Prices For Offshore Wind Power To Rise By 50% (bbc.com) 188
Simon Jack reports via the BBC: The price paid to generate electricity by offshore wind farms is set to rise by more than 50% as the government tries to entice energy firms to invest. Its comes after an auction for offshore wind projects failed to attract any bids, with firms arguing the price set for electricity generated was too low. The BBC understands the government now will raise the price it pays from 44 pounds per MWh to as much as 70 pounds. It is hoped more offshore wind capacity will lead to cheaper energy bills. Energy companies have told the BBC that electricity produced out at sea would remain cheaper and less prone to shock increases compared to power derived from gas-fired power stations.
The UK is a world leader in offshore wind and is home to the world's four largest farms, supporting tens of thousands of jobs, which provided 13.8% of the UK's electricity generation last year, according to government statistics. But when the government revealed in September that no companies bid for project contracts, plans to nearly quadruple offshore wind capacity from 13 gigawatts GW to 50 by 2030 -- enough to power every home in the UK -- were dealt a heavy blow.
The technology has been described as the "jewel in the UK's renewable energy crown," but firms have been hit by higher costs for building offshore farms, with materials such as steel and labour being more expensive. According to energy companies, the government's failure to recognize the impact of higher costs led some firms to abandon existing projects, and all operators to boycott the most recent auction.
The UK is a world leader in offshore wind and is home to the world's four largest farms, supporting tens of thousands of jobs, which provided 13.8% of the UK's electricity generation last year, according to government statistics. But when the government revealed in September that no companies bid for project contracts, plans to nearly quadruple offshore wind capacity from 13 gigawatts GW to 50 by 2030 -- enough to power every home in the UK -- were dealt a heavy blow.
The technology has been described as the "jewel in the UK's renewable energy crown," but firms have been hit by higher costs for building offshore farms, with materials such as steel and labour being more expensive. According to energy companies, the government's failure to recognize the impact of higher costs led some firms to abandon existing projects, and all operators to boycott the most recent auction.
price of power (Score:2)
"44 pounds per MWh to as much as 70 pounds."
So how much do British consumers pay per Kwh for their power?
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around 46 US cents per Kwh
Re:price of power (Score:5, Informative)
around 46 US cents per Kwh
OMG. The most expensive power in America is in Hawaii, and even that is cheaper than the UK.
In Kentucky, retail power is under 10 cents/kwh.
The wholesale power price quoted in TFA is about 5 cents/kwh for wind in the UK. Residential customers are paying ten times that much. That's a big ripoff.
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Hahaha! Yeah no kidding! Even FL is under 16c/kWhr!
You guys in the UK getting blowjobs along with your gucci power prices?
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We're a tiny little country off the North Coast of the EU that insists on maintaining it's own "independent" Nuclear weapons systems. That means we have to have nuclear power plants, and commission and decommission them which mean we also need to have pumped hydro storage and so massively push up the cost of our electricity and pretend that they are a civilian thing whilst paying for them through our electricity bills. That means that we don't even get blowjobs.
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> You guys in the UK getting blowjobs along with your gucci power prices?
No we are fighting Russia. You should see the state Germany's power costs are in, what we have here is nothing compared to that.
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You should do it too. The current average in Germany is around 33 cents.
Re: price of power (Score:3)
Iâ(TM)m currently paying 26.758p / kWh (plus an annoying standing charge of 45.315p per day), which is roughly 33 cents / kWh. Itâ(TM)s high, very high, and our bills increased a lot after Putin started his vanity project in Ukraine. On the flip side, we only used 135 kWh last month (ca. £36), although thatâ(TM)s more than the same period last year when we used 110 kWh.
Re: price of power (Score:4, Informative)
Puh-lease! The only hostile nation in the mix has been Russia. No other nation has been threatening, manipulating or invading anybody else. The only reason NATO expanded is because the new members were terrified and distrustful of Russia. If Ukraine had made it in to NATO, it wouldn't have been invaded by Russia. Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees written in the Budapest Memorandum. Guarantees that Russia has reneged on time and time again. Sweden and Finland remained neutral throughout the whole of the Cold War, but thanks to Russia's hostility and aggression in Ukraine, they too have asked to join out of fear and distrust of Russia.
Putin's legacy is the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians, tanked the Russian economy, driven Ukraine closer to the EU and NATO, reversed the decline and increasing irrelevancy of NATO and scared long term neutrals in to expanding NATO further. What a failure he's been.
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The actual wholesale price of electricity in the UK is no where near as low as 5c/kWh. Retail price is high, but it's not 10x.
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It has nothing to do with the Government mate. The prices are set internationally.
Re: price of power (Score:3)
You are describing the government subsidies and commitments that encourage power companies to build new greener capacity.
Eco-activists will go on and on about the "lower cost of production" but ignore the actual negotiated price after the gov't 'bakes in' subsidies and profits for the power company.
If alternative power sources (wind, solar, hydro, thermal) are so much cheaper than traditional sources (coal, natural gas, diesel, and nuclear), why do the so-called cheaper sources need gov't subsidies?
Re:price of power (Score:5, Informative)
According to the EIA website, most of Kentucky's electricity is generated from coal, followed by gas.
In other words, it's cheap because the costs are externalized. If you had to pay for the damage being done, it wouldn't be 10c/kWh.
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https://www.theenergyshop.com/... [theenergyshop.com]
Around 28p per kWh which is 35 US cents per kWh.
The UK price is mostly set by natural gas. There is rarely enough solar+wind+nuclear+coal to set the price.
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I suspect the numbers I were looking at likely included the 'standing charge' averaged into it.
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It's possible. My electricity rate for a recent week, factoring in the standing charge and VAT (sales tax), comes to £0.38, or $0.48 (without the standing charge, it's £0.28). However I'm a low-use electricity customer, being I'm single, work from an office, have gas heating and stove etc, so the standing charge makes a disproportionately high contribution to my bill. I suspect the figures you saw are simply out of date, because there was a period a while back when they were that high, shortly a
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I can easily recall when my retail electricity price was around £0.12 (12 p) per kilowatt hour. That was before the UK government went insane.
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Ah, the good old days, when leaving my home PC's on 24/7 seemed perfectly reasonable. Yeah, the oldest bill I have with my current supplier is from 2019, £0.136/kWh, as recently as that. To be fair, I don't think it's much of a UK government issue, there are several countries in Europe paying higher charges than us, I think we're around the European average.
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Are you talking about the insanity of Net Zero?
12p was including that, the current prices are caused by Putin.
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The question was asked for retail, not wholesale. As in what end household end users pay.
If you can get "at cost' prices excluding transmission/connection fees to your house all the power to you, but most people can't.
Re: price of power (Score:3)
If the generation alone is going to cost 7c/kWh wholesale, then Iâ(TM)m assuming a lot more for transport, the gas backup plants and taxes. At a minimum weâ(TM)re talking 28c/kWh if this were handled end-to-end by a commercial entity with no profit motive. Given the government handles it, I would say at least 30% added for government waste and then the 20% VAT beyond that, so roughly 35-40c/kWh.
I personally pay approximately 4c/kWh in the US for nearby fixed retail contract hydro and nuclear power
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The gas backup plants are already there. They will simply run somewhat less often.
Comparing to hydro is not reasonable; hydro has all the advantages and costs very little. Unfortunately, constructing hydro in the UK starts with constructing a mountain to put it on, which somewhat increases the the cost.
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New hydro is being built in Scotland using the existing valleys. The plan is basically to flood some of them, turning them into reservoirs, and then pump water in and out.
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"44 pounds per MWh to as much as 70 pounds."
So how much do British consumers pay per Kwh for their power?
I have a related question, what is the strike price for Sizewell C?
A bit of looking about tells me that Sizewell C is supposed to come in at 20% under the price for Hinkley Point C, and Hinkley Point C has a strike price of 92.5 pounds. What is 92.5 minus 20%? My calculator tells me that is 74 pounds.
When Hinkley Point C was getting a strike price offer of around 90 pounds per MWh and offshore wind projects were getting a strike price of about 35 pounds then that didn't look great for nuclear power in the
Re: price of power (Score:2)
Given inflation in the last few years, especially in the construction industry, I suspect it will cost a lot more to build a nuclear plant now and that strike price will also go up.
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Given inflation in the last few years, especially in the construction industry, I suspect it will cost a lot more to build a nuclear plant now and that strike price will also go up.
Yes, clearly inflation will make the costs go up but I thought I was making it clear that the real question was how wind power compared to nuclear fission on costs. Maybe inflation impacts both similarly to a point the ratio on the cost of one to the other is largely unchanged. Maybe inflation impacts them differently enough that nuclear power looks to be cheaper than wind power.
Maybe I should have rephrased the question in my earlier post. What people will want to know is what is the lowest cost option
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Given inflation in the last few years, especially in the construction industry, I suspect it will cost a lot more to build a nuclear plant now and that strike price will also go up.
Yes, clearly inflation will make the costs go up but I thought I was making it clear that the real question was how wind power compared to nuclear fission on costs.
On a marginal production basis, wind is significantly cheaper. The strike price is also lower.
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Yes, clearly inflation will make the costs go up but I thought I was making it clear that the real question was how wind power compared to nuclear fission on costs.
The thing you have to remember is that the strike price for Nuclear is manipulated because the generating company has limited liability for decommissioning and has limits on accident liability. The Electricity customers have to cover both of those separately, which are items that Wind doesn't have. That means that the situation is actually much worse for nuclear than it looks on paper, but the decision to invest in nuclear is a strategic / military one rather than a cost based one. If that weren't true the
Re:price of power (Score:4, Insightful)
The other option of "leaving it to the markets..." Well, I hope we can agree that would be even more disastrous. The current issues with not enough new antibiotics vs antibiotic resistant bacteria is a direct result of "leaving it to the markets." Corporations act in purely the financial interests of whoever owns them, not for the public good. Govts need to step in & do their f**king jobs for civil-scale projects & infrastructure instead of dogmatically following this neoliberal ideology.
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Mrs Thatcher came to power with the hopeful but simplistic idea that the public sector was wasteful, largely because employees had no strong incentive to work hard or to innovate. The private sector, she told us, would remedy those faults. It would bring initiative, innovation, and all sorts of clever ways of increasing efficiency.
What she failed to notice was that, in the nature of things, the private sector would keep any such gains to itself.
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The problem with the public sector - ie civil service - is no one there ever gets fired or demoted for screwing up. If they fixed that simple problem then public sector projects would work as desired.
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re: Price of Power (Score:2)
The problem is that you are comparing nuclear at it's cheapest to wind at it's most expensive.
The strike price for HPC at £92 was set in 2013 as part of the CfD scheme. The strike price for wind that you are looking at has just been set, after the governments last auction for offshore space failed to attract any bids -- they were told that this was likely to happen, but the UK government is currently too busy arguing with itself to pay attention to, well, anything.
HPC is currently forecasting a loss,
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Well depends on the supplier of course, also what region, but currently due to the high gas prices the cost per kWh is around 27p which is a sharp increase from the 13p or so we had a couple of years back resulting in a lot of fuel poverty.
Gas prices are approx 7p per kWh, but for heating you obviously need to use many kWh. Thus its way cheaper to use gas directly for heating and cooking.
It is important to note that these costs are CAPPED. The UK government has regulated a cap to sheild most energy users
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9/kW (US D per kilo watt hour) is the MWh to as much as 70 pounds
Your average UK consumer is spending 25/kW taking away grid charges, and their are some people on a smart grid, who can get that down to 12/kW
So offshore wind providers want the maximum a utility company will pay for grid attached residential production just about any place in the world.
Now if the offshore power company could store say 50MWh and seen it back at 500MW it
China's plans are impressive 43.3 GW (Score:2)
It'll more than double the world's current largest wind farm (20GW), also in China (though on-shore).
https://www.euronews.com/green... [euronews.com]
Market forces... (Score:2)
Working as Adam Smith told us they should, yes?
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The govt initially didn't allow market forces to work, they put out an auction where the companies could bid lower prices to get the contracts to build wind farms. But the govt set the maximum price too low, no company could supply electricity for the price they wanted. The summary is wrong in saying the price is increase 50% because A) the price was never 50% lower and B) the amount that increased is where bidding starts, not ends.
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As well as "The Wealth of Nations", Adam Smith wrote "The Theory of Moral Sentiments". In fact, the latter appeared 17 years before the former.
Throughout his works, Smith is at pains to stress the vital importance of morality and custom. He was well aware that unprincipled men could easily clean up by selling out their own neighbours and countries. He hoped they wouldn't, but with little confidence.
The theory of "laissez faire" (non-interference) has always been open to the obvious objection that people don
Most people are struggling (Score:4, Informative)
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Perhaps visiting a warm hub [abc.net.au] every other day when running without heat could lessen the burden?
It's horrible it comes to that, but at least it's a pragmatic temporary solution that could provide for a greater sense of community so long as everyone is relaxed about it.
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The price of electricity offered for these projects have nothing to do with the price of actual electricity which is currently driven by a variety of different market factors. Currently the wholesale electricity cost on the UK market is over 100 pounds / MWh, significantly higher than even the raised price of this bid.
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its approaching winter in the UK and most people are having to make serious cuts to their power consumption.
The problem in the UK is that it got a massive energy bonanza when the North Sea oil fields were discovered in the 80s, but it didn't do any strategic investment with the windfall. For example, it could have used some of the money to upgrade it's woeful housing stock to better energy efficiency levels. If it had done that over the last 30 years, your home might now use only 1/3 of the energy it does, which would protect you from the rising gas bills. Or it could have built out more renewable, or nuclear, or
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The UK has been run by crazy neo-liberal ideologues for decades. These people are nothing more than religious zealots.
Do religious zealots usually retire with piles of money and property that seemingly materialised from nowhere?
Maybe they do.
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That's largely due to our deregulated energy market. The price of gas went up, and corporate profits went up, and consumers had to pay for it all. To make matters worse, we closed our gas storage fields some years ago, so couldn't buy it cheap in the summer like more sensible countries.
Renewables remain the cheapest form of energy, but few people have heat pumps so are stuck with gas for heating. Our housing stock is mostly complete crap too. Poorly insulated and with antiquated heating systems that waste a
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In our case (in southern England) make that £10 a day for electricity and gas - which seems likely to increase still further when the cold weather arrives. Then there are the high taxes to keep energy costs even as low as that through subsidies.
Global warming? If only!
Did I call this or did I call this? (Score:3)
Re:Did I call this or did I call this? (Score:4)
The Tories are taking one last opportunity to line the pockets of their rich owners. Therefore the costs will be inflated.
Fixed that for you.
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Well, maybe the US can't do it, but other projects are still going on. Among them are these current projects with a capacity of more than 350 MW, along with projected completion dates: Sofia and Dogger Bank A and B in the UK, scheduled for 2023, 2024 and 2026, Borkum Riffgrund 3 in Germany, 2025, Greater Changhua, just completed, Moray West in the UK, 2025, Hollandse Kust 1,2,3,4 and 5, Netherlands, all scheduled 2023-4, Yunlin and Changfang in Taiwan, also 2023, Guondian Xiangshan 1 in China, 2025, Fecam
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Inaccurate summary and article (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Inaccurate summary and article (Score:4, Insightful)
Please mod up. This is the most informative response in the thread.
As for why it matters, with rising interest rates you need a higher guaranteed rate of return to keep costs in check.
Ah, the UK... (Score:2)
I honestly don't understand it, but the UK government seems determined to ruin the country. Just as an anecdote: We watch a fair amount of British television, and there are constant appeals for medical-related charities. Charities for cancer treatment. Charities for rehabilitation. Charities for a zillion other things. All of which *ought* to be handled by the NHS, but very obviously is not.
Apparently, energy policy is just as badly handled. If I read the rate tables [nimblefins.co.uk] correctly, UK consumers pay 53p/kwh co
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The connection charge is a standing charge and is per day whether you use energy or not.
It's a bit of a rip off, actually, especially if you have solar at home. But the standing charges are probably about half the normal bill yes.
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Costs to build have risen dramatically... (Score:2)
Price conversion (Score:5, Funny)
Could we get that in kilograms, please? Why doesn't the UK get with the metric system, already?
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Households being rinsed (Score:3)
So energy companies will get £70/MWh
The average UK household consumes 2.7MWh per year (£190) yet pays in excess of £3000 for the privilege
Where does all the money go?
Re:Clean or affordable (Score:5, Insightful)
That is a problem, because the edifice of modern society is built upon gobs and gobs of energy. The economics not working is a big problem.
This isn't just a domestic consumption problem. Energy is the lifeblood of national power. That's why you can't get countries like Russia, China or India to play nice with environmental rules, they understand this. Hell, the course and outcome of WWII was largely determined by energy availability. Give the Nazis plentiful oil supplies and things would have looked a lot different. Give the Japanese some domestic oil and the battles of the last few years of the war would not have looked so lopsided.
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Give the Japanese some domestic oil and the battles of the last few years of the war would not have looked so lopsided.
If the Japanese had domestic oil, there would've been no war.
Japan bombed Pearl Harbor because America imposed an oil embargo.
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There were more factors at play; the Japanese were feeling hemmed in and wanted to expand. I think even absent the oil issue, there would have been a fight at some point.
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But... but... but... Now British people can bask in the knowledge that they are the most virtuous and "carbon efficient"!
Surely that's a treasure beyond price.
Re:Clean or affordable (Score:4, Informative)
But once again, China is the only nation in the world to have exceeded its Paris climate goal. They are about 5 years ahead of where they said they would be.
I say this not to "defend" China or whatever it is people think I'm doing. I say it because we need to stop using China as an excuse not to do more ourselves.
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Even fossil fuels aren't really affordable if you factor in the future cost of having to clean up the mess they're making in regards to the climate. Energy has never been cheap, we've just been really good at kicking the can down the road.
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We have mountains in my country with really high rainfall so almost all of our power is hydro.
Re: Clean or affordable (Score:3)
You can, itâ(TM)s called nuclear power.
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You can, itâ(TM)s called nuclear power.
The most recent nukes (Hinkley, Vogtle, Olkiluoto) produce power for four times the cost of wind.
They have all been financial debacles.
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You can, itâ(TM)s called nuclear power.
I suspect you think that nuclear power is produced by magical pixie slaves rather than by people who actually build and operate power stations, ... people who can't even break even at 70 pounds / MWh.
You are living in a delusional fantasy.
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France nuclear power breaks even at 61-68 pounds/MWh [euractiv.com]. Which is lower than offshore wind in the UK, which as the article explains is now set at 70 pounds/MWh.
Let me sum it up:
- cheaper: nuclear
- cleaner: nuclear (but wind is close, both are low-CO2 energy sources)
- not intermittent: nuclear
- better capacity factor: nuclear
You also do realize that France has had a low-CO2 emitting electricity grid (~50g CO2eq/kWh) for the past 50 years now? While countries trying to rely on ONLY solar/wind have been trying to
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For comparison, the new nuclear plants being built in the UK have a guaranteed strike price around £140/MWh, and rising every with with inflation. So they are already twice as expensive as the maximum being offered for offshore wind, and getting more expensive, and won't be available until the 2030s.
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Choose one, you can't have both.
Yes you can. The *current* round of bidding has failed due to industry shortages and insane inflation rates in the UK. What is happening right now is not normal, and the price offered right now reflects only what is going on right now. It was the same price offered earlier which did in fact attract many successful bids which resulted in many successful projects.
In other news I'm not buying a car right now, because have you seen the frigging cost of them... right now?
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I call bullshit. Modern nuclear designs purport to be very affordable after the plant build cost is amortized.
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I call bullshit. Modern nuclear designs purport to be very affordable after the plant build cost is amortized.
Exactly. Nuclear is very affordable if you ignore 95% of the cost.
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That's a nice sounding tagline, but I disagree with it. Sure, nuclear is generally expensive, only because government has refused to subsidize it like they do other energy platforms, and it has placed legal and regulatory barriers around it like they are defending the Alamo. Even still, cost per kWhr for nuclear is around 30c today (https://www.statista.com/statistics/184754/cost-of-nuclear-electricity-production-in-the-us-since-2000/). Not great, but also not anywhere close to 50c. Reminder: this is primar
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Even still, cost per kWhr for nuclear is around 30c today (https://www.statista.com/statistics/184754/cost-of-nuclear-electricity-production-in-the-us-since-2000/).
You are misreading your link.
$30 per MWh is 3 cents/kwh, not 30 cents/kwh.
So that's good, right? Yes, it is. That's about the same wholesale price as wind.
But almost all that power comes from old plants built in the 1970s, which paid off their construction costs decades ago.
NEW nukes are far worse. Vogtle produces power at $180/MWh. That is six times the price of wind.
The Summer plant in SC was heading into a similar financial disaster when they pulled the plug after squandering $3B.
Reminder: this is primarily on old-as-fuck plant designs - the US is only recently starting to open new generation plants (finally).
No. This is backward. Th
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Vogtle produces power at $180/MWh
Interesting. Source?
America has lost the ability to implement nuclear power effectively, and there is no reason to believe that "next time will be different".
China has the ability to implement nuclear power effectively (50 plants in operation, 30ish built in the last 15 years, 150 planned for 2035). I don't share your pessimism though, and I believe America (and Europe) can regain this ability.
The thing is that in order to build things effectively, you need to build more than one every 30 year, so that there can be an industry supporting it. China understood that, and they are now leading the race. America/Europe realize that, and are trying
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Precisely zero nuclear projects in the UK are cheaper than this. Even existing plants can't operate at this price point to say nothing of your fuzzy construction accounting for a new plant.
No the cost of nuclear is roughly 4x that of Onshore wind, and roughly double that of Offshore wind. You think that it's not being built because of some conspiracy? Reality is nuclear projects don't get funded because people who look at the actual numbers think it's a horrible investment.
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No the cost of nuclear is roughly 4x that of Onshore wind
The article we are discussing tells a totally different story. Hinkley Point C has a strike price of 92 pounds/kWh. Wind is at 70 pounds/kWh (and likely to go up, but that's another story). France has a strike price for nuclear at 61-68 pounds/kWh [euractiv.com].
If you want to make up numbers, but try to at least make them sound impressive. Say something like: "Nuclear electricity cost 87x more than electricity from wind! Plus the electricity you get is radioactive, so you better watch your electrical outlets!".
Reality is nuclear projects don't get funded because people who look at the actual numbers think it's a horrible investment.
Reality is
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So, in general renewables are typically in the same ball park or lower but note that none of these figures include externalities and are just marginal costs. If you add in battery backup renewables look more expensive but the extent to which you need battery backups depends on geography, energy mix, whether you use gas peaking, etc.
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And, yet, wind power is the cheapest form of electricity in the UK, as well as one of the cleanest.
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And, yet, wind power is the cheapest form of electricity in the UK, as well as one of the cleanest.
Er, https://www.energydashboard.co... [energydashboard.co.uk]
Right now the UK is getting 5.3% of its electricity from wind power. And 1.3% from solar.
Compared to 56.3% from gas, 3.6% from coal (seriously), and an inexplicably low 7.7% from nuclear. Not long ago, nuclear was usually shown as contributing a remarkably staeady 14% or so. Perhaps the powers that be have decided it's preferably to burn gas and coal.
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You can see the actual yearly electricity mix for the UK here [nowtricity.com] (scroll down and click on the year you want to look at).
The interesting thing is that between 2018 and 2022, the share of renewables in the UK increased by 8% (from 28% to 36%). At the same time, the share of nuclear decreased by 6% (from 23% to 17%). This is why renewables are failing, in the sense that they are failing at what they were supposed to fix: our reliance on fossil fuels. In most countries (some are a bit smarter: China, France, Swed
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The windfarms that will be built will produce electricity at this new higher price, to replace electricity generation from gas plants.
the higher price needed to get the private sector to invest in wind must be lower than the expected price of natural gas.
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The max strike price increased, they still have to bid.
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Even at this price, wind is still cheaper than gas. If you don't increase the strike price of wind, no one bids to construct the wind farms; in fact, that just happened in the last round. So you end up with more gas production which is more expensive and volatile.