply answer two yes or no questions than write a long post accusing me of being like Sean Hannity?

Answer the questions:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=247379&mesg_id=247581

[kristopher]

24. NO, I refuse to indulge your attempts to dissemble. Period.

If you want to write a reasoned response then write it.

[Nederland]

25. Fair enough

I do this knowing full well it is a waste of time. It's good practice though, I have kids.

Let's look at what Amory Lovins wrote:

The manifest need for some amount of steady, reliable power is met by generating plants collectively, not individually. That is, reliability is a statistical attribute of all the plants on the grid combined. If steady 24/7 operation or operation at any desired moment were instead a required capability of each individual power plant, then the grid couldn’t meet modern needs, because no kind of power plant is perfectly reliable. For example, in the U.S. during 2003–07, coal capacity was shut down an average of 12.3% of the time (4.2% without warning); nuclear, 10.6% (2.5%); gas-fired, 11.8% (2.8%). Worldwide through 2008, nuclear units were unexpectedly unable to produce 6.4% of their energy output.26 This inherent intermittency of nuclear and fossil-fueled power plants requires many different plants to back each other up through the grid. This has been utility operators’ strategy for reliable supply throughout the industry’s history. Every utility operator knows that power plants provide energy to the grid, which serves load. The simplistic mental model of one plant serving one load is valid only on a very small desert island. The standard remedy for failed plants is other interconnected plants that are working—not “some sort of massive energy storage devised.”

The power sources that Lovins lists (coal, nuclear, gas) all have unexpected outages less than 5% of the time. Wind has unexpected outages more than 60% of the time. Only someone extremely bad at math would assert that there is no difference between connecting a bunch of sources that experience unexpected outages in the 60%+ range will result in a similar degree of reliability as a bunch of sources that have unexpected outages in the <5% range. It's just mathematically impossible. The again, anti-nukes were never very good at math.

Now theory is one thing, but let's look at real world data. Is it true that wind, even if you connect a bunch of wind farms together, is a lot less reliable than coal, nuclear or gas? Well, yes, it is true.

Here is a chart showing the variance of all the wind power in Germany (nameplate capacity: 24GW):



Now compare it to all the nuclear power in NRC Region I (nameplate capacity: 25GW):



Now, which looks more "reliable" to you?

:rofl:

[kristopher]

26. You are conflating unplanned outages with variability.

Modern solar and wind power are more technically reliable than coal and nuclear plants; their technical failure rates are typically around 1–2%.

However, they are also variable resources because their output depends on local weather, forecastable days in advance with fair accuracy and an hour ahead with impressive precision.

But their inherent variability can be managed by proper resource choice, siting, and operation.

Weather affects different renewable resources differently; for example, storms are good for small hydro and often for windpower, while flat calm weather is bad for them but good for solar power.

Weather is also different in different places: across a few hundred miles, windpower is scarcely correlated, so weather risks can be diversified.

A Stanford study found that properly interconnecting at least ten windfarms can enable an average of one-third of their output to provide firm baseload power.

Similarly, within each of the three power pools from Texas to the Canadian border, combining uncorrelated windfarm sites can reduce required wind capacity by more than half for the same firm output,thereby yielding fewer needed turbines, far fewer zero-output hours, and easier integration.

Point one: when a large central thermal plant goes down unexpectedly it requires backup - it doesn't matter that it is 2% or 4% of the time, that unexpected outage is a major problem with central thermal generation.

Point two: Following on point one, Lovins' is clear and correct when he explains that it is therefore the UNEXPECTED nature of outages that is problematic. When an UNEXPECTED failure occurs in large scale central thermal plants like coal and nuclear the consequences for the grid are massive and can result in a widespread cascade failure of the grid. With a distributed grid built around renewables the UNEXPECTED failures are both fewer than the largescale thermal systems, but they are also less disruptive when they occur.

This is what it ACTUALLY looks like when they are interconnected:


full paper can be downloaded here:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/03/29/0909075107

[FBaggins]

27. If the lights are off... Does it really matter which caused it?

Do you not need to plan for a overall system that keeps them on regardless?

[kristopher]

29. One CAUSES the lights to go off, the other doesn't.

[FBaggins]

30. What a ridiculously false statement

Both "cause" the lights to go out unless other generation picks up the slack.

With just about everything but wind and solar, you need far less excess capacity to pick that up.

[kristopher]

39. .

This is the actual profile of interconnected wind:
Kempton Atlantic Grid


Entire paper can be downloaded here from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/03/29/0909075107

[FBaggins]

45. As I said before.

Wind variability isn't a problem when the grid has excess capacity from other sources.

As wind power becomes a higher proportion of all generation, it will become more difficult for electric system operators to effectively integrate additional fluctuating power output. You need to dramatically overbuild generation AND transmission AND come up with significantly more robust storage options.

[kristopher]

46. I've proven what you "said before" to be wrong.

Every claim you make is factually inaccurate.

[FBaggins]

49. Nope... In fact, you just proved that you suffer from confirmation bias

Do you even read the stuff you spam?

It's hillarious to watch... But I think I'll let you reinforce the joke before
I point out the punch line.

[Nederland]

31. Response

Let's look at each of your points. In point 1 you said:

When a large central thermal plant goes down unexpectedly it requires backup - it doesn't matter that it is 2% or 4% of the time, that unexpected outage is a major problem with central thermal generation.

Here is what you don't get. The statement above that you seem to think only applies to thermal plants actually applies to every source in the grid. What you actually should have said is this:

When a power plant goes down unexpectedly it requires backup - it doesn't matter that it is 2% or 4% of the time, that unexpected outage is a major problem with power generation.

In other words, down is down. It doesn't matter if the source is thermal or renewable. An outage is an outage, and this is the problem with wind. While a thermal plant is creating a "major" problem 2% - 4% of the time, a wind farm is creating a "major" problem 60% of the time.

Now let's look at your second point:

Following on point one, Lovins' is clear and correct when he explains that it is therefore the UNEXPECTED nature of outages that is problematic. When an UNEXPECTED failure occurs in large scale central thermal plants like coal and nuclear the consequences for the grid are massive and can result in a widespread cascade failure of the grid. With a distributed grid built around renewables the UNEXPECTED failures are both fewer than the largescale thermal systems, but they are also less disruptive when they occur.

You make the same mistake here you did in point one: you seem to think that an unexpected failure in a thermal plant is somehow different from an unexpected failure in a renewable plant. It is not. There is no difference between a 500MW thermal plant dropping to zero output unexpectedly because a turbine broke and a 500MW wind farm dropping to zero output unexpectedly because the wind died down. An outage is an outage. The utility doesn't care whether the reason for the outage is a broken turbine or a change in the weather--all they know is that they lost 500MW of power. The difference is, of course, that the wind farm is going to go down unexpectedly 60% of the time, where as the thermal plant is going to go down unexpectedly only 2%-4% of the time. To the utility, that is a huge difference.

And I know what you are going to say: I'm going to compensate for the unpredictability of wind by creating an interconnected distributed grid, and when I do that the unpredictability of wind is better than thermal. But guess what Kristopher? I can do the same thing with thermal. I can interconnect a bunch of thermal plants too. In fact, that is precisely what utilities do to deal with the unexpected outages of thermal plants--they interconnect them into a grid. The difference is that when you connect 19 thermal plants that individually have unexpected outages of 2%-4% of the time, you end up with a grid that is 99.9% percent reliable, where as according to your own hero Jacobson, interconnecting 19 wind farms only gets you to 87.5%.

Somehow you don't seem to grasp that 99.9% is a hell of a lot better than 87.5%.

[kristopher]

32. You are still ignoring the FACT that renewable variability isn't "unexpected".

That's the first thing. LARGE THERMAL PLANTS UNEXPECTEDLY GO DOWN MORE OFTEN THAN UNEXPECTED FAILURES OCCUR WITH RENEWABLES.

If we know an hour ahead that the wind is going to drop off then it isn't UNEXPECTED when it does.

Also working to ENSURE STABILITY is the distributed nature of the thousands and thousands of individual solar panels and wind turbines - it is those individual units that have a higher rate of technical reliability than the large scale thermal plants.

Tying those renewable resources together produces a MORE RELIABLE GRID because the number of LARGE SCALE UNEXPECTED FAILURES BECOMES NEAR ZERO.

Second is that the end qualifiers are sustainability, environmental impact and costs of delivered electricity. In ALL of those areas renewable energy sources either do or will soon deliver electricity FAR CHEAPER than new nuclear possibly can. They can also be rolled out faster and will therefore be more effective at addressing our energy related problems.

[Nederland]

33. And you are ignoring the FACT that it doesn't matter

You suffer from the delusion that simply because we KNOW that wind farms have lots of variability means that variability doesn't matter. It does.

If we know an hour ahead that the wind is going to drop off then it isn't UNEXPECTED when it does.

It technically may not be "unexpected", but it might as well be. In the real world, having a one hour notice that the power from a particular source is going to disappear doesn't help much. You can't start up a nuclear plant in an hour. You can't start up a coal plant in an hour. You can't start up a large NG plant in an hour. The only thing that you can start up in under an hour is a small natural gas turbine called a "peaker". (You can use a hydo plant as a peaker, but then you can't use it for baseload. Plus, hydro isn't available everywhere) These turbines are inefficient, producing lots of emissions and producing very expensive power. Now utilities always have some of these types of plants to deal with short term surges in demand, such as the spike that happens daily around 5pm-6pm when people get home and turn on their ovens and air conditioners. However, if wind starts making up a significant percentage of your grid, you need to have a lot more of these "peakers" and start using them a lot more often, which defeats the entire purpose: namely, to get us off fossil fuels entirely.

You might be able to use a Bloom Box as peaker. Ironically, you think Bloom Boxes are mere gimmicks:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=232141&mesg_id=233599

Tying those renewable resources together produces a MORE RELIABLE GRID because the number of LARGE SCALE UNEXPECTED FAILURES BECOMES NEAR ZERO.

Only if you twist the meaning of the word "reliable". In your mind, a person that works only 30% of the time that you actually need them to work is "reliable", so long as they give you an hour notice that they are going bail... :crazy:

[kristopher]

34. And you have what source that supports your assertions?

There are none because capacity factor is not a determinant of the dependability of of grid. I've provided two different independent sources to support my position, Lovins explains it specifically, and Kempton etal provide unequivocal proof of the assertions.

Quite simply put, you are talking out of your ass.

You are conflating unplanned outages with variability.
Posted by kristopher on Sat May-15-10 04:52 PM

Modern solar and wind power are more technically reliable than coal and nuclear plants; their technical failure rates are typically around 1–2%.

However, they are also variable resources because their output depends on local weather, forecastable days in advance with fair accuracy and an hour ahead with impressive precision.

But their inherent variability can be managed by proper resource choice, siting, and operation.

Weather affects different renewable resources differently; for example, storms are good for small hydro and often for windpower, while flat calm weather is bad for them but good for solar power.

Weather is also different in different places: across a few hundred miles, windpower is scarcely correlated, so weather risks can be diversified.

A Stanford study found that properly interconnecting at least ten windfarms can enable an average of one-third of their output to provide firm baseload power.

Similarly, within each of the three power pools from Texas to the Canadian border, combining uncorrelated windfarm sites can reduce required wind capacity by more than half for the same firm output,thereby yielding fewer needed turbines, far fewer zero-output hours, and easier integration.

Point one: when a large central thermal plant goes down unexpectedly it requires backup - it doesn't matter that it is 2% or 4% of the time, that unexpected outage is a major problem with central thermal generation.

Point two: Following on point one, Lovins' is clear and correct when he explains that it is therefore the UNEXPECTED nature of outages that is problematic. When an UNEXPECTED failure occurs in large scale central thermal plants like coal and nuclear the consequences for the grid are massive and can result in a widespread cascade failure of the grid. With a distributed grid built around renewables the UNEXPECTED failures are both fewer than the largescale thermal systems, but they are also less disruptive when they occur.

This is what it ACTUALLY looks like when they are interconnected:

Kempton Atlantic Grid



full paper can be downloaded here:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/03/29/0909075107

[FBaggins]

35. "capacity factor is not a determinant of the dependability of of grid."

This is ONLY true when the grid has excess capacity from reliable sources. In the case of nations that have significantly built out their wind capacity (to a point where they rely on it) this means importing power from other countries.

What happens when "other countries" are also dealing with higher variability? The lights go out.

This is what it ACTUALLY looks like when they are interconnected:

Pretty close... and not nearly good enough.

And that was for offshore wind. Just fine when you're a small nation surrounded by ocean... not so great when you have thousands of miles from coast. to coast. Then the graph gets even uglier.

Particularly laughable when you claim that's what ACTUALLY happens... when the graph is almost entirely fictional. Offshore wind power is maturing rapidly in much of Europe... why didn't he just use real numbers?

[kristopher]

41. .

This is the actual profile of interconnected wind:
Kempton Atlantic Grid


Entire paper can be downloaded here from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/03/29/0909075107

[FBaggins]

44. There is no such animal

n/t

[kristopher]

47. That graph models actual recorded winds with actual performance from wind turbines.

It isn't hypothetical - it is representative of reality.

[FBaggins]

50. Of course it's hypothetical

The author as much as says so.

More importantly, he graphs hypothetical output for ELEVEN locations and there are STILL several days a month with virtually
no power. As you've been shown from ACTUAL data.

[kristopher]

51. No, the author doesn't "say so".

You have a real bad habit of just making things up...

[FBaggins]

52. LoL!

You might try reading what you cite before you make a fool of yourself.

You've made a number of statements here that are directly contradicted in that paper.

I note that you still dodge the larger point. Did you by any chance take a look at his graph for May of 1999? Did you note that there was one week with roughly five days that the total output rarely exceeded 20% of rated power?

That's tying eleven OFFSHORE wind farms together and still only being able to rely on the output of two of them. On a couple days it's under 10% for several hours. Heaven help you if that takes place at night and you lived in Jacobsen's world. You've got most of the east coast in a blackout.

And if Cape Wind is an illustration of cost (plus, of course, the many-times-longest-in-the-world undersea grd costs), thats FAR more expensive than any other option (and almost every one of them keeps the lights on).

How about June 1998? Only two or three days worth of hours in the entire month where the combines eleven sites produced as much as 40% of their rated capacity. Eyeballing it, it's alost HALF of the month under 20%. There's no storage on the horizon that can handle that.

[Nederland]

36. My source is the dictionary Kristopher

Main Entry: 1re·li·able
Pronunciation: \ri-ˈlī-ə-bəl\
Function: adjective
Date: 1569
1 : suitable or fit to be relied on : dependable
2 : giving the same result on successive trials
— re·li·able·ness noun
— re·li·ably \-blē\ adverb

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/reliable


You and Lovins live in bizarro world where this:



is considered "reliable".

[FBaggins]

37. Ouch... that's gotta hurt.

What's the source?

[kristopher]

40. .

This is the actual profile of interconnected wind:
Kempton Atlantic Grid


Entire paper can be downloaded here from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/03/29/0909075107

[FBaggins]

43. There IS NO "Kempton Atlantic Grid"

So there can be no "actual profile" for it's performance.

As I said before... there are MANY actual offshore wind farms. Why not provide ACTUAL performance?

[kristopher]

48. They graphed actual winds recorded for over 30 years through actual turbines.

This isn't hypothetical. Your claims on capacity factor are false and your claims regarding the Kempton paper are false.

[Confusious]

54. Where did you get 30 years from?

The report says 5 years.

[kristopher]

38. In other words you have no source

This is the actual profile of interconnected wind:
Kempton Atlantic Grid


Entire paper can be downloaded here from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/03/29/0909075107

[Nederland]

53. You are projecting (nt)

[FBaggins]

28. Can you point to a single example where that has made a difference?

Kris... You've got the worst case of confirmation bias I've ever seen... It's downright clinical. :)
The more reasoned the respose, the less likely you are to accept it as such.

[kristopher]

42. .

This is the actual profile of interconnected wind:
Kempton Atlantic Grid


Entire paper can be downloaded here from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/03/29/0909075107

[joshcryer]

12. Then why do all credible renewable energy plans incorporate capacity factor?

Why do all wind farm contracts with the electric company incorporate capacity factor? Why?

[kristopher]

13. There's that need for a bib again...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=247379&mesg_id=247516

[joshcryer]

14. Remember when you were adament that wind contracts didn't work that way?

Good times.

[kristopher]

17. You are exaggerating the importance.

As I said, you are presenting CF as if it is the final determinant of costs and desirability. It isn't.

Cooper A Multi-dimensional View of Alternatives

Abstract here: http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Full article for download here: http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/revsolglobwarmairpol.htm


Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c

Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

Abstract
This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

[kristopher]

4. Renewables can do the job much faster, much cheaper and much much more cleanly.

Abstract here: http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Full article for download here: http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/revsolglobwarmairpol.htm


Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c

Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

Abstract
This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

[BrightKnight]

7. LOL - E85 & HFCV - What is an expression for pointed sophistry? (hint: BBM looks like coal)

n/t

[kristopher]

9. Whatever that means your assertion remains false.