Japan’s Electricity Shortage to Last Months
TOKYO — The term “rolling blackouts” has become shorthand for noting one way Japan is trying to cope with its national calamity.
Shorthand should not be confused with short term. Utility experts and economists say it will take many months, possibly into next year, to get anywhere close to restoring full power.
The places most affected are not only in the earthquake-ravaged area but also in the economically crucial region closer to Tokyo, which is having to ration power because of the big chunk of the nation’s electrical generating capacity that was knocked out by the quake or washed away by the tsunami.
Besides the dangerously disabled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, three other nuclear plants, six coal-fired plants and 11 oil-fired power plants were initially shut down, according to PFC Energy, an international consulting firm.
By some measures, as much as 20 percent...
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/business/global/29power.html?src=buslnHere is a description by Amory Lovins of the way reliability is portrayed by nuclear supporters, and the reality. Following that is a brief statement from DOE about the benefits of distributed generation, which is the way renewables fit together; and then a challenge for nuclear supporters to justify their claims for more public spending on nuclear fission technology.
The “baseload” myth
... 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
Available for download:
http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/2009-09_FourNuclearMyths THE POTENTIAL BENEFITS OF DISTRIBUTED GENERATION AND RATE-RELATED ISSUES THAT MAY IMPEDE ITS EXPANSION
June 2007
U.S. Department of Energy
Executive Summary
Background
Section 1817 of the Energy Policy Act (EPACT) of 2005 calls for the Secretary of Energy to conduct a study of the potential benefits of cogeneration and small power production, otherwise known as distributed generation, or DG. The benefits to be studied are described in subpart (2)(A) of Section 1817. In accordance with Section 1817 the study includes those benefits received “either directly or indirectly by an electricity distribution or transmission service provider, other customers served by an electricity distribution or transmission service provider and/or the general public in the area served by the public utility in which the cogenerator or small power producer is located.” Congress did not require the study to include the potential benefits to owners/operators of DG units.1
The specific areas of potential benefits covered in this study include:
• Increased electric system reliability (Section 2 of the Study)
• An emergency supply of power (Section 2 and 7 of the Study)
• Reduction of peak power requirements (Section 3 of the Study)
• Offsets to investments in generation, transmission, or distribution facilities that would otherwise be recovered through rates (Section 3 of the Study)
• Provision of ancillary services, including reactive power (Section 4 of the Study)
• Improvements in power quality (Section 5 of the Study)
• Reductions in land-use effects and rights-of-way acquisition costs (Section 6 of the Study)
• Reduction in vulnerability to terrorism and improvements in infrastructure resilience (Section 7 of the Study)
Additionally, Congress requested an analysis of “...any rate-related issue that may impede or otherwise discourage the expansion of cogeneration and small power production facilities, including a review of whether rates, rules, or other requirements imposed on the facilities are comparable to rates imposed on customers of the same class that do not have cogeneration or small power production.” (Section 8 of the Study)
A Brief History of DG
DG is not a new phenomenon. Prior to the advent of alternating current and large-scale steam turbines - during the initial phase of the electric power industry in the early 20th century - all energy requirements, including heating, cooling, lighting, and motive power, were supplied at or near their point of use. Technical advances, economies of scale in power production and delivery, the expanding role of electricity in American life, and its concomitant regulation as a public utility, all gradually converged to enable the network of gigawatt-scale thermal power plants located far from urban centers that we know today, with high-voltage transmission and lower voltage distribution lines carrying electricity to virtually every business, facility, and home in the country.
At the same time this system of central generation was evolving, some customers found it economically advantageous to install and operate their own electric power and thermal energy systems, particularly in the industrial sector. Moreover, facilities with needs for highly reliable power, such as hospitals and telecommunications centers, frequently installed their own electric generation units to use for emergency power during outages. Traditionally, these forms of DG were not assets under the control of electric utilities. However, in some cases, they produced benefits to the overall electric system by supplying needed power to those consumers in lieu of the local electricity provider. In such cases, utility investment for facilities and/or system capacity that would have been used to supply those customers could be re- directed to expand/upgrade the network.
Over the years, the technologies for both central generation and DG improved by becoming more efficient and less costly. Implementation of Section 210 of the Public Utilities Regulatory Policy Act of 1978 (PURPA) sparked a new era of highly energy efficient and renewable DG for electric system applications. Section 210 established a new class of non-utility generators called “Qualifying Facilities” (QFs) and provided financial incentives to encourage development of cogeneration and small power production. Many QFs have since provided energy to consumers on-site, but some have sold power at rates and under terms and conditions that have been either negotiated or set by state regulatory authorities or non- regulated utilities.
Today, advances in new materials and designs for photovoltaic panels, microturbines, reciprocating engines, thermally-activated devices, fuel cells, digital controls, and remote monitoring equipment (among other components and technologies) have expanded the range of opportunities and applications for “next generation” DG, and have made it possible to tailor energy systems to the specific needs of consumers. These technical advances, combined with changing consumer needs, and the restructuring of wholesale and retail markets for electric power and natural gas, have opened even more opportunities for consumers to use DG to meet their own energy needs.
At the same time, these circumstances can allow electric utilities to explore the possibilities of utilizing DG to help address the requirements of a modern electric system. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has supported research and development in an effort to make these “next generation” DG devices more energy efficient, reliable, clean and affordable. The aim of these efforts has been to accelerate the pace of development of “next generation” energy systems, and promote greater energy security, economic competitiveness, and environmental protection. These “next generation” systems are the focus of this study....
The full study may be found at
http://www.oe.energy.gov.Why should we build nuclear?
At this point it is up to the supporters to justify it.
1. nuclear power isn't "cheap" it is expensive;
2. learning and new standardized designs will not solve all past problems - waste, safety and proliferation are part and parcel of the technology;
3. the waste problem is a real problem, even if we’d follow the lead of many other nations and “recycle” our spent fuel;
4. climate change does not make a renaissance "inevitable";
5. there are other ways to provide electricity than with large-scale “baseload” sources of generation - "baseload" is in reality nothing more than an economic construct that developed around centralized generation and a distributed approach is technically far superior;
6. there’s every reason to worry that a rapidly expanding global industry will put nuclear power and weapons technologies in highly unstable nations, often nations with ties to terrorist organizations.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
