What great news, doubling gas turbine generator manufacturing, except for us poor smeals here in New England where we are as Karl in the movie “Sling Blade” identifies the problem with a cranky non starting lawn mower “ain’t got no gas in it.” We have no gas here in New England! Thank you Governor Healy of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts! You complaining about the success of suing the two major gas expansions by two very reputable firms have left us in a pickle. She sort of reminds this writer of the Soviet era submarine captain in “Red October” who fires a torpedo at another submarine missing that submarine only to find that the torpedo is headed straight for his boat….his XO says it best “You arrogant ass you just killed us..”
Yet, there she is, out on Nantucket blashing everyone and everything that has to do with the high cost of energy in New England and specifically Massachusetts! Whadda mean lawsuits have electoral and long term consequences? You can’t make this stuff up. We can only put our hopes and dreams on the SMR’s being a real solution either that or take Hydro Quebec at gunpoint. For the rest of the country? God love you! The Japanese are coming to the rescue! Let’s hope they leave Godzilla at home this time.
You would get lower cost electricity by building a large traditional reactor (or not shutting down Vermont Yankee and Indian Point in the first place). Although, perhaps, it is more politically viable to site SMRs and to finance their lower cost of entry.
Like so many things, lower cost to buy, much higher cost to own for SMRs vs. traditional large reactors.
Plus, there are no SMRs that can begin construction now. Large traditional reactors are ready to go.
Haven't they camouflaged themselves as Haliburton, now? Classic case of everyone learned to recognize their criminal and/or incompetent nature and so they changed their name and hoped no one noticed.
Beware any organization or group that changes it's name often or regularly.
They were part of Halliburton but a series of transactions shed them. In 2015 they separated from KBR - Kellogg Briwn& Root - to become their own independent company . HQ is now Baton Rouge.
Thank you for the update. I have not been keeping up.
My main awareness of B&R is that they were the incompetent management of the South Texas Nuclear Project that helped balloon the cost tremendously, until the partners finally replaced them with Bechtel.
And I have a vague memory of some shady dealings involving a dam and LBJ, way back when.
I still have ill will feelings as the cost of their mistake cost all of us at the big red h profit sharing money!! But then the financial guys came into power displacing the technical operations folks and they ruined the company - it’s still ruined.
That's not stopping Ontario from ordering 4 US BWRX-300 SMRs at a cost of $20.9B for 1.2GW, which is likely a low ball estimate.
In spite of already having a fully functional CANDU industry & supply chain, which is 95% Canadian, and CANDU 700MW or newer 900MW are a far better fit for Ontario's burgeoning power demand, whereas the SMRs make vastly more sense for use in the 7 Canadian provinces whose power grid being much smaller, could use SMRs far more effectively. Likely using CANDU's would cost ~1/3rd that of the BWRX's.
The whole thing reeks of corruption. But that's nothing new for Ontario. Their wind & solar Green Energy Act costs the same as Ontario's current CANDU fleet, $60B. But the CANDUs will produce over 16X the amount of electricity as the wind & solar will. That is if you were so foolish as to compare 24/7 nuclear power to intermittent, unreliable wind/solar power as equally valuable.
The CANDUs also produce large amounts of Transuranics that are the startup fuel for extremely fuel efficient Fast Reactors and Thorium Molten Salt Reactors, including a number of SMR types, best example the Copenhagen Atomics 100MWth shipping container reactor:
We don't yet know what SMRs are going to cost. Returning existing reactors to service, when that can be done safely, looks like a cheaper and more expedient solution.
Unfortunately, that logic merely ensures that SMRs are going to cost far more than they should. The US once had a booming, lucrative nuclear power industry that was completing one NPP per month by 1974, with 2 NPPs per month on order.
That was demolished by determined, criminal efforts of NGOs (with $billions/yr in funding), legal-lobby firms, criminal Foundations and wholly corrupted politicians, including ex-Climate Czar, John Kerry. They did that. The current administration must take responsibility for the evil that was done, and spend whatever needs to be spent to return that industry to its former strength.
With SMRs you don't order one or two. You order a dozen or more. That's how factory production brings down costs. They did that to solar & wind, in spite of them being total losers, inherently due to a thing called Physics. Don't you think they could do the same to a tech that ACTUALLY does severely reduce emissions?
You are making unfounded allegations of criminality, perhaps out of ignorance.
The primary reason why the US nuclear power faltered is the huge cost overruns and plant cancellations in the 1980s that cost both electrify customer and utility shareholders tens of billions of dollars. Utilities are understandably reluctant to take on the huge financial risks associated with investing in nuclear. Furthermore, Southern Company's recent experience with the new Vogle units confirms that reluctance.
One big advantage of SMRs is that they will involve smaller financial risks for utilities which may override the cost advantage they forfeit in economies of scale.
Every projection I've seen has electricity from SMRs substantially higher priced than from traditional large reactors. Numbers resembling $.15 vs. $.08 per KWHr.
Timely article given the significant increase in demand. Mitsubishi will do extremely well financially if they're able to achieve the 100% production increase in just 2 years. We have CT's from domestic manufacturer that are currently late (maxed out liquidated damages) and additional CCGT's due in 2030....any we're already skeptical of their timely delivery.
One question we've been working on is their ability to reliably achieve capacity factors around 80% to support the designated customer load. Our current CCGT's currently operate in the 50% range.
Another potential risk area is reliability. Our engineers indicated the turbine selection decision was a tradeoff between new, larger and more efficient models with questionable reliability versus older, smaller models with proven reliability. Our newest turbines, installed in 2019, have suffered from both poor reliability and limited spares availability. We've purchased 2 "super-cores" at a cost of $40M+ to maintain unit availability.
This is super interesting information. Thanks for sharing. I’ve heard some people say it might be worth it for American companies to buy turbines that operate at 50 hertz and convert it to 60 just to alleviate the backlog.
I have heard the usual suspects claim that demand response for data centers is a good idea. Am I the only one who wonders what will happen when the data center that provides the computer support for self driving cars gets turned off?
I am scratching my head on that one too, Roger. But I seem to recall a recent article that said Microsoft or Google (or one of the AI big ones) was offering to modulate their electricity usage somehow.
Demand response can take the form of running behind-the-meter generation. That's exactly what happens today. Typically BTM generation is more expensive to produce than the wholesale market price of energy but that relationship can reverse when system demand is high.
The gas is going to be built, just at a higher price. The best way to lower CO2 emissions is to use gas as a smooth transition to nuclear power. Higher electricity prices not only hurt working people, but they also disincentivize electrification.
Not necessarily. Wind and solar can be installed faster than gas-fired generation and much faster than nuclear. We are close to a decade away from seeing a significant amount of nuclear being on line. Using just gas to bridge the gap will produce a huge amount of GHG, which can be avoided by deploying renewable resources.
Gas-fired generation can be used to back up the renewables so that reliability is not jeopardized, although it will run at a low capacity factor..
According to a Berkeley Labs study, the median wait time in 2023 to get an Interconnection for a new plant is 5 years. Berkeley Labs is the gold standard for grid studies. I don’t know of a newer study, but there is a lot of talk that the current wait is up to 7 or 8 years.
The problem is mainly that solar and wind have clogged up the grid due to their low capacity factors. Plants with low capacity factors use up more transmission capacity because they peak up to 3 to 4 times their average. The grid was designed for dispatchable plants that transmit near their average.
Fermi Texas, 4 AP1000s, BTM, slated to go online in 2032. Aggressive schedule indeed, but this is what makes me happy. BTM means they don’t have to wait for an interconnection. We might see a lot more of this.
That's not "internalizing the external costs", not even close. If they really wanted to do that, they would evaluate those costs using rational and rigorous methods, and then apply a revenue neutral carbon fee and dividend upon the fuel they burn. And then let the free market accurately and honestly determine the most viable energy sources to use. It only works when you remove all the preferential, politically mandated, irrational subsidies, mandates & exemptions given to wind & solar. That destroys the free market. Apart from the CF&D, solar & wind can compete fairly on the market.
I agree; a carbon tax would be the ideal mechanism for internalizing GHG emissions. Tell that to Congress.
Also, a related issue is where to set the tax. It should be set equal to the Social Cost of Carbon, which is a very ambiguous value. The most recent analyses set SCC equal to about $200 per Metric Ton of CO2. Is that the correct value? Who knows. The climate change models produce a wide range of values.
What's criminal is having a mentally incompetent figurehead as a president with unelected individuals making the decisions, illegally using a Robopen to forge the Presidents signature. Including on starting illegal wars that put the entire World at risk. That's high treason. And a crime against humanity.
Solar is criminal because it is being foisted upon us through corruption. No utility would throw money down the sewer on Solar if it was allowed to act in the most financially responsible way.
Exactly. I am an engineer designing pumps that run off of batteries charged by solar panels - that is the only financially non-corrupt way to use them.
Solar has been a criminal enterprise since they first came out in the 70's.
There is also the possibility of seeing Trump as correctly convicted criminal (for multiple crimes committed, to many to reach a verdicts in time) who avoided punishment by spineless system enabling corruption. And also to see solar power as criminal waste of resources and a way of supporting Chinese dictatorship at the same time.
No need to be worried about climate change to wish to reduce inflationary dependence on fossil fuels (source of wars and crisis after crisis). Cheap FF are harder and harder to find. Solar and wind are not tools for that reduction (factual evaluation).
Some things can be separated, like every issue should be evaluated separately, otherwise it is either one or the other camp and no way of achieving any (good) compromise.
Great article. Next EnergyBadBoys article on ability to get 5-10% more capacity on existing natural gas plants. Many of the generating companies focusing on it including FMPA. Low-cost and quickest way to add. Transmission queue likely the biggest lead time
Smelters running on wind and solar? come on guys:)
I wondered how long that fantasy would last, and sure enough, a new managing director has spiked the idea, he is going to seek public support to keep smelting while the cost of power escalates. How surprising.
Crazy idea using expensive, intermittent, unreliable, electricity from wind & solar to supply heat. Makes far more sense to use gas & coal thermal energy while replacing gas & coal electricity generation with nuclear. At some point well in the future you can use high temperature reactors for smelter high grade heat requirements and nuclear hydrogen. High temperature reactors are great for economically cracking water to produce H2.
Now we need the other major turbine makers like GE and Siemens to double their output. There does not seem to be much risk on their part, if one data center is cancelled, another data will need the turbines.
Clearly, you guys are climate change deniers and most likely shills for the fossil fuels industry. Why else would you systematically deny the fact that renewable energy reduces greenhouse gas emissions?
Renewable energy can be backed up with storage and gas-fired generators (which would seldom run, thus produce minimally acceptable emissions). Yes, this is a more costly solution than just relying on fossil generation. But then what price do you place on saving the habitability of our planet for future generations?
By renewable energy you mean wind & solar. Wind & solar are non-viable, the EROI is so low as to make them physically impossible replacements for fossil. They do replace some fossil, highly dependent upon grid architecture, but the carbon abatement cost is far higher than OCGT-->CCGT, conventional Coal --> ultrasupercritical coal, conventional hydro, nuclear and biomass --> methanol. As well as electrification of most diesel based transportation.
The only long term solution for replacing fossil energy is nuclear. And fortunately that supply essentially unlimited, at least until the Earth is consumed by the Sun, and has the highest EROI of ALL energy sources right now, as well as being the most compact, the lowest footprint environmentally and by area by far of all energy sources. As well as being the most economical if the criminal roadblocks deliberately contrived to prevent its expansion are removed.
Apparently you and I read different journal articles.
A simple Wikipedia search reveals that the EROIs for wind and solar range from about 8 to 34.
Oil and Natural Gas range from 1.5 (oil shale) to 43 (for some conventional oil production).
Nuclear ranges from 20 to 81.
But from a climate change perspective, EROI is a useless metric. It tells us nothing about the GHG emissions produced by a resource for each unit of energy output.
A few perspectives below on new and existing nuclear costs
New Nuclear Economics | I agree with the comments that new nuclear energy is very expensive. I have not seen any comparison of resource cost metrics where new nuclear is not the most expensive resource. Without addressing the value of nuclear’s dispatchability and carbon free operation, I’ll address the long-term economic value and cost effectiveness of nuclear given the potential for a nuclear resource to operate 60+ years.
Nuclear Extended Life Economics | I recently completed an economic analysis of extending our large nuclear resource for an additional 20-years. This represents a potential 2nd license extension for each of the units. One economic lens is the comparison of Overnight Capital Costs (OCC), for either extending the nuclear resource or developing a new Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT). The cost for extending the nuclear resource includes both mandatory capital investment (license costs, replacing end of life systems) and substantial plant reliability investment in the $2.5B range. Even with this substantial capital investment commencing immediately, the OCC for extending our nuclear resource is 5%-10% of that of a new CCGT.
Another economic competitiveness lens developed by this nuclear analysis was the Levelized Cost Of Energy (LCOE). The incremental LCOE for the plant’s extended operation was in the $110/MWH range (2025 economics). While this may seem to be less attractive compared to today’s costs, it likely will be very attractive during the actual 2046-2066 operational period. In addition, the LCOE for the combined 1st and 2nd license renewals would be in the very competitive $55/MWH range.
A related note is that I anticipate the next area of focus for existing nuclear resources is the feasibility of a 3rd license extension (100-year endpoint). I just added this functionality to a nuclear capital model I’ve just refreshed at leadership’s request. I’ve heard there are some significant technical challenges to achieving this. However, I’d anticipate that in 20-years that the economics of this will be as attractive as our current, proposed license extension – even with billions of capital investment.
Large Reactor versus SMR Economics | One economic perspective that I have seen multiple times is that the large reactors will be more cost effective than the SMR’s. My preliminary analysis of the AP1000 versus multiple SMR technologies confirms this from an LCOE perspective, especially when using dual-AP1000 projects (our internal guideline is that we don’t want to build one of any nuclear technology, always at least 2 co-located units). At the present time, I would estimate AP1000 LCOE’s to be 10%-20% lower than that of a few co-located SMR’s.
Increasing SMR Cost Competitiveness | There are multiple factors that could enable SMRs to approach cost parity with large reactors over the next 20+ years. One factor is development of a substantial orderbook to enable rapid advancement toward anticipated Nth Of A Kind (NOAK) project costs. Key enablers to achieve this include:
• Developing pricing leverage over the supply chain
• Effective documentation and transfer of construction lessons learned to drive down construction costs
• A focus on identifying and developing projects with multiple co-located units to achieve site and operational cost efficiencies.
New Nuclear Cost Discovery | My current view is that we are still in the “cost-discovery” stage for all SMR’s from both a First Of A Kind (FOAK) and NOAK perspective. We have received preliminary cost estimates from several SMR OEMs over the past 30 months, in addition to others who have not shared any costs to date. A telling fact is that where we’ve received multiple cost updates, the estimated cost metric has always increased. In one case, the updated OCC increased by roughly 40% over a 12-month timeframe. This drives my expectation that we’ll continue to see progressively higher FOAK project costs across all SMR technologies.
The conceptual pathway to the target NOAK cost is a learning curve applied to the FOAK costs. I’ve seen a rough estimate of 88% from a DOE study. My current thinking is that two learning curves should be applied to each project. A technology learning curve tracks cost efficiency associated with the prior quantity of projects / powerblocks completed while a site learning curve should be applied to capture the efficiencies associated with co-locating multiple SMRs on one site.
My rationale for believing that the SMRs are still in a NOAK cost discovery phase is the inability of OEMs to articulate a specific strategy to progress down the learning curve from the FOAK project. OEMs have been ambiguous on contracting strategy for large components. In addition, plans for using modular construction appear to be in a trial and error phase.
As much as i appreciate Mitsubishi’s aggressive timeline and intentions which is worldwide market & not USA, what our nation need is energy policy certainty. Never forget Keystone XL pipeline & sleepy Joe Biden’s first day on the job’s executive order that killed 11,000 jobs and cancellation of the project and loss of billions. Look up Atlantic Coast pipeline fiasco as another poster child of an energy project with jobs and economic prosperity destroyed because of lack of pro American households and businesses energy legislation at the federal level. So what can be done??? Pass a federal law in line with Louisiana’s affordable reliable clean energy security law:
We do this as a federal law and allow the states to determine their own energy prosperity or not. With the Fed’s out of the way & economic certainty back in long term energy infrastructure projects, GE & Siemens will jump into this capacity increase with both feet and then we’ll see American households and businesses in the states that embrace the pro energy affordability & reliability route prosper for generations to come …
I'm not sure whether cancelling Keystone XL was a good or a bad decision. Yes, jobs ere lost but if the pipeline would have endangered the underground aquifers in our nation's bread basket, its cancellation was justified.
I can tell with 💯 percent certainty that it’s cancellation was bad for the USA and our energy independence from the bad guys … our refineries that our bureaucrats in government state and federal have over regulated and red taped , are mostly set up to refine heavy crude which are imported
If not from the Canadian oil-sands then from Venezuela and other America hating nations … yeaper keystone pipeline cancellation was & is criminal
The Gas Turbine, NG and LNG suppliers may well be happy now, but downside to this for those in pursuit of AI is it relies heavily on rapidly depleting fossil fuels, particularly Oil and NG, prised for their high energy density. The hope is that AI can discover a low- or zero-CO2 energy source to replace them before depletion or climate impacts destabilise the systems supporting AI. However, the immense energy demands of those AI (e.g., data/learning centers using ~2% of global electricity) and its carbon footprint (e.g., training one model emits ~100-300 tons of CO2) make this a risky gamble, as no alternative currently matches fossil fuels' versatility and density.
When REbuildable’s, sorry Renewable Energy converters energy from the likes of PVP’s and WT’s enters the Grid it’s intension is to do public good, but I see little good coming from AI so maybe it’s just as well that many of these’s AI companies go Off-Grid. I just hope that all the vendors, have been paid before AI’s are switched on for eventually along with rocket flights to terraform and then colonise Mars, they’re seen as just another piece of technology that fails to “deliver" on its promises, a form of oneiric technology, of it’s rich fantasist dreamers along with their backers, rather than a functional reality. When AI falls short of expectations, whether due to overhyped potential, insufficient capabilities, or a failure to provide tangible benefits, it becomes a "pipe dream", a "myth"🤔
What great news, doubling gas turbine generator manufacturing, except for us poor smeals here in New England where we are as Karl in the movie “Sling Blade” identifies the problem with a cranky non starting lawn mower “ain’t got no gas in it.” We have no gas here in New England! Thank you Governor Healy of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts! You complaining about the success of suing the two major gas expansions by two very reputable firms have left us in a pickle. She sort of reminds this writer of the Soviet era submarine captain in “Red October” who fires a torpedo at another submarine missing that submarine only to find that the torpedo is headed straight for his boat….his XO says it best “You arrogant ass you just killed us..”
Yet, there she is, out on Nantucket blashing everyone and everything that has to do with the high cost of energy in New England and specifically Massachusetts! Whadda mean lawsuits have electoral and long term consequences? You can’t make this stuff up. We can only put our hopes and dreams on the SMR’s being a real solution either that or take Hydro Quebec at gunpoint. For the rest of the country? God love you! The Japanese are coming to the rescue! Let’s hope they leave Godzilla at home this time.
You would get lower cost electricity by building a large traditional reactor (or not shutting down Vermont Yankee and Indian Point in the first place). Although, perhaps, it is more politically viable to site SMRs and to finance their lower cost of entry.
Like so many things, lower cost to buy, much higher cost to own for SMRs vs. traditional large reactors.
Plus, there are no SMRs that can begin construction now. Large traditional reactors are ready to go.
Yes! Just don’t let brown & root do the concrete work
Haven't they camouflaged themselves as Haliburton, now? Classic case of everyone learned to recognize their criminal and/or incompetent nature and so they changed their name and hoped no one noticed.
Beware any organization or group that changes it's name often or regularly.
They were part of Halliburton but a series of transactions shed them. In 2015 they separated from KBR - Kellogg Briwn& Root - to become their own independent company . HQ is now Baton Rouge.
Thank you for the update. I have not been keeping up.
My main awareness of B&R is that they were the incompetent management of the South Texas Nuclear Project that helped balloon the cost tremendously, until the partners finally replaced them with Bechtel.
And I have a vague memory of some shady dealings involving a dam and LBJ, way back when.
All, IIRC.
I still have ill will feelings as the cost of their mistake cost all of us at the big red h profit sharing money!! But then the financial guys came into power displacing the technical operations folks and they ruined the company - it’s still ruined.
That's not stopping Ontario from ordering 4 US BWRX-300 SMRs at a cost of $20.9B for 1.2GW, which is likely a low ball estimate.
In spite of already having a fully functional CANDU industry & supply chain, which is 95% Canadian, and CANDU 700MW or newer 900MW are a far better fit for Ontario's burgeoning power demand, whereas the SMRs make vastly more sense for use in the 7 Canadian provinces whose power grid being much smaller, could use SMRs far more effectively. Likely using CANDU's would cost ~1/3rd that of the BWRX's.
The whole thing reeks of corruption. But that's nothing new for Ontario. Their wind & solar Green Energy Act costs the same as Ontario's current CANDU fleet, $60B. But the CANDUs will produce over 16X the amount of electricity as the wind & solar will. That is if you were so foolish as to compare 24/7 nuclear power to intermittent, unreliable wind/solar power as equally valuable.
The CANDUs also produce large amounts of Transuranics that are the startup fuel for extremely fuel efficient Fast Reactors and Thorium Molten Salt Reactors, including a number of SMR types, best example the Copenhagen Atomics 100MWth shipping container reactor:
https://www.copenhagenatomics.com/technology/
SMRs are the new shiny...
Sigh. Analysis seems to go out the window, assuming it was ever in the room with politicians in the first place.
For your information, Ontario has a grid that is 95 percent CLEAN! How much is that worth?
Seriously, Jeff? Don’t you know that the morons we elected throughout New England aren’t doing any of that?
We don't yet know what SMRs are going to cost. Returning existing reactors to service, when that can be done safely, looks like a cheaper and more expedient solution.
Unfortunately, that logic merely ensures that SMRs are going to cost far more than they should. The US once had a booming, lucrative nuclear power industry that was completing one NPP per month by 1974, with 2 NPPs per month on order.
That was demolished by determined, criminal efforts of NGOs (with $billions/yr in funding), legal-lobby firms, criminal Foundations and wholly corrupted politicians, including ex-Climate Czar, John Kerry. They did that. The current administration must take responsibility for the evil that was done, and spend whatever needs to be spent to return that industry to its former strength.
With SMRs you don't order one or two. You order a dozen or more. That's how factory production brings down costs. They did that to solar & wind, in spite of them being total losers, inherently due to a thing called Physics. Don't you think they could do the same to a tech that ACTUALLY does severely reduce emissions?
You are making unfounded allegations of criminality, perhaps out of ignorance.
The primary reason why the US nuclear power faltered is the huge cost overruns and plant cancellations in the 1980s that cost both electrify customer and utility shareholders tens of billions of dollars. Utilities are understandably reluctant to take on the huge financial risks associated with investing in nuclear. Furthermore, Southern Company's recent experience with the new Vogle units confirms that reluctance.
One big advantage of SMRs is that they will involve smaller financial risks for utilities which may override the cost advantage they forfeit in economies of scale.
Every projection I've seen has electricity from SMRs substantially higher priced than from traditional large reactors. Numbers resembling $.15 vs. $.08 per KWHr.
Vote out the idiots
Timely article given the significant increase in demand. Mitsubishi will do extremely well financially if they're able to achieve the 100% production increase in just 2 years. We have CT's from domestic manufacturer that are currently late (maxed out liquidated damages) and additional CCGT's due in 2030....any we're already skeptical of their timely delivery.
One question we've been working on is their ability to reliably achieve capacity factors around 80% to support the designated customer load. Our current CCGT's currently operate in the 50% range.
Another potential risk area is reliability. Our engineers indicated the turbine selection decision was a tradeoff between new, larger and more efficient models with questionable reliability versus older, smaller models with proven reliability. Our newest turbines, installed in 2019, have suffered from both poor reliability and limited spares availability. We've purchased 2 "super-cores" at a cost of $40M+ to maintain unit availability.
This is super interesting information. Thanks for sharing. I’ve heard some people say it might be worth it for American companies to buy turbines that operate at 50 hertz and convert it to 60 just to alleviate the backlog.
How to make electricity more expensive:
1) Tell the makers of gas turbines they have no future
2) Makers of gas turbines hear the message and disinvest
3) New demand emerges that requires stable power (data centers)
4) Intermittents are unable to supply new demand for stable power
5) Gas turbines are more expensive now due to disinvestment
6) Electricity prices rise due to increased demand and a lack of supply
7) Lecture data centers that all they need is demand response
8) Blame higher prices on the rising price of gas
9) Go to 1)
I have heard the usual suspects claim that demand response for data centers is a good idea. Am I the only one who wonders what will happen when the data center that provides the computer support for self driving cars gets turned off?
That sounds like a good thing, as self driving cars surely sounds like Hell to me.
Think AC/DC. Highway to Hell!
I was channeling Richard Thompson's "Bee's wings" but AC/DC does better fit my mood today.
Used to play "Big Balls" on repeat while learning to juggle...
I am scratching my head on that one too, Roger. But I seem to recall a recent article that said Microsoft or Google (or one of the AI big ones) was offering to modulate their electricity usage somehow.
Demand response can take the form of running behind-the-meter generation. That's exactly what happens today. Typically BTM generation is more expensive to produce than the wholesale market price of energy but that relationship can reverse when system demand is high.
How very European
What's wrong with making fossil fuel electricity more expensive? It's called internalizing the external costs that their emissions impose on society.
The gas is going to be built, just at a higher price. The best way to lower CO2 emissions is to use gas as a smooth transition to nuclear power. Higher electricity prices not only hurt working people, but they also disincentivize electrification.
Not necessarily. Wind and solar can be installed faster than gas-fired generation and much faster than nuclear. We are close to a decade away from seeing a significant amount of nuclear being on line. Using just gas to bridge the gap will produce a huge amount of GHG, which can be avoided by deploying renewable resources.
Gas-fired generation can be used to back up the renewables so that reliability is not jeopardized, although it will run at a low capacity factor..
According to a Berkeley Labs study, the median wait time in 2023 to get an Interconnection for a new plant is 5 years. Berkeley Labs is the gold standard for grid studies. I don’t know of a newer study, but there is a lot of talk that the current wait is up to 7 or 8 years.
https://emp.lbl.gov/queues
The problem is mainly that solar and wind have clogged up the grid due to their low capacity factors. Plants with low capacity factors use up more transmission capacity because they peak up to 3 to 4 times their average. The grid was designed for dispatchable plants that transmit near their average.
Fermi Texas, 4 AP1000s, BTM, slated to go online in 2032. Aggressive schedule indeed, but this is what makes me happy. BTM means they don’t have to wait for an interconnection. We might see a lot more of this.
That's not "internalizing the external costs", not even close. If they really wanted to do that, they would evaluate those costs using rational and rigorous methods, and then apply a revenue neutral carbon fee and dividend upon the fuel they burn. And then let the free market accurately and honestly determine the most viable energy sources to use. It only works when you remove all the preferential, politically mandated, irrational subsidies, mandates & exemptions given to wind & solar. That destroys the free market. Apart from the CF&D, solar & wind can compete fairly on the market.
I agree; a carbon tax would be the ideal mechanism for internalizing GHG emissions. Tell that to Congress.
Also, a related issue is where to set the tax. It should be set equal to the Social Cost of Carbon, which is a very ambiguous value. The most recent analyses set SCC equal to about $200 per Metric Ton of CO2. Is that the correct value? Who knows. The climate change models produce a wide range of values.
Exactly! And that’s right out of the anti-capitalist playbook.
Great piece as usual. Too bad our government is still spending a majority of our money on criminal solar, see Dave Walsh Energy
"Criminal solar?" You sound like someone who has drunk the MAGA Kool Aid. What's criminal is having a convicted felon as president.
What's criminal is having a mentally incompetent figurehead as a president with unelected individuals making the decisions, illegally using a Robopen to forge the Presidents signature. Including on starting illegal wars that put the entire World at risk. That's high treason. And a crime against humanity.
Solar is criminal because it is being foisted upon us through corruption. No utility would throw money down the sewer on Solar if it was allowed to act in the most financially responsible way.
Exactly. I am an engineer designing pumps that run off of batteries charged by solar panels - that is the only financially non-corrupt way to use them.
Solar has been a criminal enterprise since they first came out in the 70's.
So you understand the meaning of the word, "criminal?" It means that a person or organization is convicted of a felony (like Trump).
Do you? Stealing our tax money and giving it to the communist party in China in the form of toxic waste known as solar made by child slaves therin...
You need to come to grips with the fact that your guys illegally charged Trump with fake crimes like the Soviets did to their own back in the day...
There is also the possibility of seeing Trump as correctly convicted criminal (for multiple crimes committed, to many to reach a verdicts in time) who avoided punishment by spineless system enabling corruption. And also to see solar power as criminal waste of resources and a way of supporting Chinese dictatorship at the same time.
No need to be worried about climate change to wish to reduce inflationary dependence on fossil fuels (source of wars and crisis after crisis). Cheap FF are harder and harder to find. Solar and wind are not tools for that reduction (factual evaluation).
Some things can be separated, like every issue should be evaluated separately, otherwise it is either one or the other camp and no way of achieving any (good) compromise.
Your MAGA roots are showing. Virtually everything you have just said is a lie.
Taking lessons from the pathological liar in the White House?
Woohoo! More gas turbines coming, but down the road. More NG burning is better! More Power Scotty! Beam me up Bones... Sorry...
Great article. Next EnergyBadBoys article on ability to get 5-10% more capacity on existing natural gas plants. Many of the generating companies focusing on it including FMPA. Low-cost and quickest way to add. Transmission queue likely the biggest lead time
We’d love to do that. I’ll shoot you my contact info and we can chat next week
Like data centres, smelters must have continuous power and here is something for the "you couldn't make it up" file.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/australias-biggest-smelter-to-launch-massive-wind-and-solar-tender-says-nuclear-too-costly/
Smelters running on wind and solar? come on guys:)
I wondered how long that fantasy would last, and sure enough, a new managing director has spiked the idea, he is going to seek public support to keep smelting while the cost of power escalates. How surprising.
Smelters are actually a good load for renewables because they act like large thermal storage sources.
Crazy idea using expensive, intermittent, unreliable, electricity from wind & solar to supply heat. Makes far more sense to use gas & coal thermal energy while replacing gas & coal electricity generation with nuclear. At some point well in the future you can use high temperature reactors for smelter high grade heat requirements and nuclear hydrogen. High temperature reactors are great for economically cracking water to produce H2.
It remains to be seen what HTGRs can economically do.
Now we need the other major turbine makers like GE and Siemens to double their output. There does not seem to be much risk on their part, if one data center is cancelled, another data will need the turbines.
Clearly, you guys are climate change deniers and most likely shills for the fossil fuels industry. Why else would you systematically deny the fact that renewable energy reduces greenhouse gas emissions?
Renewable energy can be backed up with storage and gas-fired generators (which would seldom run, thus produce minimally acceptable emissions). Yes, this is a more costly solution than just relying on fossil generation. But then what price do you place on saving the habitability of our planet for future generations?
By renewable energy you mean wind & solar. Wind & solar are non-viable, the EROI is so low as to make them physically impossible replacements for fossil. They do replace some fossil, highly dependent upon grid architecture, but the carbon abatement cost is far higher than OCGT-->CCGT, conventional Coal --> ultrasupercritical coal, conventional hydro, nuclear and biomass --> methanol. As well as electrification of most diesel based transportation.
The only long term solution for replacing fossil energy is nuclear. And fortunately that supply essentially unlimited, at least until the Earth is consumed by the Sun, and has the highest EROI of ALL energy sources right now, as well as being the most compact, the lowest footprint environmentally and by area by far of all energy sources. As well as being the most economical if the criminal roadblocks deliberately contrived to prevent its expansion are removed.
Apparently you and I read different journal articles.
A simple Wikipedia search reveals that the EROIs for wind and solar range from about 8 to 34.
Oil and Natural Gas range from 1.5 (oil shale) to 43 (for some conventional oil production).
Nuclear ranges from 20 to 81.
But from a climate change perspective, EROI is a useless metric. It tells us nothing about the GHG emissions produced by a resource for each unit of energy output.
What do you expect the GDP cost of warming to be in 2100, with no emissions policy?
Like it , love it want some of it! Get off your kiester GE!
A few perspectives below on new and existing nuclear costs
New Nuclear Economics | I agree with the comments that new nuclear energy is very expensive. I have not seen any comparison of resource cost metrics where new nuclear is not the most expensive resource. Without addressing the value of nuclear’s dispatchability and carbon free operation, I’ll address the long-term economic value and cost effectiveness of nuclear given the potential for a nuclear resource to operate 60+ years.
Nuclear Extended Life Economics | I recently completed an economic analysis of extending our large nuclear resource for an additional 20-years. This represents a potential 2nd license extension for each of the units. One economic lens is the comparison of Overnight Capital Costs (OCC), for either extending the nuclear resource or developing a new Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT). The cost for extending the nuclear resource includes both mandatory capital investment (license costs, replacing end of life systems) and substantial plant reliability investment in the $2.5B range. Even with this substantial capital investment commencing immediately, the OCC for extending our nuclear resource is 5%-10% of that of a new CCGT.
Another economic competitiveness lens developed by this nuclear analysis was the Levelized Cost Of Energy (LCOE). The incremental LCOE for the plant’s extended operation was in the $110/MWH range (2025 economics). While this may seem to be less attractive compared to today’s costs, it likely will be very attractive during the actual 2046-2066 operational period. In addition, the LCOE for the combined 1st and 2nd license renewals would be in the very competitive $55/MWH range.
A related note is that I anticipate the next area of focus for existing nuclear resources is the feasibility of a 3rd license extension (100-year endpoint). I just added this functionality to a nuclear capital model I’ve just refreshed at leadership’s request. I’ve heard there are some significant technical challenges to achieving this. However, I’d anticipate that in 20-years that the economics of this will be as attractive as our current, proposed license extension – even with billions of capital investment.
Large Reactor versus SMR Economics | One economic perspective that I have seen multiple times is that the large reactors will be more cost effective than the SMR’s. My preliminary analysis of the AP1000 versus multiple SMR technologies confirms this from an LCOE perspective, especially when using dual-AP1000 projects (our internal guideline is that we don’t want to build one of any nuclear technology, always at least 2 co-located units). At the present time, I would estimate AP1000 LCOE’s to be 10%-20% lower than that of a few co-located SMR’s.
Increasing SMR Cost Competitiveness | There are multiple factors that could enable SMRs to approach cost parity with large reactors over the next 20+ years. One factor is development of a substantial orderbook to enable rapid advancement toward anticipated Nth Of A Kind (NOAK) project costs. Key enablers to achieve this include:
• Developing pricing leverage over the supply chain
• Effective documentation and transfer of construction lessons learned to drive down construction costs
• A focus on identifying and developing projects with multiple co-located units to achieve site and operational cost efficiencies.
New Nuclear Cost Discovery | My current view is that we are still in the “cost-discovery” stage for all SMR’s from both a First Of A Kind (FOAK) and NOAK perspective. We have received preliminary cost estimates from several SMR OEMs over the past 30 months, in addition to others who have not shared any costs to date. A telling fact is that where we’ve received multiple cost updates, the estimated cost metric has always increased. In one case, the updated OCC increased by roughly 40% over a 12-month timeframe. This drives my expectation that we’ll continue to see progressively higher FOAK project costs across all SMR technologies.
The conceptual pathway to the target NOAK cost is a learning curve applied to the FOAK costs. I’ve seen a rough estimate of 88% from a DOE study. My current thinking is that two learning curves should be applied to each project. A technology learning curve tracks cost efficiency associated with the prior quantity of projects / powerblocks completed while a site learning curve should be applied to capture the efficiencies associated with co-locating multiple SMRs on one site.
My rationale for believing that the SMRs are still in a NOAK cost discovery phase is the inability of OEMs to articulate a specific strategy to progress down the learning curve from the FOAK project. OEMs have been ambiguous on contracting strategy for large components. In addition, plans for using modular construction appear to be in a trial and error phase.
As much as i appreciate Mitsubishi’s aggressive timeline and intentions which is worldwide market & not USA, what our nation need is energy policy certainty. Never forget Keystone XL pipeline & sleepy Joe Biden’s first day on the job’s executive order that killed 11,000 jobs and cancellation of the project and loss of billions. Look up Atlantic Coast pipeline fiasco as another poster child of an energy project with jobs and economic prosperity destroyed because of lack of pro American households and businesses energy legislation at the federal level. So what can be done??? Pass a federal law in line with Louisiana’s affordable reliable clean energy security law:
https://youtu.be/9d3EsX1vNtI
We do this as a federal law and allow the states to determine their own energy prosperity or not. With the Fed’s out of the way & economic certainty back in long term energy infrastructure projects, GE & Siemens will jump into this capacity increase with both feet and then we’ll see American households and businesses in the states that embrace the pro energy affordability & reliability route prosper for generations to come …
I'm not sure whether cancelling Keystone XL was a good or a bad decision. Yes, jobs ere lost but if the pipeline would have endangered the underground aquifers in our nation's bread basket, its cancellation was justified.
I can tell with 💯 percent certainty that it’s cancellation was bad for the USA and our energy independence from the bad guys … our refineries that our bureaucrats in government state and federal have over regulated and red taped , are mostly set up to refine heavy crude which are imported
If not from the Canadian oil-sands then from Venezuela and other America hating nations … yeaper keystone pipeline cancellation was & is criminal
Great news. Do you happen to know if GE and other CCGT manufacturers are also planning on increasing their production?
The Gas Turbine, NG and LNG suppliers may well be happy now, but downside to this for those in pursuit of AI is it relies heavily on rapidly depleting fossil fuels, particularly Oil and NG, prised for their high energy density. The hope is that AI can discover a low- or zero-CO2 energy source to replace them before depletion or climate impacts destabilise the systems supporting AI. However, the immense energy demands of those AI (e.g., data/learning centers using ~2% of global electricity) and its carbon footprint (e.g., training one model emits ~100-300 tons of CO2) make this a risky gamble, as no alternative currently matches fossil fuels' versatility and density.
When REbuildable’s, sorry Renewable Energy converters energy from the likes of PVP’s and WT’s enters the Grid it’s intension is to do public good, but I see little good coming from AI so maybe it’s just as well that many of these’s AI companies go Off-Grid. I just hope that all the vendors, have been paid before AI’s are switched on for eventually along with rocket flights to terraform and then colonise Mars, they’re seen as just another piece of technology that fails to “deliver" on its promises, a form of oneiric technology, of it’s rich fantasist dreamers along with their backers, rather than a functional reality. When AI falls short of expectations, whether due to overhyped potential, insufficient capabilities, or a failure to provide tangible benefits, it becomes a "pipe dream", a "myth"🤔
Thanks for posting, and great news, indeed!
Ps- scallywags 😂 perfect.
Great article and great news.