European OEM's and their EV timelines

[OVERKILL]

@UncleDave here would be an example of where you'd need to ramp something quickly:

Looking at the 2nd Saturday, wind capacity goes from 3,597MW to 3,014 then 2,285 over the course of two hours. That's an almost 600MW drop in that first hour, then an additional almost 800MW drop in the 2nd. I don't have anything more granular than hourly unfortunately, but these major variations in output are logistically challenging and require replacement capacity "at the ready".

 

[UncleDave]

Would be interesting to see the demand line across that chart and how much margin there is at the various times.

 

[OVERKILL]

Would be interesting to see the demand line across that chart and how much margin there is at the various times.

I don't track demand unfortunately, just wind and Darlington output to compare, but yes, that would be interesting to see.

That ties into what's called "Capacity Value" and it's the ability of a generator to provide meaningful capacity during periods of peak demand. Wind is valued at ~10% capacity value in Ontario. 20% of the time its output is 0% at periods of peak demand.

An acquaintance of mine, Scott Luft, wrote a good piece on Capacity Value a few years back:

The declining capacity value of solar in Ontario, and beyond

the value of electricity supply can be analysed by considering energy and capacity values separately. It is well-established that the energy value declines for a type of generation, such as solar, as it grows market share. The capacity value also shrinks for solar, once it meets daytime demand...

coldair.luftonline.net

It's worth the read if you are interested.

 

[Wolf359]

The cost per MW isn't the only metric that matters. A nuke will be inherently more expensive in that regard (and that cost varies wildly based on design) but it will produce significantly more power per MW of installed capacity.

Wind's inherent variability absolutely locks-in fast-ramp gas capacity, which has a larger emissions footprint than CCGT. While solar's daytime output at least aligns somewhat well with depressing daytime peaking and could theoretically have the morning and evening ramps buffered with storage, wind buggers off for days at a time, sometimes weeks.

And then of course there is the life expectancy problem. We've already decommissioned our only publicly owned wind turbine in the province, which was 18 years old at the time. The ones built shortly after near Bruce will be the next set to go, at roughly the same age. The nuke plant they are built behind is slated to run until 2064, potentially longer, and it broke ground in 1971. Its eight units produce more power now than they ever have in their history and the operator plans on trying to get as close to 7,000MWe as possible out of the facility. At a 90% CF, that's 55TWh a year.

To match that facility's 7,000MWe during Ontario's highest demand summer months, JUST using average CF, ignoring that it would still require significant backup capacity for when generation falls below that average, would require 51,900MW of wind. At 13.5% CF, that's 7,000MW average. That's 3,707 of your GE wind turbines, at $1 million/MW, that's $52 billion dollars to match the nameplate output of a 7,000MW nuke, and those wind turbines will last 1/5th as long, and they will STILL require backup gas capacity.

I believe GE just started making those windmills and they're basically for offshore projects where the wind is more consistent. But it'd be interesting to see how it ramps with time on those projects.

A long time ago, I used to work at an IPP and they had a 20 year contract on a gas fired co-gen plant and those were built in the late 80's. At the time, about a million per megawatt was a good number for a gas plant. I think GE's new turbine also calls for a 25 year life. I'd also be curious what the maintenance costs for keeping a nuclear plant online would cost. For the gas plants, they did major PMs about once a year and took anywhere from 2-5 weeks a year to do. Strangely the union plant took about 5 weeks and the non union plant would take 2-3 but maybe that wasn't fair as they may have been doing different things. Of course you also have things like the blade breaking on the turbine which wipes out the rest of the turbine. I was told that the whole town heard it when it went.

 

[OVERKILL]

I believe GE just started making those windmills and they're basically for offshore projects where the wind is more consistent. But it'd be interesting to see how it ramps with time on those projects.

A long time ago, I used to work at an IPP and they had a 20 year contract on a gas fired co-gen plant and those were built in the late 80's. At the time, about a million per megawatt was a good number for a gas plant. I think GE's new turbine also calls for a 25 year life. I'd also be curious what the maintenance costs for keeping a nuclear plant online would cost. For the gas plants, they did major PMs about once a year and took anywhere from 2-5 weeks a year to do. Strangely the union plant took about 5 weeks and the non union plant would take 2-3 but maybe that wasn't fair as they may have been doing different things. Of course you also have things like the blade breaking on the turbine which wipes out the rest of the turbine. I was told that the whole town heard it when it went.

OPEX on a nuke varies wildly, as it has a relationship to staffing, output...etc. The higher the output, the lower the price on that output needs to be to cover it. The OPEX for Darlington for example, is significantly cheaper than for Pickering, but both are less than 1/2 the price of the contract price for industrial wind. IIRC, Darlington is around $0.036/kWh for OPEX.

Yes, the projected operating life of a wind turbine is supposed to be 25 years, but they've been falling short of that. Offshore projects are of course located in even harsher environments, so it will be interesting to see how those hold up.

Even in coastal areas like Nova Scotia, wind may have very poor capacity value. Heat waves, even in ocean-front areas can bring huge lulls, so wind output goes into the toilet.

Did I provide you with a link to ElectricityMap in the past? If not, it's just electricitymap.org and it provides access to current generator output, which can be valuable when discussing this stuff.

So, earlier this AM, it wasn't very windy in coastal Nova Scotia:

It has since gotten more windy, but this sort of performance, or worse, isn't uncommon in the summer months where demand is higher.

Presently, in both the UK and Denmark, both with significant wind capacity, including offshore, output is also poor:

 

[Wolf359]

I don't track demand unfortunately, just wind and Darlington output to compare, but yes, that would be interesting to see.

That ties into what's called "Capacity Value" and it's the ability of a generator to provide meaningful capacity during periods of peak demand. Wind is valued at ~10% capacity value in Ontario. 20% of the time its output is 0% at periods of peak demand.

GE claims their capacity factor is 60-64% for their new turbines which is about 5-7% higher than others out there. Some of that might be due to the power it can generate even at low wind speeds. The rotor size alone is 220 meters with a 107 meter long blade. Didn't really find projections of what they think it will be once in operation on those offshore projects. Eventually there will be a limit on the size of the blade but for now they seem to keep getting bigger and bigger which both lowers costs and increases output.

 

[OVERKILL]

GE claims their capacity factor is 60-64% for their new turbines which is about 5-7% higher than others out there. Some of that might be due to the power it can generate even at low wind speeds. The rotor size alone is 220 meters with a 107 meter long blade. Didn't really find projections of what they think it will be once in operation on those offshore projects. Eventually there will be a limit on the size of the blade but for now they seem to keep getting bigger and bigger which both lowers costs and increases output.

The bigger turbines require a higher wind speed for cut-in, so there are trade-offs. That projected CF is likely based on ideal conditions, it will be interesting to see what actual CF is in service. I know we saw all kids of ridiculous figures here in Ontario, none of which bore to fruition and nobody appeared to consider the seasonality aspect either, which really hurt things. Wind CF in the fall and spring can be north of 40%, but these are our lowest demand periods where the capacity is simply not needed. Wind produces out of phase with demand as both cold snaps and heat waves are typically accompanied by calms.

If you've got the impression I'm not a fan of wind generation, you'd be correct The high contract cost and a value approaching zero coupled with the locking-in of fossil backup make it an absolute piss-poor source of power generation if the goal is ultra-low emissions and the elimination of fossil capacity from grids. There's a reason we moved away from wind for running mills and motivating ships. Fossil fuels allowed for 'round the clock operation, something we've grown accustomed to and depend on in a modern society. Not being able to heat the house because it's -30 and not windy is completely insane. China has started using nuclear power to provide not only electricity but district heating at this point, a trend that I expect may pick up some momentum if it is successful. Russia is now building small modular nuclear barges. The first one is grid connected and providing heat and power in the arctic right now.

When its so cold your breathe freezes on your face, when it's dark for most of the day and everything is buried in 3ft of snow, the only sources capable of allowing for existence in these conditions are fossil fuels, nuclear and hydro-electric. The two former ones also have the benefit of producing excess heat that can be harnessed for other purposes. Everything else is just green-washed window dressing pandered under the guise of environmental stewardship. When you are never required to do any of the heavy lifting, you can claim all sorts of extraordinary achievements. Reminds me of that meme that claims on a specific day that Denmark produced 158% of their electricity from "clean, green, wind energy" ignoring the fact that when that meme was made, on average 60% of the time, the country was powered by something else. It's a parlour trick.

 

[Wolf359]

I'm not necessarily a big wind fan, just impressed that the costs keep coming down, same as solar. Eventually they'll make more sense. Nuclear and gas have hit the point where the costs aren't coming down and increase with time along with inflation. Also I believe the larger wind turbines actually claim the opposite, they can work with lower wind speeds which give them the higher capacity factor. I think your data was for on shore wind, doesn't seem to be that much data for off shore wind. Will be interesting to see how much bigger they can get.

 

[UncleDave]

The was I always looked at it was
1. You need a dino, nuke, hydro backbone that can carry everything.
2. The amount and type of your renewables determine how much and when you can turn the knob down on the on the above.

 

[UncleDave]

I'm not necessarily a big wind fan, just impressed that the costs keep coming down, same as solar. Eventually they'll make more sense. Nuclear and gas have hit the point where the costs aren't coming down and increase with time along with inflation. Also I believe the larger wind turbines actually claim the opposite, they can work with lower wind speeds which give them the higher capacity factor. I think your data was for on shore wind, doesn't seem to be that much data for off shore wind. Will be interesting to see how much bigger they can get.

Depends on the solar plant type as to whether costs have come down.

Uber expensive - Google and Bright suns Ivanpah plant is horrifically complex and has been a consistent under performer
It consumes gross quantities of gas and money.

Then you have roadrunners panel farm with no moving parts is much cheaper way to put out 500MW.

 

[OVERKILL]

I'm not necessarily a big wind fan, just impressed that the costs keep coming down, same as solar. Eventually they'll make more sense. Nuclear and gas have hit the point where the costs aren't coming down and increase with time along with inflation. Also I believe the larger wind turbines actually claim the opposite, they can work with lower wind speeds which give them the higher capacity factor. I think your data was for on shore wind, doesn't seem to be that much data for off shore wind. Will be interesting to see how much bigger they can get.

As I noted earlier, cost is just a small part of it. Wind is installed because it's a quick and easy compliment to gas and many of the same companies own both so it makes for an easy virtue signal. Serial construction of standardized designs drives-down cost, that's why Russian nuclear plants are currently quite inexpensive compared to Western designs and why China has settled on the Hualong One for their own domestic builds. This is supposed to be the big driver to reduced cost on SMR nuclear.

At some point we need to decide whether the goal is just high penetration of renewables or deep decarbonization, because they are not the same thing. A high wind grid is not a low emissions grid, but it's an expensive one due to the acrobatics required to make such massive amounts of intermittency work.

Read the Capacity Value article I linked earlier, at some point these technologies start sabotaging their own markets because "more" doesn't mean "more right now". You end up with bigger peaks of output and the same lulls where somebody else steps in, so market value continues to decline while market price, to prop it up, continues to climb. Nobody is going to build a generator that doesn't make money and fuelled sources will simply demand more if they produce less.

No, eventually they won't make more sense, that's like saying eventually the square peg will fit in the round hole, you just need more pegs, and the pegs need to be cheaper. It doesn't change the fundamentals of grid operation or redefine demand profiles. Not producing power when it is needed is, and will continue to be, the problem.

Solar works, as long as penetration is constrained, to depress daytime peaking. The limit on penetration is key, because it works reasonably well as long as you don't start cannibalizing your baseload sources. Once you do that, and drive them out of market, then that capacity gets replaced by fast-ramp peaker capacity which is more emissions intense and more expensive. So then your "cheap solar" makes power more expensive because backup capacity isn't going to be built, or operate, if it can't make money. If you drive out ultra-low emissions sources like nuclear, then your grid also gets dirtier too, taking things the opposite direction. There are of course stability implications as well, as even things like a fast roll-in of cloud cover, if a larger portion of the grid is solar, can destabilize things. Large generators do FCAS as part of their standard operation and provide inertia, something that solar and wind lack.

On the predicted higher average CF, this comes from projections for more, and more consistent wind conditions at higher altitudes. It appears that the cut-in speed for most of the larger models is the standard 3m/s that it was for the 3-6MW units. GE hasn't made the cut-in available for the one we are discussing but I did find some for another 12MW turbine and it was the same.

 

[OVERKILL]

Depends on the solar plant type as to whether costs have come down.

Uber expensive - Google and Bright suns Ivanpah plant is horrifically complex and has been a consistent under performer
It consumes gross quantities of gas and money.

Then you have roadrunners panel farm with no moving parts is much cheaper way to put out 500MW.

Yes, the CSP plants have been a nightmare. Ivanpah, Crescent Dunes (which is currently inop) and there are a few more. Ivanpah was, per MW, more expensive than a nuke.

 

[UncleDave]

Yes, the CSP plants have been a nightmare. Ivanpah, Crescent Dunes (which is currently inop) and there are a few more. Ivanpah was, per MW, more expensive than a nuke.

I was amazed to see Ivanpah uses more land than a panel farm and ultimately produces less energy - makes me curious about why its claimed to be more efficient. It requires so much natural gas it would be considered a gross polluter if it didnt ride in on the solar part, plus its a bird killer.

In the end whats the point when you can just put up a super simple bunch of panels on a single axis tracker?

 

[OVERKILL]

I was amazed to see Ivanpah uses more land than a panel farm and ultimately produces less energy - makes me curious about why its claimed to be more efficient. It requires so much natural gas it would be considered a gross polluter if it didnt ride in on the solar part, plus its a bird killer.

In the end whats the point when you can just put up a super simple bunch of panels on a single axis tracker?

With Crescent Dunes the idea was that the molten salt would allow the plant to continue to generate after traditional PV had buggered off. Of course it was an epic failure. Not sure about Ivanpah, it's just goofy, lol

 

[UncleDave]

With Crescent Dunes the idea was that the molten salt would allow the plant to continue to generate after traditional PV had buggered off. Of course it was an epic failure. Not sure about Ivanpah, it's just goofy, lol

Same concept - only thing I can think of is that the load bleeds off the heat faster than was anticipated.
Ivanpah goes to gas to keep the salt molten and apparently takes unbelievable amount of it.
Somebody didn't carry the 1.

 

[OVERKILL]

Same concept - only thing I can think of is that the load bleeds off the heat faster than was anticipated.
Ivanpah goes to gas to keep the salt molten and apparently takes unbelievable amount of it.
Somebody didn't carry the 1.

I was under the impression that Ivanpah was straight-steam and didn't have any storage?

 

[UncleDave]

I was under the impression that Ivanpah was straight-steam and didn't have any storage?

Could very well be, I lost interest early on.

 

[measureman]

What happens to Tesla when the major car companies totally ramp up EV production?

 

[UncleDave]

What happens to Tesla when the major car companies totally ramp up EV production?

Nothing.

 

[JeffKeryk]

What happens to Tesla when the major car companies totally ramp up EV production?

I predict they are gonna go belly up any day now.
Elon's whack.

Just kidding. Tesla is 10 years ahead of everyone. From an EV tech standpoint, no one is even close.
They are a pure play EV company which is a huge advantage over "the major companies".
And then there is that awesome market cap might...