Interesting that even on the yearly chart almost all green and greenish areas get their 'green' power from hydro and nuclear by large. If only wind and solar produced as much power as they do talk.
The renewables buildout is still ongoing, while the nuclear and hydro areas were built decades ago. The hydro areas are also mostly former glaciated areas, which is a great advantage in terms of suitable sites.
The post-first-oil-crash nuclear buildout might have continued if it hadn't been for the combination of fossil fuel becoming cheap again and Chernobyl fallout covering the entirety of northern Europe. The symbolism of Reagan taking Carter's solar panels off the White House made it clear that wasn't going to be the path.
The initial nuclear rollout ran into capacity factor issues. They barely broke even at 90+% capacity factors with subsidies and would have needed increasing subsidies to become as common as coal. Ultra cheap energy storage would have fixed the issue, but nothing was viable at the time.
Unfortunately, renewables cause similar issues. If solar tanks wholesale prices for 8 hours a day nuclear needs to make that up on the other 16. Meanwhile Solar hits the same wall once it needs energy storage.
Hydro ran out of ideal locations in most countries etc which is why we have so many different energy sources. The only way things hangs is if the underlying economics does. Nuclear with an 80% reduction in operating and decommissioned costs would largely take over the world.
Australia is already on track to have half of that already with snowy 2 (350Gwh).
This also doesn't take into account stuff like https://octopus.energy/agile/ that can use pricing to adjust demand to supply. Heating, car battery charging, industrial processes like aluminum smelting - lots of demand can be time shifted easily.
I am specifically referring to a nuclear power plant’s income here. If they averaged 10c per kWh over a year that’s X$/year. To make that same X$/year when wholesale prices are 2c/kWh for 8 hours a day they would need to be average 14c/kWh for 16 hours to average 10c/kWh over a full day. Aka (8 * 2c + 16 * 14c)/24 = 10c
The above is of course a simplification of a complex market, but illustrates a real effect related to the “duck curve.”
Of course, this is why markets where everyone is forced to sell into a single pool don't work. If you let them sign a PPA for baseload electricity with a consumer who values that certainty (and there are many) for the whole year at 10c/kWh then there is no issue.
Yes and no, PPA don’t change the underlying economics. In the above model, of batteries added 20c/kWh then Nuclear averages cheaper over a full day. If batteries added 10c/kWh then Solar ends up cheaper over a full day.
The underlying issue is nobody wants a PPA that lasts for the full 40+ year lifespan of a new nuclear reactor and battery prices are still falling. Enough subsides can make anything viable, but western governments have largely lost interest in doing so.
I don't understand this line of argument - that's a high capacity factor! And it's not a dirunal or annual one either, it's a predictable "we need to shut down to refuel" one. It sounds like it wouldn't have broken even, even at 100% capacity factor? At which point it's no longer "too cheap to meter" but "nuclear power is too expensive". And that's before we even dig into capex vs opex vs decommissioning vs disaster insurance.
Hinkley point C is guaranteed a price of £92 per megawatt hour (or 9.2p/kWh), when it finally comes online.
A high capacity factor sounds like a benefit, however demand isn’t a constant. The perfect power source would be capable of running 24/7 but be profitable if run for 1 hour a year.
In the electrical industry a base load generation has historically been the least valuable electricity and it’s the only way Nuclear can operate.
Nuclear requires 90%+ of utilization to be competitive. They reached a wall once they provide enough power that they would have to be cut down for 10% of the time.
What is completely different from solar, that is outcompeting everything with ~20% utilization, and making the alternatives more expensive on the process... What is a problem because it can't provide more than ~20% utilization.
The negative externalities of fossil fuels justified some level of relative subsidies. Either by taxing pollution or direct subsidies of nuclear power.
Even ignoring global warming smog and acid rain have been known issues for a very long time. On top of this many countries lacked domestic supplies of fossil fuels.
Apparently they were not taken down just because Reagan didn't want them. The roof needed work and they were in the way. They were just not put back up.
Notably, GHWBush's mansion in Texas, shortly after, had solar water heating.
If I need (for my small European country) 15 TWh of electricity per year, and my typical rainfall onto catchment area for hydro is enough to do maybe 10 TWh per year, I'm 5 TWh short. In the 1980s you'd have probably solved that with CCGT, but that means finding or importing methane (natural gas). If I also build 10 TWh of wind production, even though I can't tell you a year in advance which days it will blow hardest, it will blow, and now my total capacity is enough to run solid green, because when the wind blows the hydro schemes save water to use another day.
Wind production varies year on year, but only maybe 10% where the variation day to day is almost 100%. So wind + hydro should pair nicely because the hydro plant can ramp up or down production as appropriate.
In the 1980s they solved it they solved it with coal. Or, occasionally, oil or simple (open cycle) gas turbines. CCGTs didn't really become popular until the 1990s.
At least in the UK, wind right now is over 30% of our power generation [0]. I don't have links handy but wind regularly exceeds most other sources here. How much more do you want it to provide before you'd consider it not just talk?
It does, sometimes, causing electricity price to go negative.
This summer our local Hydro dam was full. But instead of generating electricity at full capacity they had to open the overflow valves because it was windy and the local wind farm was producing at full capacity and the transmission lines does not have capacity to handle both wind and hydro at full capacity.
Renewable energy installation has broken records for newly-installed capacity every year, even during the pandemic-induced supply chain chaos and material price instability, and is projected to do so this year as well. However, we're still quite early into the curve, and even with the accelerating rate of growth it will be many years before most people are using mostly-renewable power.
I find your statement is slightly misleading, when there are just barely two handful green countries over the whole year and half of them have wind energy with at least 30% share, a few even as primary source.
Wind & solar are still in their infancy in much of the world, but are growing very quickly.
In the UK, wind will overtake natural gas as the largest source of electricity in the next few years. It’s already producing more than 2.5x as much as all the UK’s nuclear plants combined.
By 2025, more than half of all UK electricity will be renewable, and by 2030, 95% will be from low-carbon sources (including nuclear).
There's several places where you can see the UK's power generation live. Right this second we're running on 31% wind power. We're just rolling into peak power usage times so probably different when you click the link.
This one is not the full picture of UK generation, however, as Elexon's data only includes generators that are connected to the National Grid.
Many smaller generators, including all(?) UK solar farms, smaller wind farms, W2E plants, etc, are connected to the distribution networks (DSOs), not directly to the National Grid. These can account for a significant percentage of UK generation at times!
Most of the other websites displaying UK generation include additional data sources so that things like solar are accounted for.
