Mike Nemeth said:

The concept of parity is fascinating from a market perspective. A Recovery Act report, http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/uploads/Recovery_Act_Innovation.pdf, says "The cost of solar is forecast to reach grid parity over the next five years in many parts of the country," citing information from the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Technologies Program. Of course for that to happen, technology must play along. Much depends on development of solar thin-film technology, which comes in two main varieties: cadmium telluride, or Cd-Te, and copper indium gallium selenide, or CIGS.

Then again a friend who works in the Texas oil patch tells me there's just so much oil out there (in various forms) that competition faced by clean energy will be stiff for many years to come. And don't discount natural gas. New extraction techniques have uncovered vast U.S. reserves made available by new techniques such as hydraulic fracturing.

Thanks for the post.

JohnEnglert said:

I think it should be noted that Dr. Blackburn's article was so biased that the NY times has printed a retraction of the story they ran his research:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/27/business/global/27iht-renuke.html?_r=3

You would think that the fact that the research wasn't published in a peer-reviewed journal would have made them think twice about running the story in the first place.  Oh well, at least they caught their mistake.  

Maureen McHale said:

Excellent article.  Thanks for bringing it to my attention on LinkedIn.

--Maureen

Mike Greczyn said:

Correction, the nuclear subsidy in 2007 was $.00159, not $.0159. Foiled again by math in public.

Mike Greczyn said:

What's interesting to me is the number of folks who think that nuclear power receives no subsidies.  In fact, although the subsidy $/kwh is lower for nuclear than for solar, the aggregate amount is much higher.  Orders of magnitude higher, in fact.  And this is for a technology that hasn't seen an installation in this county in decades! 

As far as $0.02/kwh nuclear power is concerned, the feds were doling out $.0159/kwh to nuclear generators as of 2007, so if that absurdly low cost figure is true, the obvious question is why would such an efficient industry need such a massive subsidy? Wind costs around a nickel and gets a $.021/kwh subsidy so it would seem to be under-subsidized relative to nuclear.

All energy, it turns out, is subsidized.  The only way you, Citizen, will EVER have access to energy that is not subisidized is if you put up your own power plant and explicitly decline to accept government money for doing it.  People tend not to accuse conventional power technologies of "only working because of government money" because A) they are traditionally championed by groups that successfully sell themselves as being opposed to subsidies and B) we've been subsidizing them for so long we've forgotten it's happening. Clean energy is the ONLY category of generation that ANYONE is suggesting should have to be "economically competitive".  Energy prices have been so distorted by subsidies and monopoly markets for so long that I suggest there is almost nothing "economic" about them.  The question must be asked then: should we choose to subsidize an industry that is creating zero jobs, has added zero capacity in 30 years, has a 10 year lead time before commercial operation, is plagued with increasingly unattractive economics, has a huge waste storage issue and looming problems with water usage OR should we subsidize an industry that is adding jobs, adding capacity rapidly, is modular and distributed, scales easily, has economics that get better every year, generates neglible pollution and uses no water?  This doesn't seem like it should be a hard question to answer.

In the end, the trend lines tell the story (and no, solar developers won't be writing you checks).  Regardless of subsidies, nuclear power will continue to get more expensive and PV will continue to get cheaper.  When that first new nuke finally gets switched on 10 years and untold billions of dollars from now, it might have to sell it's power above market prices to survive.

BobWallace said:

Interesting,  Rod, that you fail to report the projected cost of electricity from  CSP with storage even though it was pointed out to you in the conversation which you link.  I suppose $0.06/kWh is not something that those pushing nuclear want to hear.  (And that number includes projected maintenance/operational costs including cleaning the mirrors.)

Then you talk about 2 cent nuclear, while somehow wishing away the cost of plant construction and financing, as well as the immense subsidies new nuclear would have to receive just to get under $0.20/kWh.  I could drive a Bugatti Veyron if someone else paid for the car and gave me free insurance.

As for your 'cheap tickets only good for those times when events are not scheduled' thing, très bogus.  Power is most needed when the sun is shining brightest. 

First Solar has announced that they are now manufacturing panels for $0.76/watt and expect to bring that cost down another ten to twenty cents per watt in the next four years.  Add on a bit for FS profit and some for installation costs and sunny hours demand will be supplied by roof-top PV solar and utility field PV solar.  CSP with storage at anything under ten cents per kWh will dominate high demand evening hours.  Wind at a nickle per kWh is overly abundant at night.  Geothermal and biomass firing will crank along 24/7 at a dime or less.

Pay attention to what Craig posted above...

"With solar now competing for the high-value kWh’s in the daytime, and wind competing with very cheap power for low night time rates, what niche is left for a power plant that runs all the time? The "anachronism" of base load power (Chairman Wellinghoff’s term) can only compete if it is cheap. If instead you need to sell kWh’s 90% of the time at a high rate, does this work?"

Where's the niche that will let new nuclear sell it's product for cost X 4 or more?  That few hours of the day when the grid will be so hungry for power that it will pay well up to a dollar per kWh? 

(Hint: There isn't one.  Those hours can be filled by storage, load shifting, and gas turbines.)

---

First Solar is planning on installing 500 to 700 megawatts of PV during the next 12 months. Each year they do so FS, alone, negates one new reactor.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/first-solar-drops-cost-to-76-cents-a-watt/

Craig Severance said:

It is quite useful to pencil this out for a real solar PV system. I routinely do this for my clients both residential and commercial, for real solar proposals. When you do this, you will see how viable solar PV already is at today’s prices for retail small-system customers (the highest cost PV as volume customers would be lower).

Remember, solar PV is a distributed power source so it must only compete with retail electric rates (when there is net metering, common in many states today). It need not compete with the incompletel-cost busbar electricity cost (without any transmission & distribution costs added) at the power station.

The key to determining the viability for a retail customer is the Cash Flow Analysis. If the customer finances the system, which is likely, they have converted an up-front cost into a monthly payment, similar to their monthly savings on their electric bills.

For a sample 9.8 KW system in my location – Grand Junction, CO – the customer can expect net production of about 17,000 kWh/yr, from my own experience with an identical system. At a very conservative 11 cents/kWh retail electric rate, this saves $1,870 on their electric bills the first year. These savings will go up every year as electric rates rise, say at 8%/yr which is also pretty conservative given recent history.

If they finance the cost of say $5,000/kW, as I said a pretty high cost for today because this is for small customers, as part of a 30-yr refinanced home mortgage at 6.5% interest rate (also high today), the addition to their monthly mortgage payments is about $3,492/year. Initially, electric savings aren’t quite enough to make the extra mortgage payments, but with electric rate increases the cross-over occurs by Year 9, after which the project cash flows positive every year just on electric bill savings.

Yet we mustn’t forget the 30% Federal Tax Credit, which the customer gets in Year 1.  Even with no utility help whatsoever, this is cash in their pocket of $14,700 in Year 1 – enough to make those mortgage payments for several years.

Pencil it out and you will see that the customer – even at today’s PV prices – is never out a single penny, and they have positive cash flow in their pocket, after making the loan payments, from Year 1 forward. (They can cut their Federal WH to make sure of this since they won’t owe the taxes.) This Positive Cash Flow never goes below $12,000 positive balance to their bank account in any year.

It’s even better for businesses – as they can depreciate the equipment over five years.

Progressive utilities like Xcel Energy are actively promoting solar PV because it has become a cheap way for them to meet daytime peak and intermediate loads, and the customers actually pay part of the costs of doing so.

Utilities who ignore these facts, however, do so at their peril as more customers are "walking away" daily as seen by the explosive growth of the solar PV market.

This is no academic or think tank study -- look into this yourself, and you will see that central utility shareholders should be concerned about their ability to continue to sell their product.

David Lewis said:

What matters isn't whether the NYTimes provided balance, what matters is what is the truth. I see no particular conceptual reason ruling out that someone might discover how to produce solar PV cheaper than nuclear one day, but I remain hesitant about believing that it has been done just on the basis of hearing about this one report. 

One factor few bring up in any consideration of how expensive nuclear power is or could be, is the dramatic escalation of the cost of reactors that came about especially after the Three Mile Island incident.  Cohen has his book The Nuclear Option online, with a chapter on cost escalation. 

Reactors that used to cost $100 or $200 million escalated up into the multi bilions, and it isn't clear what extra safety was secured by spending all that money. For instance, quoting from the President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island:  "Indeed, once regulations become as voluminous and complex as those regulations now in place, they can serve as a negative factor in nuclear safety", and that quote is about the industry before it was inflicted with regulators driven by public fear after Three Mile Island.  

The industry has become ultra conservative and does not lobby in the way other industries do to fight off regulation that chip away at its viability.  Some industry PR experience has shown that no matter what public education efforts are tried, afterwards the general population seems to be more worried about nuclear problems than before. 

They used to dream up a reactor design and start in on construction before finalizing most important parts of it and get the whole thing operational in less time than it takes to get approval to do anything these days and the people who did that (the US naval reactor program) never had an accident. 

It seems clear to me that nuclear power could be far cheaper than it is. 

OshaDavidson said:

The NYT has issued the following statement about their report on the study "Historic Crossover," a statement which I believe calls into question the validity of the claims:

An article published July 27 in an Energy Special Report analyzed the costs of nuclear energy production. It quoted a study that found that electricity from solar photovoltaic systems could now be produced less expensively than electricity from new nuclear power plants.

In raising several questions about this issue and the economics of nuclear power, the article failed to point out, as it should have, that the study was prepared for an environmental advocacy group, which, according to its Web site, is committed to ‘‘tackling the accelerating crisis posed by climate change — along with the various risks of nuclear power.’’ The article also failed to take account of other studies that have come to contrasting conclusions, or to include in the mix of authorities quoted any who elaborated on differing analyses of the economics of energy production.

Although the article did quote extensively from the Web site of the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group, representatives of the institute were not given an opportunity to respond to the claims of the study. This further contributed to an imbalance in the presentation of this issue.

Bob Wallace said:

"CF turns into some very expensive electricity even if there are no fuel costs to worry about."

I find it telling that you use the FOAK numbers when just the day before you were given expected prices in your discussion with Carlo Ombello.  You even link the discussion on Carbon Commentary.  Why did you not report that the expected price of CSP is somewhere around $0.06/kWh?  Expected to be about as cheap as wind.

---

"How is that cheaper than nuclear - which has an average, all in operational and maintenance cost of about 2 cents per kilowatt hour here in the US?"

How do you purpose to go back in time and build more of these "2 cents" reactors?  Got a plan to find a few trillion dollars under a mattress somewhere?  I can afford to drive a Bugatti if someone else pays for the purchase and gives me free insurance.

--

"One more thing - how much will the developers charge for solar electricity at night or on a cloudy day? What power source will step in to fill in the gaps when solar is not available?"

When will nuclear pushers quit setting up unreal worlds?  No one advocates supplying the grid with a single source of power.  No one. 

The grid of the future, just like the grid of today, will be fed by a mix of generation methods.  Time of availability and cost of production will determine that mix.  PV solar will obviously supply power when the sun is shining, wind when the wind is blowing.  CSP with storage will come into its own during those hours right after the sun goes down.  Geothermal and biomass firing will crank along around the clock.  Hydro will be both continuous and serve as fill-in power, depending on water availability in the area.   All are, or soon will be, less expensive electricity generators than is new nuclear.

And, yes, that will leave some time blocks uncovered.

Now, how will we fill those blocks?  With nuclear which will have to average $0.12+/kWh on a 24 hour basis?  What if nuclear has only an average daily 30% block into which it can sell its power, thus needing 40+ cents per kWh to stay in business?

Or will we find it less expensive to store excess wind/solar power for those blocks?   (And, obviously, we can fill those blocks much less expensively with gas turbines.)

Let's revisit Craig's post above...

"With solar now competing for the high-value kWh’s in the daytime, and wind competing with very cheap power for low night time rates, what niche is left for a power plant that runs all the time? The "anachronism" of base load power (Chairman Wellinghoff’s term) can only compete if it is cheap. If instead you need to sell kWh’s 90% of the time at a high rate, does this work?"

David Lewis said:

I heard a radio interview on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) with Monbiot about the time his book "Heat" came out, and I immediately recognized him as a master of the issue of climate change.  He's one of those guys who has to have an answer for every aspect of the issue, and he has a job, i.e. as a The Guardian newspaper weekly columnist, that requires him to try to be on top of everthing associated with climate. 

I read "Heat" in 2006 when it came out.  The guy can write, and he knows the climate issue, as I said.  Anyone who argues seriously for 90% or more reductions in CO2 emissions in all developed countries as quickly as possible has my support.  I thought a lot of his prescriptions for what to do were a bit out of his league, or not worth bothering to flesh out in so much detail, as what actually is done, if anything, depends on so many other people agreeing.  We've got all these planet killers around. 

I guess I went through my phase of having to have an answer for all questions back in the late 1980s when I staked my political career, what miniscule prospects for it as there were, on talking the entire world into restoring the composition of the Earth's atmosphere to what it was before the Industrial Revolution began, i.e. 280 ppm CO2.  After I gave that quest up a number of years later, I reconciled myself to the notion that life, as in Life on Earth, would continue to exist in some form, no matter what, which allowed me to find some peace.  Since then I've even given up on the no matter what, as I agree with Hansen that there is a risk of feedback causing the oceans to boil away causing Earth to never have life again.  Still, I'm not one of those environmentalists who hate humans for doing in their cherished wild places, and/or for killing the planet.  I'm on the side of the humans, hoping they'll wake up to their peril one day. 

I say people will find they have a lot of power at that point, and I don't count them out even as this late hour slips away. 

Uncle B said:

A whole website of Americans in conflict!  Meanwhile, China, and the rest of Asia for that matter, forge ahead in all directions! Solar, Wind Wave, Hydro, Tidal, Geothermal, and Nuclear! Anything to get away from the high prices Americans are willing to pay for Oil, their addiction of choice! American Electric plants burn coal for now because it is domestic and available and the infrastructure supports it. Realize: China has up and running, nuclear/electric sourced, electric bullet train networks and the associated infrastructures complete with workers fed veggies and rice, producing products at very cheap prices, and oil free, for American and World markets. Keep in mind that Asians are duplicating this economical miracle as we speak, and will soon overwhelm American and world markets with goods porduced by nuclear engines alone! Meanwhile back in the U.S.A. we still run SUV's in the 'burbs filled with McMansions and expect to achive superiority by mystic means - it won't happen! As long as America bulls ahead on the oil and coal route, and worships the V-8 engine we will fail miserably when competing in the Asian nuclear age.

CraigShields said:

Most of the discussion surrounding the choice between energy technologies that lay before us centers around two narrow considerations - the viability of the technology to provide baseload, and the discrete cost per kWh as paid by the customer to the utility. In my view, CSP will likely shine in both categories with the use of molten salt for energy storage and Google's new mirror production process - see this link:

http://www.ecogeek.org/solar-power/3090

The many cost benefit analyses I've seen discussed for nuclear don't give me a glowing feeling for numerous reasons, including the ones I’ve detailed here:

http://2greenenergy.com/nuclear/4833/

Two different aspects I should like to see take the lead in the discussion are 1) what is the cost of a reasonable worst case scenario mishap with each technology, and can we afford that cost, and 2) which technology makes the most sense from the perspective of the total long term impact from end to end - both actual and potential - on the beautiful biosphere that sustains all life, including our own.

I hope we figure it out quick and proceed at speed, because with China and India rising to chase the oil we've long regarded as our personal foreign reserve, we don't have the luxury of a leisurely stroll to energy independence.

Craig Shields, Editor, 2GreenEnergy.com, and author, Renewable Energy - Facts and Fantasies (2010)

steve said:

Ok lots of facts and figures but missing the most important concept. How we produce electricity without carbon based fuels is important but not as important as how we use that electricity.

We just need too much of it, now by addressing our needs and reducing them we might meet what is physicaly possible to produce by renewables.

Our house in Spain runs on a 200 watt inverter, thats right 2 x100watt light bulbs of power is all we have available at any one time.

(ok we need the generator for the washing machine but that is because of the amount of start up lecky needed for the motor)

crf said:

Who made that graph and decided to fit those trend lines to it?

Is there any basis in reality to think those trend lines are valid at their extrema in the present (2010) let alone for those data points in the future? By 2020 are the solar utility companies going to be giving their customers cheques along with their power? Those trend lines say so.

Anyone will look at that graph and think: "WTH is this author trying to sell me?"

David Lewis said:

George Monbiot, Guardian columnist, would like to be a solar believer.  As he says: 

"Like most environmentalists I believe that small is beautiful. I hate pylon lines and I don’t care for the sight of big power plants of any description, wind farms included. I detest the big energy firms which provide our electricity. I am deeply attracted to the idea of being able to produce my own power, just as I love producing my own fruit and vegetables. But my attempts to find the best means of tackling climate change, which I explain at greater length in my book Heat, have forced me to put my gut feelings to one side. Our choices must be based on the best possible information. Otherwise we waste our lives chasing chimaeras"

Monbiot has written a number of columns explaining why he is opposed to U.K. feed in tariffs such as those in Germany for solar power. See here.  Quote:

"By 2008 solar PV was producing a grand total of 0.6% of Germany’s electricity. 0.6% for E35bn. [35 billion euros]  Hands up all those who think this is a good investment.

After years of these incredible payments, and the innovation and cost reductions they were supposed to stimulate, the paper estimates that saving one tonne of carbon dioxide through solar PV in Germany still costs E716. The International Energy Agency has produced an even higher estimate: E1000 per tonne. There are dozens of ways in which you can save carbon for 100th of the cost of solar PV at high latitudes."

Quoting from the report Osha links to, i.e. page 17 "average installed costs were substantially lower in Germany and Japan". 

Monbiot is writing about solar PV in Germany, where Osha's cited report states solar PV has been cheaper to install than in the US up to now. 

Geant Erreur said:

Osha was saying not long ago that nuclear was too expensive, that's why no one should use it, now he touts solar because according to him, solar is now getting as cheap as nuclear. '

GerryRunte1 said:

This is under construction, exceeds a GW, has a much better capacity factor than the citations above and is around $4,000 kW installed.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/02/bigsolar/

Since the early 80's, beginning with EPRI's advanced LWR designs, they all were predicted to come in at $1,800/kW. 30 years from now they will be making the same prediction.

Nuclear only appears cheap in the US because all that gets cited are variable O&M and fuel.  Most reactors magically had their initial construction cost and billions in outage upgrades erased when they were bought for cents on the dollar by independent operators (although the original ratepayers are still paying off that debt). None of them have all in costs anywhere near 2 cents kwh.

A real apples and oranges comparison will yield a conclusion similar to the headline that provoked these comments.

RickEngebretson said:

Physics advocates Solar Power development. On a hot, sunny day a solar collector and power converter EXPORTS energy from where we want it cooler. IMPORTING energy to cool an area where we already have too much energy is goofy physics. Draw some vectors.

Of course the cost of solar energy needs to be reduced. I don't defend many current designs. But, again, do some physics. Solar energy is FREE, grid voltage is expensive. So in between we have photons doing what photons do; getting absorbed by valence electrons to excited molecular or crystalline electrons. This is where I like the high efficiency, small package semiconductor. Optical waveguides and light pipes, fancy collection designs, etc. are among many useful tools of the optics trade. Anybody remember the old LP records (now replaced by optical DVDs)? Remember Polaroid photos (now replaced by digital optics)? It is silly to presume solar power will not get cheaper.

At the same time, the amount of technology and capital resources between a controlled fission reaction and grid voltage is humbling, indeed. I HOPE there are people who can pull it off because nuclear will remain important for a long time. But bragging isn't doing, and I suspect most nuclear proponents fall in this category.

Peter Reck said:

Let's stay real, can we?  

Since when is solar recognized as potentially providing base load generation across the US?

Until solar can be utilized (perhaps even with other renewable energy generation) as a reliable base load source then the comparison in cost against Nuclear (or chicken poop plants) is mute.  Enablers like advanced energy storage, aggregation (demand side control), and load following/ frequency regulation technologies, etc., may help solar (and wind generation) to reach a respectable percentage of the total mix.  But don't go shutting the coal plants down just yet. 

I would love to cover my roof with windmills and PVs; and fill my garage with Axion Power deep cells. Even run a micro turbine in a stream behind the house...

If you live in the PJM where the wind sometimes blows enough at night to turn a turbine (when currently you don't need it), and the sun refuses to constantly shine (esp. at night, darn it), you could just dream about all the solar powered toasters in North Carolina at Duke.  Even CSPs ( http://bit.ly/9ApeJh ) won't work on a cloudy day in Cleveland Ohio - or D.C.  http://bit.ly/enlw2

Generation utilities will continue to maintain and expand a diversified generation fleet, continually reviewing and chasing regulations, politics, stimulus incentives, and proven cost-effective technology.  

New nuclear NSSS designs that are scalable and have much lower capital requirements and operational costs -- (such as the SMR design recently announced by the B&W / Bechtel alliance) -- should reduce financial risk for loan guarantees and turn-key project time frames.   http://www.bechtel.com/mpower  I would bet that scalable SMR based nuclear will be a huge percentage of the future base load mix.  

Solar is probably not the only technology to compete with fossil-fired generation that is going to get more affordable.  Anything can happen (if the government stays out of it). Maybe someone will find those missing Tesla white papers --  http://to.pbs.org/aZn4Pu --  or build the Tesla free energy tower ( http://bit.ly/btWoGRor ) that JPM wanted nothing to do with.  

Finally isn't there the fabled over-unity power generation technology that might arrive from outer space (or Lichtenstein) one day? http://www.terawatt.com/

Forget that first line about staying real.

Craig Severance said:

Everyone till now who has discussed this post has come at it from a "utility-centric" world view – as if the only decision makers were utility executives. Customers, however, are now important players.

The existence of a competitive and distributed power source such as rooftop PV which can compete with grid pricing changes everything! That is the real message of this article.

Utility central planning only works when consumers are willing (and able) to pay whatever the electric utility charges. Customers, however, can now walk away.

With nuclear’s very long lead time and very high capital costs, a utility must bet tens of billions on a new power station that won’t come on line for ten years.

What will be the cost of PV ten years from now?  How easy will it be for customers to shave their electricity demand through PV and efficiency? Will high cost central power compete?

If not, nuclear’s "Bet the Farm" risk (Moody’s term for nuclear) will go sour. Loan guarantees only protect lenders. Ask a utility shareholder if their stock value is guaranteed. 

With solar now competing for the high-value kWh’s in the daytime, and wind competing with very cheap power for low night time rates, what niche is left for a power plant that runs all the time? The "anachronism" of base load power (Chairman Wellinghoff’s term) can only compete if it is cheap. If instead you need to sell kWh’s 90% of the time at a high rate, does this work?

Business risks are at least as important as cost projections. We know what distributed power and efficiency measures cost, as we are already doing them. Their costs look to go even lower.  No one knows what a new nuclear plant will cost – except that it will be more than today.  

The "crossover" is the death knell point for high cost central power. "X" marks the spot as clearly as the mark on a condemned man facing a firing squad.

Joe Kraska said:

On the subject of efficiency, it only matters indirectly. For example, given a PV that's 10X less efficient, but 100X less expensive, you have a fairly good PV at first blush. That would, of course, lead to higher actual costs to install (more infrastructure) as well as the rather obvious need for more square footage to install an equivalently powered system. That, of course, will be ultimately captured via indirect, as the rental value or depreciation value of the land is of course a real cost of doing business.

quixote said:

To the pro-nuclear commenters here.  All you need to know about nuclear: the nuclear industry itself will not build nukes without taxpayers to take on the construction loan guarantees.  And the industry itself will not run a single plant without the taxpayers to take on the open-ended part of failure risk via the Price-Anderson Act. (Their liability is capped.)

I'm curious.  Why are you supporting an industry that doesn't put its money where its mouth is?

Nathaniel said:

The title of this article is not only misleading but FALSE.  Solar is not cheaper than Nuclear and will only be in the future if you don't count government subsidies as a cost.  How is this reasonable?  By your logic, if the government subsidized 100% of nuclear power then Nuclear power is free!  Ridiculous!

JohnEnglert said:

The study by Dr. Blackburn isn't consistent with the study done by DOE EIA. 

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/electricity_generation.html

EIA shows the levalized cost of future electic generation such as solar PV which is projedted to be $396/MWh and solar thermal at $256/MWh.  The same study projects nuclear at $119/MWh.    Why is there such a descrepancy between Dr. Blackburn and the EIA?  This can be answered with a little digging into the source of the funding for the research for this article, which reveals an anti-nuclear bias.

StephenGloor said:

Rod Adams - "Osha - that is a fine academic study. Now look at real life costs. For example, look at the rather eye popping numbers associated with the world's first molten salt concentrating solar plant (CSP)."

I would just like to clarify the technology of this plant that you have posted.  It is a molten salt plant where the salts are used as the working fluid instead of mineral oil like the units operating in Spain.  In this case it is most definitely a FOAK and is a small demonstration plant rather than a serious power plant.

In that light of course it is going to be really expensive so no real cost comparisons can be made. This is not even close to being an accurate cost of the much larger plants when they come on line.

Additionally you seem to have missed this:

"Last but not least, the higher temperatures reached by the molten salts enable the use of steam turbines at the standard pressure/temperature parameters as used in most common gas-cycle fossil power plants. This means that conventional power plants can be integrated – or, in perspective, replaced – with this technology without expensive retrofits to the existing assets."

This plant can be supplemented easily with conventional gas so the capacity factor can be whatever is required not limited to 42%.  The amount of gas burnt can be adjusted with the amount of storage until a price and emissions point is reached where the gas use is minimal.

Power towers will reduce the cost of molten salt as there is no need for kilometers of pipe running above the troughs as all the molten salt part is in the tower.  Solar reserve seems to be leading this charge:

http://www.solar-reserve.com/

Additionally the use of heliostats helps to minimise the lower winter output due to the sun being lower in the sky. Heliostats can point at the sun no matter where it is however troughs are flat on the ground and cannot be tilted up to be pointing at the sun when it is low in the sky.

RickEngebretson said:

Osha, I believe CSP-PV is already far and away the most efficient (some group in Spain claims a world best, and they did win the soccer tournament and bike race). I think the lenses and mirrors are limiting collection strategies. Optical waveguides with special coatings offer large, low cost collection surface areas. Our semiconductor industry must stay competetive. When I was pushing fiber optics in the early 80s someone said, "Who ever heard of glass wires?"

My quote is, "Everybody on the planet wants a window."

OshaDavidson said:

Rod,

As usual, you pack a lot into a single post (a good thing; just challenging). I'll try to hit the high spots. And thanks for the links, BTW.

The molten salt CSP technology you mention has a cost of 16¢ kWh, according to a pdf document on their Website (in Italian only, unfortunately), with an estimated reduction down to 6¢ kWh by 2025. Whether or not they achieve that goal is a fair question, but it does seem in line with technological leaps in solar efficiency in the past few years.

I'm not sure how the cost of feed-in tariffs in Germany and Spain is relevant to this particular thread, since it isn't mentioned in the study or in my post. (Let me know if I missed a reference to EU FITs in the study.) Any discussion of European subsidies should include the French nuclear program, which is often mentioned as a model for the U.S.

A few days ago, the International Energy Agency issued its first review of French energy policies and performance since 2004. They wrote:

"The French energy policy is characterized by strategic continuity and its key four principles have not changed over the last years. They still are: i) security of energy supply, ii) competitive energy supply, iii) sustainable energy development and iv) equal level of energy service to all territories and all citizens."

With nuclear power generating 77% of their electricity, perhaps France has made the right energy choices. But these are overwhelmingly not market decisions. France's energy policy is a great example of what in the U.S. is called command-and-control, centralized decision-making with energy costs still largely determined by what until very recently were absolute state monopolies.

The nuclear power model that France offers is socialist. I'm not red-baiting here; just stating a fact. Technology itself may be ideologically neutral, but all the important decisions about funding, R&D, deployment, risk-benefit analysis -- that is, everything that goes into making a source of energy possible or impossible in the real world -- is subject to ideology.

Even in the U.S., the bastion of free-market capitalism, nuclear power was a creation of the state, or, as President Eisenhower famously called it: "the military-industrial complex." The reason had everything to do with the historical context of the Cold War. Nuclear power was inseparable from military priorities and was funded by the government accordingly.There's not enough discretionary money in the U.S. Treasury to subsidize solar power today at the rate nuclear was during its formative decade or two.

Was it wrong for the government to create the nuclear power industry? I don't know. But, again, as in the French model, I do know that we can't make smart energy choices for the future if we ignore the essential factors that shaped where we are today in terms of energy.

Yikes, it's noon here. I'm going to have to break up my response to your comment into a couple of replies, Rod. I hope you don't mind.

BillWoods said:

Rod Adams: "that is a fine academic study."

No, it's not.

First of all, the whole basis of it is misconceived.  Nuclear competes with coal to supply baseload power, while PV competes with gas to provide (the front side of) peak load.

Secondly, "solar and nuclear costs given here ... are net of a variety of financial incentives for each technology. This is as close as one can get to an “apples to apples” comparison"

Hah.

For solar, "A 30% Federal tax credit and a 35% North Carolina tax credit were applied to the capital cost", reducing it from 35.0¢ to 15.9¢/kWh.

For nuclear, the article starts with Price-Anderson.

"An analysis by economists Heyes and Heyes (1998) places the value of the government insurance subsidy at $2.3 million per reactor-year, or $237 million annually.[4] In 2008 the Congressional Budget Office estimated the value of the subsidy at only $600,000 per reactor per year."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act

With an average of about 8 billion kW·h per reactor-year, the high figure works out to about 0.03 ¢/kW·h.

Then the article lists disposal of spent fuel — "much or all of the outlay will be borne by the federal taxpayer." No it won't; it's already been paid for at a rate of 0.1 ¢/kW·h, about $300,000 per ton.


Among other errors, "This year the Obama administration ... quietly agree[d] to even lend taxpayer funds for Plant Vogtle." A loan guarantee is not a loan.

The appendixes are interesting. Using the same amortization factor that they use for solar, the most expensive nuclear project on their list would produce power for a capital cost of about 11 ¢/kW·h, well below even the subsidized cost of solar.

Marcel F. Williams said:

The capital cost of nuclear reactors are going to fall dramatically once the US and other countries start to mass produce and ship centrally manufactured  modular nuclear reactors. Its going to be extremely difficult for any other clean energy systems to economically compete against small nuclear reactors during the rest of this century for producing electricity and carbon neutral synfuels. 

Nathan Wilson said:

So the headline says solar is cheaper, and the fine print says "only if you include the subsidy"?   A bit dishonest I think.

More importantly, as Rod points out, the capacity factors can't be ignored.  PV's capacity factor of <20% means that 80% of demand must be supplied dispatchable power; and realistically that means fossil fuel. 

Even for solar thermal with 16 hours of storage, the capacity factor is about 50% in the desert southwest, so 40% is more realistic for most of the US.  So again, most of the system demand would have to be met by dispatchable power.

If anything, solar will compete with wind, as a way to supplement fossil fuel power.

We need carbon-free power.  the choices are still:

• nuclear with load following, or
• fossil fuel with carbon capture and storage (augmented with up to 20% renewables).