Among advocates of low-carbon energy production there are often competing views on how the power grid of the future should look like. Some countries like France have a strategy that is heavily based on nuclear power to decarbonize the energy system, while other countries like Germany or Switzerland have a strategy that explicitly excludes the construction of new nuclear plants focusing instead on a combination of variable renewable energy sources like wind, water and sun. Both require additional sources of flexible dispatchable power generation to exactly match supply and demand at any time.
Assuming we were to build a new low carbon power grid to cover Germany's current electricity consumption, how much would the refusal to include nuclear generation in the mix actually cost?
For this augment our previous simulation/optimization scenario with a fictitious 100% capacity factor baseload generator, operating a different costs to see how the optimal mix would change:
For the cost estimate of solar and wind generation as well as long and short duration storage, we are using the same assumptions as in this previous post. It is hard to find reliably all inclusive numbers for energy cost from new construction nuclear plants in Europe. On possible data point might be the CfD of about 110 Euro over 35 years which the British government is committing to pay for the electricity generated by the Hinkley Point C plant currently under construction, even though it is not clear how much of the construction and operating cost this compensation will be able to cover.120 | 90 | 60 | |
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Load (total / avg / peak) | 465.6TWh / 53GW / 76.3GW | 465.6TWh / 53GW / 76.3GW | 465.6TWh / 53GW / 76.3GW |
Generation (total / avg / peak) | 550.5TWh / 62.8GW / 190.7GW | 502.8TWh / 57.3GW / 104.8GW | 493.5TWh / 56.3GW / 59.9GW |
Generation PV / ONW / OFFW / BL | 35.9% / 53.9% / 10.2% / 0.0% | 13.9% / 23.3% / 8.0% / 54.8% | 0.0% / 2.7% / 0.0% / 97.3% |
Annual Cost / Cost per MWh | 47.1B€ / 101.2 €/MWh | 45.3B€ / 97.3 €/MWh | 33.1B€ / 71.2 €/MWh |
System Efficiency | 84.6% | 92.6% | 94.4% |
Surplus | 2.9% | 1.2% | 2.3% |
Storage contribution | 96.3TWh (20.7%) | 37.6TWh (8.1%) | 24.7TWh (5.3%) |
SDS Power | 31.2GW | 9.1GW | 6.8GW |
SDS Capacity / Duration | 189.1GWh / 6.1h | 56.4GWh / 6.2h | 43.1GWh / 6.4h |
SDS contribution | 39.6TWh (8.5%) 209 cycles | 11.4TWh (2.5%) 202 cycles | 11.0TWh (2.4%) 255 cycles |
SDS capacity factor | 0.14% | 0.14% | 0.19% |
SDS LCOS | 72.8 €/MWh | 75.0 €/MWh | 59.1 €/MWh |
LDS Power (charge/ discharge) | 40.7GW / 48.9GW | 18.3GW / 28.7GW | 7.1GW / 14.5GW |
LDS Capacity / Duration | 24360.9GWh / 498h | 12508.8GWh / 435h | 12638.5GWh / 870h |
LDS contribution | 56.7TWh (12.2%) 2 cycles | 26.2TWh (5.6%) 2 cycles | 13.6TWh (2.9%) 1 cycles |
LDS capacity factor | 0.13% | 0.10% | 0.11% |
LDS LCOS | 158.7 €/MWh | 182.1 €/MWh | 204.1 €/MWh |