Post by
Clemxb7 on Jan 26, 2021 11:31am
Wind/solar not well suited nor cost effective for baseload
Nuclear’s big advantage is it has the highest Capacity Factor by a mile it's not even close. Capacity factor can be seen as the amount of electricity a generating station could produce if it ran at 100% over a given period of time say 365 days divided by the actual electricity generated over the same time. Nuclear has a Capacity Factor in the mid 90% area. Considering its carbon free power that’s impressive.
When you calculate the cost generating electricity by a renewable you have to take in all the extra generation that has to be built into the system to make the system reliably generate X amount of power. For instance you might hear wind is cheaper to build than nuclear per megawatt. However wind has a capacity Factor somewhere in the mid 30%. Basically wind can only generate at full name plate between 30 and 40% of the time. So when you design a system using wind power you also have to include the cost of building usually a gas turbine that can be brought on and off powering the grid when needed - e.g. those times when the wind is not blowing or not blowing very strongly. So total cost of wind power is much higher once you take into consideration all the extra stuff that has to be built by the utility to accommodate wind generation.
There is a reason China is steadily building 5 new reactors a year. Nuclear is the only baseload carbon-free alternative. BTW a definition of baseload is the amount of electricity required on a 24/7 basis. E.g. During the day a given utility may need a peak of 5 gigawatts right at 5:30 pm when the peak amount of electricity is required – air con, cooking that sort of thing. At 3 am the same utility only needs to provide 3 gigawatts of electricity because there is less activities using power. That’s the baseload. The amount that is always needed.
Nuclear is the king of baseload and its carbon free. As our planet slowly cooks it is very possible Nuclear could have a real renaissance because with newer designs multiple safety factors can be built in to make things really idiot proof.