Tanada wrote:The problem is the politicians over the last two decades picked winners in the form of massive subsidies for wind and solar that have massively distorted the markets already. I don't think subsidizing Coal is the answer, how about we strip out all those incentives for Solar and Wind and see what the market actually says?
That is already underway. The
PTC(wind subsidy) has already started being phased out. It will be gone completely by 2020.
ITC(solar subsidy) phase out will begin in 2020 and the phase out will end in 2024. Except instead of ending completely the ITC will revert to a 10% subsidy in 2024. So at least that problem is being addressed.
However I think there is also another problem. Coal & nuclear provide reliable baseload power. wind & solar do not. We are approaching a point where wind & solar can be competitive with nuclear & coal on a direct cost basis. However this omits the cost of lower grid reliability and/or the need for backup power for wind & solar. Most coal & nuclear do not perform well as load following plants. And our storage options are limited. That just leaves natural gas to fill that role. Natural gas prices are currently cheap so it's not an issue now. However what happens if this trend continues for another few decades and coal & nuclear continue to lose ground in our grid? We will experience the lose of diversity in grid generation that Perry was talking about. We will have a grid with lots of renewables, natural gas, and not much else. So should we throw a subsidy to coal & nuclear or let them continue to fade away?
I was also thinking another approach is to have coal and nukes operate in load following mode. This is less profitable, less safe, and generates more wear and tear on the equipment, but it might be a necessary sacrifice for the grid of tomorrow.
France and some German nukes already run in load following mode. Some US nukes do as well:
Why is load following hard to do with nuclear power plants?
Senior reactor operator here. Reactors are actually very good at load following. It's not "hard" to do, it is "undesirable". If you get up to 100% power and sit there, fat, dumb, and happy, you don't have any thermal cycling of equipment, you don't have any potential for human performance errors, you aren't starting/stopping pumps. In other words, it completely minimizes wear and tear and "generation risk". When nuclear units were well below the marginal price of power, it made it completely unnecessary to ever cycle them for load following, other than special grid contingencies. Today, with nuclear units operating at or above the marginal price, some units are using load following for economic purposes such as Exelon's midwest units.
Why is load following hard to do with nuclear power plants.Same for coal:
Increasing the flexibility of coal-fired power plants is an important priority for most power plant managers and utility executives. Researchers have discovered several ways to increase the flexibility of coal. Improving operational flexibility of conventional fossil generation should be a top priority for asset owners and operators. Historically, operators could ignore the impacts of cycling on equipment, primarily the risks involved - safety, availability and costs because the need for operational flexibility was minimal and therefore the risk was small. Wholesale market deregulation, increased renewable generation and environmental pressures have impacted how plants are operated; but plant cycling is not a new phenomenon. Plants have always cycled; however, it is the intensity of cycling which has been impacted.
Operating units at low loads is not risk free. The equipment at power plants still undergoes thermal stresses and operators who are tuned to running plants at full load for extended periods of time are not trained for this operating mode. Finally, most fossil steam power plants in the U.S. are much older with aging equipment and archaic control systems providing little to no feedback to operators performing increased low load operation. With financial and environmental constraints on existing fossil fleets, it is difficult to justify large capital retrofits.
Whether units should be cycled or not is no longer an important question, instead determining the new improved dispatch stack wherein units are operated economically with reduced long term risks from cycling, and new units are designed and procured based on lessons learnt today, will allow us to meet our future energy requirements safely and reliably.
Improving the Flexibility of Coal-Fired Power Plants
The oil barrel is half-full.