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tphuang

tphuang

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I think China being ahead of wind/solar commitment is quite obvious. With more nuclear plants coming online, that will reduce the need for coal even further. Wind/solar costs have fallen so much that they are now more economical than new coal plants. It really doesn't make sense to keep building replacement coal plants when wind/solar/nuclear can replace their power generation capacity. we will see.

Also, we've seen the energy storage, power transmission and smart grid technology are all improving. All of which will hopefully improve the utilization of wind/solar farms.

Another factor to consider is greater import of natural gas. The quickest way to lower emission is actually just switching from coal to natural gas.
 
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AndrewS

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tphuang said:
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I think China being ahead of wind/solar commitment is quite obvious. With more nuclear plants coming online, that will reduce the need for coal even further. Wind/solar costs have fallen so much that they are now more economical than new coal plants. It really doesn't make sense to keep building replacement coal plants when wind/solar/nuclear can replace their power generation capacity. we will see.

Also, we've seen the energy storage, power transmission and smart grid technology are all improving. All of which will hopefully improve the utilization of wind/solar farms.

Another factor to consider is greater import of natural gas. The quickest way to lower emission is actually just switching from coal to natural gas.
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Yes, wind and solar can match or beat coal electricity, based on the wholesale electricity cost of 4.2c per kWh.

But the problem is that the lowest cost battery storage solution currently is 11c per kWh, and you need batteries to even out supply.

Plus gas costs in Asia are very high compared to the US, so electricity made from burning gas would cost a lot more than coal in China.
 
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gelgoog

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tphuang said:
Another factor to consider is greater import of natural gas. The quickest way to lower emission is actually just switching from coal to natural gas.
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China does not have the technology for large gas turbines for electrical power generation. It would need to be imported. The market leaders in that are US, Japanese, and German companies like GE, Mitsubishi, and Siemens. The Italians also make some of the lower power output models.

Ukraine cut water and electricity to Crimea after it was annexed by Russia. Russia realized they had a problem with imports of that when they wanted to put a gas power plant in Crimea and it got sanctioned by the West. As a result they basically got some second hand Siemens gas turbines. That also got sanctioned and no technicians or parts were allowed to get them operating. The Russians did get them working anyway, but it took a couple of years. The Russians did start licensed production of some of the smaller Western turbines (GE ones) some years ago. They should have a 100% native supply chain since like last year. But these are smaller models for power plants with like 100MW class. They have had a program to make larger gas turbines for several years already but they aren't ready yet.
 
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Godzilla

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gelgoog said:
China does not have the technology for large gas turbines for electrical power generation. It would need to be imported. The market leaders in that are US, Japanese, and German companies like GE, Mitsubishi, and Siemens. The Italians also make some of the lower power output models.

Ukraine cut water and electricity to Crimea after it was annexed by Russia. Russia realized they had a problem with imports of that when they wanted to put a gas power plant in Crimea and it got sanctioned by the West. As a result they basically got some second hand Siemens gas turbines. That also got sanctioned and no technicians or parts were allowed to get them operating. The Russians did get them working anyway, but it took a couple of years. The Russians did start licensed production of some of the smaller Western turbines (GE ones) some years ago. They should have a 100% native supply chain since like last year. But these are smaller models for power plants with like 100MW class. They have had a program to make larger gas turbines for several years already but they aren't ready yet.
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I am pretty sure that they have their own E class already, and Shanghai electric does have the JV with Anasaldo to make F class turbines in China. A little bit off the latest and greatest toys in terms of efficiency but still pretty good. In any case, they are still buying H class directly from GE too.
Gas is definitely the go to complement the renewables, and having a few open cycle ones lying around to help with the localized peaking loads is perfect, and the efficiency penalty for those won't matter so much!
 
FairAndUnbiased

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gelgoog said:
China does not have the technology for large gas turbines for electrical power generation. It would need to be imported. The market leaders in that are US, Japanese, and German companies like GE, Mitsubishi, and Siemens. The Italians also make some of the lower power output models.

Ukraine cut water and electricity to Crimea after it was annexed by Russia. Russia realized they had a problem with imports of that when they wanted to put a gas power plant in Crimea and it got sanctioned by the West. As a result they basically got some second hand Siemens gas turbines. That also got sanctioned and no technicians or parts were allowed to get them operating. The Russians did get them working anyway, but it took a couple of years. The Russians did start licensed production of some of the smaller Western turbines (GE ones) some years ago. They should have a 100% native supply chain since like last year. But these are smaller models for power plants with like 100MW class. They have had a program to make larger gas turbines for several years already but they aren't ready yet.
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Gas turbines are indeed very efficient but they aren't a good transition to the king of thermal power, nuclear, which uses steam turbines.
 
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gelgoog

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Nuclear is more suitable for baseload. You will need additional power at certain times of the day. And to provide that peaking power you will need either pumped storage hydro or gas powered plants. In addition, if for whatever reason you need to build a power plant close to a populated area, it is more likely they will use a natural gas power plant than build a nuclear power plant. NPPs are typically built quite far away from main population centers for rather obvious reasons.
 
NiuBiDaRen

NiuBiDaRen

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gelgoog said:
Nuclear is more suitable for baseload. You will need additional power at certain times of the day. And to provide that peaking power you will need either pumped storage hydro or gas powered plants. In addition, if for whatever reason you need to build a power plant close to a populated area, it is more likely they will use a natural gas power plant than build a nuclear power plant. NPPs are typically built quite far away from main population centers for rather obvious reasons.
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Is the hangover following Fukushima for nuclear now over? It appears so, Japan I think will expand nuclear mid-2020s and S Korea has ended its nuclear phase out policy.
 
FairAndUnbiased

FairAndUnbiased

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gelgoog said:
Nuclear is more suitable for baseload. You will need additional power at certain times of the day. And to provide that peaking power you will need either pumped storage hydro or gas powered plants. In addition, if for whatever reason you need to build a power plant close to a populated area, it is more likely they will use a natural gas power plant than build a nuclear power plant. NPPs are typically built quite far away from main population centers for rather obvious reasons.
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Based on demand curves, the peak without renewables is noon, while the peak with renewables is shifted towards 8 PM.

Duck_Curve_CA-ISO_2016-10-22.agr.png

So to account for this, it looks like you need 60-70% peak as base load (coal/nuclear), with 15% being intermittent renewable and 15% being rapidly dispatchable.
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Hydro, doesn't matter if its pumped storage or natural, is rapidly dispatchable. It isn't intermittent thanks to the reservoirs. Hydro is 17% total generation but realistically you can't shut off all the dams, so we'll call it 10% hydro dispatchable.

So realistically natural gas plants only need to be around 5%. Which overestimates the % of natural gas fired power plants in actual service (~1%), indicating that hydroelectricity has more room for dispatch than I thought. It also shows that natural gas fired plants aren't that important to the energy mix.
 
Godzilla

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FairAndUnbiased said:
Based on demand curves, the peak without renewables is noon, while the peak with renewables is shifted towards 8 PM.

Duck_Curve_CA-ISO_2016-10-22.agr.png

So to account for this, it looks like you need 60-70% peak as base load (coal/nuclear), with 15% being intermittent renewable and 15% being rapidly dispatchable.
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Hydro, doesn't matter if its pumped storage or natural, is rapidly dispatchable. It isn't intermittent thanks to the reservoirs. Hydro is 17% total generation but realistically you can't shut off all the dams, so we'll call it 10% hydro dispatchable.

So realistically natural gas plants only need to be around 5%. Which overestimates the % of natural gas fired power plants in actual service (~1%), indicating that hydroelectricity has more room for dispatch than I thought. It also shows that natural gas fired plants aren't that important to the energy mix.
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I wonder what the curve looks like for China. I would imagine a country that have significantly more manufacturing activities would have a completely different power draw compared to Cali.
 
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