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Prediction: Coal has fallen. Nuclear is next then Oil.

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CO2 based air-space heat pumps are becoming cheaper and more widely available. They are a lot cheaper to buy and install, the COP at low(ish) temperatures is now in the 3+ range, and operating costs are lower because they have less tubing.

Interesting.

One reason why I am such a BEV fan is that I really don't like mechanical noise (so no spinning hard-disks or overhead fluorescent tubes in my office). Right now, all I can hear is a black bird singing outside. A blowing fan turning on and off at home would be a total show stopper for me.

How is the noise level from such an air source heat pump?
 
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Interesting.

One reason why I am such a BEV fan is that I really don't like mechanical noise (so no spinning hard-disks or overhead fluorescent tubes in my office). Right now, all I can hear is a black bird singing outside. A blowing fan turning on and off at home would be a total show stopper for me.

How is the noise level from such an air source heat pump?
You and me both!!

The AS heat pumps have a noise range that varies with fan speed and outside temperature; then you have to consider that they are outside and a distance away. Others have written that they do not hear the outside device but can hear the air coming out of the inside vent.
 
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How is the noise level from such an air source heat pump?

Modern inverter driven heat pumps are very very quiet. I usually have to get within 5' before I can even hear it. I have one outside my bedroom window and I rarely hear it. They also usually don't cycle... mine has a VFD. Instead of turning on/off it ramps down to maintain temperature.

Ground source heat pumps only make sense where temperatures <20F are the norm during the winter.
 
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Ground source heat pumps only make sense where temperatures <20F are the norm during the winter.
My back of the envelope numbers agree if the peak daytime temperatures are below 20F.

If the daytime temp reaches the 40F+ range for say 4-6 hours a day and the home is well insulated with little leakage (say, HERS of about 30) that came out to enough with an AS heat pump*. Do you agree ?

*I estimated 3.5 kW at a COP of 3 for 4 hours a day, thus 42 kWh of heating energy a day.
 
@nwdiver,

Thank you for your quick response. I apologize that I'm not nearly as quick.

It's easy to focus on how much solar/wind we have without acknowledging how incredibly fast it's growing. Every 2.5 years installed solar doubles. Diablo Canyon will be operating until 2024. Solar and Wind are expected to grow >8 fold by then. Solar output in California is currently ~8GW with peak demand ~40GW...
I want to believe your claim of 8X by 2024. Can you point me to something authoritative that I can use for quotes in newsletters or publications re "installed solar doubles every 2.5 years" and/or the trend line extending out another 8-10 years? (It's one thing to double again in the next 2.5 years and still another to repeat that doubling two or three or more times.)

Diablo Canyon will be experiencing significant curtailment events by the time it's retired... that's no way to operate a nuclear plant and undoubtedly played into PG&E decision.
Sorry, I don't know what a "curtailment event" is, much less a significant one, nor the implications of same.

What may not be immediately obvious is the fact that there is no 'nuclear industry' like there is a solar and wind industry... there are only companies that operate nuclear plants.
A very interesting point and new to me!

What does this mean? With the exception of Areva and Exelon most companies involved in operating, maintaining and building nuclear plants are far more exposed to coal, oil and gas than nuclear. Flour is the company behind NuScale building modular reactors; most of their business is in oil... do you really think they want a carbon tax? Westinghouse and GE also build and maintain gas turbines... do you really think they want a carbon tax? Duke Energy operates ~7GW of nuclear... but 11GW of coal and gas... do you really think they want a carbon tax? This is why NEI spends more time attacking Wind and Solar than actually lobbying for a carbon tax like AWEA and SEIA.
OK, I can wrap my head around this. It's very disappointing but I get it. I wonder if this is one reason why nuclear power has advanced seemingly so little since the 1960s/1970s in terms of deployed technology.

Sorry, can you please translate these acronyms: NEI, AWEA, SEIA.

Yes... nuclear power is very clean energy... but very few people that work in nuclear power actually care. Their goal is maintaining the status quo. ~20% nuclear... and the rest?
Wow... I would have thought that there would be SOME people in the "nuclear industry" interested in spreading the deployment of nuclear. I mean... what about all those guys who talk about small, modular nuclear? Or thorium? Or....? It has always seemed to me as if there were a bunch of ideas "out there" but, puzzlingly, no one seeming that interested in turning the ideas into deployments. No Solar City, Tesla or Apple or similar for the nuclear world.

Who cares. Wind and Solar on the other hand a determined to conquer the world... and they are succeeding.

I'd say Wind and Solar PLUS batteries. A good storage technology will be the key to widespread success.

But what to do in the meantime? I'm still left thinking that maybe the current raft of nukes should be subsidized for CO2 benefits until we really ARE in a better place w.r.t. CO2 levels & trends. (Maybe more accurately "more subsidized". Seems like there are many subsidies already in place in the nuclear power world, ranging from insurance guarantees to we'll-take-the-waste guarantees.)

Thank you.

Alan
 
I want to believe your claim of 8X by 2024. Can you point me to something authoritative that I can use for quotes in newsletters or publications re "installed solar doubles every 2.5 years" and/or the trend line extending out another 8-10 years? (It's one thing to double again in the next 2.5 years and still another to repeat that doubling two or three or more times.)

Solar PV in particular has a long history of doubling every ~2.5 years. 8 years is 3 doublings or ~8x what we have now... Today Solar peaked at 7.8GW when demand was ~27GW in California. Solar is likely to saturate the California grid in ~2020... sadly I predict that Diablo Canyon won't even make it to 2024...

cumulative-solar1.png


As costs continue to fall I see no reason for this to change much until we start reaching saturation.... which is what will trigger curtailment events (reduction of output) at baseload plants during the daytime. This is a huge problem for nuclear plants in particular which aren't designed to modulate their power levels. A co-worker previously worked at a BWR (Boiling Water Reactor) the lowest they can go is ~80%. If you're a 1GW plant and the grid can only take another 500MW then you either shutdown or dump steam... either way you're losing A LOT of money.

Nuclear advocates need to accept the reality that cheap & highly variable sources such as wind and solar are poison to nuclear and nuclear isn't dynamic or cost effective enough to displace even ~50% of fossil fuels let alone 100%. Nuclear simply cannot exist on a grid where solar and wind are significant contributors (>20% annually) to generation.[/user]
 
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Of course couldn't CA just lower the price of electricity when solar peaks to prevent curtailment or blowing steam?

Currently TOU has a very high rate at noon (disclaimer, I do not live in CA and don't know). In 2018, the noon price could start falling. Soon people are running a/c or charging their car at noon. This will decrease the night time use and also maybe help that pesky 6-9 pm time.

I always like to point out to CA that in NC our TOU has 1-4 pm off peak in the winter (actually 6 months). So they build a lot of west facing panels because a/c in the afternoon in summer is our peak. In the winter, that becomes cheap power. As people in CA know - they can change the times - much to the disappointment of solar owners. People have the ability to change their usage patterns and so does industry (by a lot!)

Solar early matched the peak. But solar eventually makes daytime electricity really really cheap. So charge cars at work and precool the house for the evening. It isn't hard for the next decade. For another decade, hopefully car charging can absorb the excess solar. So by my WAG, nuclear could work for another 2 decades without blowing off steam

Batteries never handle the winter problem. Not in my lifetime. Can wind do it? Sure - anything can if overbuilt enough. Maybe easier to run nuclear for 6 months out of the year for the next century.
 
Solar early matched the peak. But solar eventually makes daytime electricity really really cheap. So charge cars at work and precool the house for the evening. It isn't hard for the next decade.
Yep

Can wind do it? Sure - anything can if overbuilt enough. Maybe easier to run nuclear for 6 months out of the year for the next century.
Overbuilding wind by 2x is equivalent over-capacity to shutting down Nuclear for 6 of every 12 months.
 
Batteries never handle the winter problem. Not in my lifetime. Can wind do it? Sure - anything can if overbuilt enough. Maybe easier to run nuclear for 6 months out of the year for the next century.

Batteries are already ~$0.05/kWh over their cycle life. Battery compatible grid-tie inverters are just now popping up. The #1 reason we don't see more storage isn't cost... it's necessity. There simply isn't much of a benefit to adding a battery to a PV system. Once that really shifts storage will take off. I expect ~90% of PV installs to include ~7kWh of battery capacity in 5 years to help with evening demand.

You can't economically operate a nuclear plant for half the year... it's ~5x more expensive than natural gas if operated like that. Gas Turbines will fill in the gaps until wind, hydro and solar take over.
 
Except that gas turbines make carbon.

Hydro? Where do you see significant growth in hydro?

Solar - my argument comes from my own use profile which is clearly a single data point. I use well over 2000 kwh in December and I generate 300. 2 cars, heat pumps, solar hot water backup. I don't have 6x more roof area (maybe 2x). I have an efficient house in a mild winter climate. Would anyone like to look at the numbers for a 40 year old house in New York? Less sun. 5 times the heating load.

Is there that much wind in the winter? How many wind turbines could be built in the next 30 years?

The economics of nuclear power are subject to all sorts of variables. If you look at best case scenarios, I suspect the economics are not that bad. Worst case - absolutely horrible. I am solidly in the camp that nuclear kept in the mix results in lower carbon emissions - I think it is pretty hard to argue with that.

The fact is that probably 100 million people live in homes in areas with a deep winter that use fossil fuels to heat them. Converting that to heat pump results in a huge winter demand - mostly at night. Realistically - getting there without nuclear seems very very hard to me. And there is the 100 million cars to charge.

Now if we could depopulate some of the rural north, that would help. I suspect that is coming. But politics is a bitch. Almost 30% of Northeast homes still use oil heat. And very few use electricity - but that has to change.
 
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Is there that much wind in the winter? How many wind turbines could be built in the next 30 years?
Yes. As many as you want

Heating with heat pumps is mostly quite different than fossil fuels or resistance heating for a couple of reasons:
  1. COP much greater than 1.0
  2. Heat pumps encourage people to change behavior: insulate the home, then heat during the afternoon for the night-time
I've looked into this for the place I live in Colorado that has ~ 5000 HDD a year. Rather than heat the slab* with NG which is a (WAG) of 60% useful heat, I could reduce loads 30% with reasonable home upgrades and then heat during the day with ~ a COP of 3.0. The kWh equivalent would drop to (0.6)(0.7)(0.33) = 14%. For my use case then, 2100 kWh of electric a heating season.

The real answer to home heating demands is to build a less leaky home.

*That is an exaggeration. The home has radiant heating but the pipes run through the slab. The boiler is about 85% efficient and then I estimated pipe losses.
 
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Thank you, kind sir. Can you please point me to the original source of the cumulative installed solar PV globally chart? Something that could be cited.

Thanks,
Alan

Solar PV in particular has a long history of doubling every ~2.5 years. 8 years is 3 doublings or ~8x what we have now... Today Solar peaked at 7.8GW when demand was ~27GW in California. Solar is likely to saturate the California grid in ~2020... sadly I predict that Diablo Canyon won't even make it to 2024...

cumulative-solar1.png


As costs continue to fall I see no reason for this to change much until we start reaching saturation.... which is what will trigger curtailment events (reduction of output) at baseload plants during the daytime. This is a huge problem for nuclear plants in particular which aren't designed to modulate their power levels. A co-worker previously worked at a BWR (Boiling Water Reactor) the lowest they can go is ~80%. If you're a 1GW plant and the grid can only take another 500MW then you either shutdown or dump steam... either way you're losing A LOT of money.

Nuclear advocates need to accept the reality that cheap & highly variable sources such as wind and solar are poison to nuclear and nuclear isn't dynamic or cost effective enough to displace even ~50% of fossil fuels let alone 100%. Nuclear simply cannot exist on a grid where solar and wind are significant contributors (>20% annually) to generation.[/user]
 
Except that gas turbines make carbon.

We have finite resources ($$$)... Diablo Canyon O&M (operating and maintenance) costs are ~$1.2B/yr that figure is fairly independent of output as mentioned previously so the cost per kWh will rise steeply as curtailments increase.

Shutting down diablo canyon will allow more fossil fuels to be displaced for the same amount of money. Storage will gradually replace natural gas as standby generation. There are also clean sources of natural gas used in turbines from waste water treatment plants, land fills and farms.

This sums up the lethal problem with nuclear...

'PG&E also agrees that removing the inflexible “must-run” nuclear output, which can’t easily and economically ramp down much, will help integrate more renewable power reliably into the grid. Midday solar, rather than being increasingly crowded out by continued nuclear overgeneration, will be able to supply more energy. As Germany found, integrating varying solar and windpower with steady “baseload” plants can present challenges for the the opposite of the reason originally supposed: not because wind and solar power vary (demand varies even less predictably), but because “baseload” plants are too inflexible.'

If we had an infinite supply of capital then I would agree that we should have a large nuclear fleet and operate them regardless of the cost... but if I was going to start making wishes to alter reality I'd start with the physics of CO2 so we wouldn't have to worry about fossil fuels at all ;)

 
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Except that you forget that Nuclear can be less expensive. I'd argue that it is easier to make nuclear less expensive than to replace all of that with winter usage with wind. Using a horrible cost example makes the argument convincing for sure for the anti-nuclear side.

"As Germany found..." that when they shut nuclear plants they build more coal plants. Despite a huge solar push - largest in the world. Germany has built (ing) more coal generation than their solar generating capacity and wind combined.

Japan is building 41 new coal plants. Not a typo. Why? Because their electricity use is up so much? No.

Now remind me - is burning coal bad? Is it responsible for the most carbon intensive electricity generation? Is it responsible for more deaths per GWH generated? By a factor of 1000 over nuclear?

Wonder why Germany didn't just build more wind and solar? Or Japan?

I'd argue that if Germany can't do enough wind/solar in 2015/16, good luck in the USA. Sure we could build enough wind. We could also stop using electricity. But it isn't happening. And it won't.
 
I don't know a ton about Levy or the Georgia plan, but I do know Levy was going to cost $20B+. With $20B you could power half of Florida on solar/wind/storage. The idea that these nuke plants will ever get off the ground in the sunny southern states is silly.
 
Except that you forget that Nuclear can be less expensive. I'd argue that it is easier to make nuclear less expensive than to replace all of that with winter usage with wind. Using a horrible cost example makes the argument convincing for sure for the anti-nuclear side.

Can you provide a good example? Every nuclear plant built in the last 20 years have had two things in common... they're built over budget and behind schedule. It's not a one off thing... nuclear power has consistently been one of the costliest boondoggles... Watts Bar 2 was celebrated as a victory going online last month... they started construction in 1973! Clinton Nuclear Power Plant was initially projected to cost ~$400M... the final bill was >$4B!. Current construction at Vogtle and Summer isn't going well either...

"As Germany found..." that when they shut nuclear plants they build more coal plants. Despite a huge solar push - largest in the world. Germany has built (ing) more coal generation than their solar generating capacity and wind combined.

Nuclear plants in Germany and Japan aren't be slated for closure for the same reason as Diablo Canyon. Germany in particular could probably hang on to theirs for a bit longer. Japan is rightly concerned Fukushima will repeat itself...

Solar and Wind are cheaper than coal... but coal is faster to build.
 
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Japan is interesting. The country recently de-regulated the power industry, about the same time that Australia chopped it's coal export prices. The Fukishima vacuum is being filled in part with coal. This all makes sense, but if the industry stays deregulated (really deregulated,) PV and wind are going to strand those fossil fuel assets in a few years.
 
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