MSE News: Government to appeal High Court solar ruling

Blossom2528

Shouldn't we allow renewables some slack. even the americans think co2 is a problem now. or am I being stupid.

jamesd

Thanks, so that's roughly the high end of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority's value and includes lots of cost related to weapons and fuel reprocessing unrelated to UK power generation.

To give some idea of costs per kWh, a reasonably typical single commercial reactor might generate power at 800-1200 megawatts and operate for 80% of the time. Over one year that's about 233 million kWh of power. The plant would have an expected service life of perhaps 40 years, so that's 9,344 billion kWh of power. Attributing all of the cleanup costs over 100 years for all plants and all of the weapons and unrelated reprocessing costs to just the one plant over just 40 years of operation means a cost of 0.61p per kWh.

But there hasn't been just one reactor operating, its been more like twenty. So that takes the cost of decommissioning and all of the other non-power cleanup to something like 0.03 p per kWh.

This compares to a 43.3p per kWh FIT subsidy that's 1,400 times higher.

So you've mentioned some nice big numbers, but when expressed in pence per kWh they aren't so big after all compared to the FIT.

Now, nuclear power cleanup costs are estimated to be somewhere between 1% and 5% of the total cost of construction and fuel and everything else for a plant's lifetime. So to better compare with FIT that's covering all costs, at 1% that's 3p per kWh. That's reasonably consistent with the advertised costs for nuclear power generation so the numbers appear to be reasonably consistent.

Plenty of room to try to use other approximations for power generated and to perhaps halve of quarter the cleanup cost to get the cost for just power generation cleanup if you want to try that but my estimate is that the real cost for just nuclear power cleanup is less than one five thousandth of the FIT cost for solar PV. And if that 3p was the cost for everything, the PV FIT would be fourteen times higher. Of course we don't need to use these estimates for costs of various forms of power because there are some current estimates of costs for newbuild power stations available that we can use instead.

Cost per kWh is an important measure to use so we can be sure we're not just throwing around big numbers without any idea of what it really means to people in their electricity cost.

HalloweenJack

panel prices have dropped 30% in the last year , so a 20% drop this is feasable - inverters are also still dropping , retail a 1700 rated sunnyboy is £800

Martyn1981

grahamc2003 wrote: »

That's very astute of you.

No doubt you also think it's unlikely that there'll ever be a Muslim Pope.

Just to flesh out your thoughts, could you tell the board how much solar energy and Nuclear energy was generated in 2011?

That's very astute of you.

Thank you, I feel it's only proper to make realistic assumptions when looking forward.

No doubt you also think it's unlikely that there'll ever be a Muslim Pope.

I don't feel qualified to comment. I leave such statements to you.

Just to flesh out your thoughts, could you tell the board how much solar energy and Nuclear energy was generated in 2011?

Isn't it about time you supplied some referenced numbers, and stopped leaving all the heavy lifting to informed contributors?

However, I have previously stated that domestic generation through PV could reach approx 14% of domestic demand. Nuclear generation is declining, but is currently around 14% of supply (all supply, not just domestic). Difficult to guess regarding commercial installs, but probably higher potential depending on roof designs.

Why do you want to compare 2011 generation, aren't you aware that PV is a relatively new product in the UK?

Thanks as always.

Mart.

jamesd

Blossom2528 wrote: »

Shouldn't we allow renewables some slack. even the americans think co2 is a problem now. or am I being stupid.

You're not being stupid but what we need to look at is reduction in pollution emissions and the cost for say each ton of CO2 not released. That can be done more cheaply in ways other than the solar PV subsidy through things like improved insulation and more efficient appliances.

Looking a bit longer term we can also look to the chance of things like electric vehicles powered by unreliable renewable generation like solar PV and wind at times when that generation is producing power. This sort of thing could greatly increase the amount of power generation in the UK and save a lot of lives through reduced vehicle emissions in towns that kill a lot of people through things like fine soot particle releases.

Martyn1981 wrote: »

It's unlikely that PV will ever reach the scale of nuclear in Britain

I'm not so sure about that. Costs are dropping rapidly and we may eventually see things like mandatory installation of solar PV in all suitable newbuilds. I do expect solar PV generation in the UK to exceed current nuclear levels.

HalloweenJack

it would be better to throw money at the grid network to improve it rather than spend money on pv to be honest - the benefits would be felt for many more years than 10 panels on a roof.

grahamc2003

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Why do you want to compare 2011 generation, aren't you aware that PV is a relatively new product in the UK?

Thanks as always.

Mart.

I don't want to compare 2011 generation, I want you to. I'm sure the scal of the difference would be an eye opener for you.

If you don't like my historic 2011 year, you could try it with your projections for the generation from Nuclear and Solar in 2012.

Often in these forums, a sense of scale is usually missing, and that was very well personified by your view that solar may not reach the (current) levels of energy contribution from Nuclear.

The scales are several orders of magnitude different.

HalloweenJack

now , i have a question for the readers - in the clutch of renewables - where does solar actually stand and which renewable source is the most widly used? (rhetorical question since i have the answer)

Blossom2528

Thanks James, Martyn said something similar about waiting 5 years and insulating everything. didnt know pv could get so big. But why does Graham want to comapre them now?

grahamc2003

jamesd wrote: »

I do expect solar PV generation in the UK to exceed current nuclear levels.

Well that implies about 110GW of solar capacity (say 10%cf for solar 95%cf Nukes)

At say £2k/kW installed, that means finding £220 billion from somewhere, just for solar. That's roughly £10,000 per household, and more panels than would fit on all the homes, suitable or not, in the UK.

I think not, especially as even if that were possible, it would all have to be duplicted anyhow to ensure peak demand was met. So total spending for that amount of solar plus other generation made necessary by that much, to satisfy peak demand, would be something of the order of £370 billion.