Electricity Prices In France Turn Negative As Renewable Energy Floods the Grid (fortune.com) 187
French electricity prices turned negative due to a drop in demand and a surge in renewable energy output, prompting the grid operator to request that Electricite de France (EDF) take several nuclear reactors offline. Fortune reports: While more clean power is needed across Europe to reach climate goals, soaring renewables output and a lack of battery storage mean reactors sometimes have to be turned off during periods of low demand. It's becoming increasingly common around weekends in France -- which gets about two-thirds of its electricity from its atomic fleet -- and also occurs in the Nordic region and Spain.
EDF halted its Golfech 2, Cruas 2 and Tricastin 1 nuclear plants, and plans to halt three others during the weekend. Some renewables producers will also have to curb generation to avoid paying a fee amid negative prices. French day-ahead power fell to -5.76 euros a megawatt-hour, the lowest in four years, in an auction on Epex Spot. Germany's equivalent contract dropped to 7.64 euros.
EDF halted its Golfech 2, Cruas 2 and Tricastin 1 nuclear plants, and plans to halt three others during the weekend. Some renewables producers will also have to curb generation to avoid paying a fee amid negative prices. French day-ahead power fell to -5.76 euros a megawatt-hour, the lowest in four years, in an auction on Epex Spot. Germany's equivalent contract dropped to 7.64 euros.
prices (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:prices (Score:5, Interesting)
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France has been selling its nuclear energy for pennies on the dime during night time
EDF does not sell its nuclear electricity for "pennies on the dime". It sells nuclear power through mechanisms like the Regulated Access to Historic Nuclear Electricity (ARENH [services-rte.com]), which offers electricity at €42 per megawatt-hour to promote market competition. While it is kinda cheap, especially since it can generate electricity at will, with a higher capacity factor than solar/wind, this is not the definition of "pennies on the dime" (i.e.: selling something at a significantly reduced price or at a sub
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Your inability to grasp the arguments presented is remarkable:
EDF [...] offers electricity at €42 per megawatt-hour to promote market competition. While it is kinda cheap, especially since it can generate electricity at will, with a higher capacity factor than solar/wind, this is not the definition of "pennies on the dime"
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EDF makes no profits.
Wrong, as shown in my previous link, which you didn't even bother to read.
It is a government run organization that is backed about two third of its expenses by the tax payer.
Second part is wrong.
I thought you live in France, am I mistaken?
Damn, you are indeed getting a lot of things wrong today.
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Revenue and Earnings: EDF reports billions in revenue annually. For example, in their 2022 annual report, EDF reported revenues of €143.5 billion and a net income of €5.1 billion .
This happens ever winter where I live (Score:3, Informative)
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REEEE!!! You can't look at outcomes, only claimed feel good intent!
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It's depressing that fact-free comments like this get modded up. The IPCC says that renewables are 10x more effective at reducing CO2 emissions than nuclear. We very much are focusing on the outcomes.
Also nice of you to mock people with mental illnesses, what a lovely person you are.
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We were talking price per unit of energy and bad contracts in favor of renewables to the detriment of everyone else. Not co2.
No mentally ill people were mocked. Where did you get that from? "REEE!!!" is mockery of the screeching mad dog far left. Unless you think they're mentally ill.
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The IPCC says that renewables are 10x more effective at reducing CO2 emissions than nuclear.
If you're talking about this chart [x.com], you should also mention that it's talking about potential in the future which is not the same things as you said.
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In theory that could work but without a really good, realtime feedback mechanism, the information asymmetry heavily favors electric producers and results in crazy high prices as we've seen in Texas. So we need a smarter grid, and maybe a consumption monitoring device that beeps each time your bill increases by a dollar. When it becomes a continuous tone, you're in trouble!
Re:This happens ever winter where I live (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait so environmentalists are evil because they've managed to change the political landscape to get renewables built, but (a) all the usual lobbyists make sure they get their cut (b) the government didn't pass a politically impossible law based on widespread rollout of nonexistent smart meters?
Or do you think environmentalists own those wind farms and lobby the government? Cute!
Re:This happens ever winter where I live (Score:5, Informative)
The IPCC considers renewables to be about 10x more effective at reducing CO2 emissions than nuclear: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6... [www.ipcc.ch]
There are various reasons, the main two being cost and speed of deployment.
As for minimum prices for generated electricity, nuclear gets them too. Even fossil fuels get them. Many grids operate that way, with guaranteed minimums, but no maximum when the price tracks the spot price. So the negative pricing is the grid operator that put out those tenders for generation trying to shed excess energy. In France's case the grid is operated by the same state owned company as the nuclear plants: EDF.
I don't have numbers for France, but in the UK offshore wind is contracted at a minimum of £27/MWh, where as the new nuclear plants under construction are around £140/MWh.
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The IPCC considers renewables to be about 10x more effective at reducing CO2 emissions than nuclear: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6 [www.ipcc.ch]...
There are various reasons, the main two being cost and speed of deployment.
Does it consider that we could've had a 100% carbon free grid since the 80s with technology available at the time?
Re:prices (Score:5, Insightful)
Get paid to fill up your battery, then get paid again to sell it back into the system. What's not to love?
When enough storage is built, prices will level off again.
Prices going negative are just a signal that there isn't enough storage in their grid.
storage? (Score:2)
Every firmed renewable proposal I've seen takes it into account. Why do you think places with lots of renewable power are building so much storage (hydro and battery)?
Examples please. I've never seen any meaningful ways of storing electricity regardless of how it is generated. All the batteries made last year would be charged in about 30 minutes by all the new renewable energy added last year. Pumped hydro isn't economical for anything other than insurance for unexpected shortfalls in supply while other generation comes online. In fact, given the arbitrage potential, the first person to figure out how to store meaningful amounts of grid level electricity would be the
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Examples please. I've never seen any meaningful ways of storing electricity regardless of how it is generated.
OP said "firmed renewables" which is a subset. So there might be one or two! The rest just dump the energy on the market when it happens to be available, and good luck everyone!
Re:storage? (Score:4, Informative)
Their findings in the last report?
Renewables (solar and wind + firming) remain the lowest cost new build electricity technology.
They use a Levelized Cost of Electricity calculation (LCOE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] )
Have a read of their report - they go into great detail in their costings.
A new build of renewables + firming gives cheaper electricity than a new build of any other currently available technology.
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And a pretty strong signal, too! Free marketeers are supposed to luurv strong price signals, as it means that economic activity shifts rapidly. Fingers crossed that this means that lots of storage is going to get built (plus other measures, too, eg demand flex, interconnectors, etc)
Re: prices (Score:2)
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I have no idea how that could ever be done with electricity, though.
Pumping water upstream into a reservoir is the traditional way, as is running very high energy processes like aluminum smelting. Today you could also charge batteries.
Re: prices (Score:2)
Why stop nuclear power? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why not just stop the renewables, because those are already intermittent, the base load generation should output at all times to reduce the cost of energy and make sure the energy is available. Stopping and starting a nuclear plant is expensive and unnecessary.
Moreover, the issue is not overproduction, it is underwhelming demand, because individual customers are still paying their regular energy prices which have been elevated due to the green boondoggles and taxes. You could continue letting the energy pri
Re:Why stop nuclear power? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, nuclear is best at base load, it's not so good at load following. Still, shutting down a few plants apparently was cheaper than keeping them running in this case.
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Re:Why stop nuclear power? (Score:4)
Yes, nuclear is best at base load, it's not so good at load following. Still, shutting down a few plants apparently was cheaper than keeping them running in this case.
You got it backward.
The same applies to solar and wind farms: they are beneficial if they can sell their electricity. However, since you can't control when the sun shines or the wind blows, solar and wind energy get priority on the grid. Nuclear power, which can more easily adjust to changes in demand (definition of load following) compared to solar and wind, is used to compensate for the intermittency of renewable energy sources.
Solar/wind is so bad at load following that making them shutdown when we don't need their electricity would make them unprofitable.
Re:Why stop nuclear power? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's true that you need storage for when there's little light and wind.
But new nuclear plants are so expensive that you can't run them with load following, you need to run them at full capacity, i.e. the only downtime is refueling and repairs. It's always been like this - you don't build nuclear plants to load follow.
PV and wind on the other hand is getting so cheap that it's probably cheaper to overbuild capacity to some degree to reduce the need for long-term storage. When you don't need the power, you just shut them off. In the future, we're probably going to see much more PV and wind, batteries for short-time load-following and something like biomass/biogas for longer-term storage.
It's also true that at some point in some markets, renewables did get preferential access, but I don't think that's been true for many years now for new capacity. Instead, they simply shut down. Thermal plants typically can't shut down as fast as the winding down process takes time, and meanwhile they need to get the energy away.
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> However, since you can't control when the sun shines or the wind blows, solar and wind energy get priority on the grid. Nuclear power, which can more easily adjust to changes in demand (definition of load following) compared to solar and wind, is used to compensate for the intermittency of renewable energy sources.
Say what?
I can't speak for France, but in the UK, nuclear is 'bought' for the grid before anything else. It's about the only way you can finance nuclear builds - you need a guaranteed price a
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in the UK, nuclear is 'bought' for the grid before anything else.
Source?
France has shut down a couple of nukes (they were old)
When you start to throw around misinformation like that, it brings doubts to the rest of your argument. The shutdown nuclear plants are not old. Golfech2 is 33 years old (not old by nuclear plants standard).
Over night they had an excess - but so does everyone else - so they had to sell their excess at super-low prices or not sell it at all.
You are describing the situation of solar/wind, not just over night though.
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Google broken where you are, is it?
https://www.squeaky.energy/blo... [www.squeaky.energy]
I do concede that renewables are often "in front" of nuclear on the merit order, but they produce a relatively small amount of power, certainly not enough for even an over night base load, so nuclear will always be bought as well. The price of nuclear is definitely guaranteed though - ref. Hinkley C, but that may involve using google.
As for the "old" comment, okay, they were older than "ideal" and cost more to run than newer, cheaper ones,
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You claim that wind and solar are hard at load following, why? I believe it's the reverse. Want to reduce power from wind? Just brake some turbines, done. Want to reduce power from solar?
You've misunderstood the issue as well. It's not primarily about reducing output, although that is a concern because solar and wind receive substantial subsidies, about ten times more than nuclear, for example, making them unprofitable without the ability to sell surplus electricity whenever possible.
The real challenge lies in increasing power output. When demand spikes, especially at night or during calm wind periods, solar and wind energy sources cannot ramp up production. Some suggest solving this with g
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Nuclear on the other hand can ramp up and down, which is what load-following is.
Mostly false. While certain type of reactors has some limited rump up capabilities, most are generation fixed.
You can check two cases. One if France. There is no more nuclearized country than France.
https://www.rte-france.com/eco... [rte-france.com]
The nuclear mix has a minor ability to change but pretty much oscillate between 37 and 40 GW.
Spain
https://demanda.ree.es/visiona... [demanda.ree.es]
7 GW of generation. Mainly constant.
Common nuclear reactors are very inflexible. They produce mostly flat because it's too complicated to change the
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This is actually an interesting answer, with actual data. Thanks for that.
I will just add that there is a difference between being able to, and actually doing. Exports for instance is a way for EDF to generate revenue (~10 billion profit in 2023), instead of ramping down nuclear production. But it doesn't mean they can't ramp it down if needed.
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France nuclear electricity strategy is ~50 years old. Not 140.
Germany's transition will never end at the rate they are going, and they already wasted 50 years of CO2 emissions.
Re:Why stop nuclear power? (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem for nuclear is that the concept of baseload supply is outdated. Grids are shifting to demand shaping, and renewables have removed the need for constant generation entirely. Many places now see extended periods where all demand is covered by renewables, so anything else needs to be able to fit around those periods, into the increasingly rare times when there isn't enough wind and sun and hydro.
Even in that narrowing band, storage and 100% reliable renewables like tidal are taking over.
Re:Why stop nuclear power? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem for nuclear is that the concept of baseload supply is outdated.
Dude. Really?
The concept of baseload is a simple thing and can only become inapplicable when/if demand hovers near zero on a routine basis... Stop talking out of your ass and use your head. Outdated? Being stupid is outdated.
Re:Why stop nuclear power? (Score:5, Informative)
From the perspective of the grid, overproduction and underconsumption are literally two sides of the same coin. If you think that French electricity prices are driven by green boondoggles, you are a moron. The prices are heavily subsizides by the state to compensate for the cost of the aging nuclear reactor fleet. There's a reason why EDF is again controlled by the France State.
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Nowadays, nuclear power plants are both, inflexible and expensive.
That is painful to read. France has been running its nuclear plants in load-following mode [world-nuclear.org] since they started their nuclear program. There is nothing inflexible about it. If anything, this just shows that nuclear is more flexible than solar/wind...
There's a reason why EDF is again controlled by the France State.
And that is not the reason you are claiming. France nationalized EDF to ensure energy sovereignty, control electricity prices, and support the energy transition. Nationalization helps secure national control over energy production, manage prices to protect consum
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Nowadays, nuclear power plants are both, inflexible and expensive.
That is painful to read. France has been running its nuclear plants in load-following mode [world-nuclear.org] since they started their nuclear program. There is nothing inflexible about it. If anything, this just shows that nuclear is more flexible than solar/wind...
The reality is that the production by nuclear power plant changes only within 20% over the day and not even necessarily following demand.
There's a reason why EDF is again controlled by the France State.
And that is not the reason you are claiming. France nationalized EDF to ensure energy sovereignty, control electricity prices, and support the energy transition. Nationalization helps secure national control over energy production, manage prices to protect consumers, and facilitate investments in renewable energy and nuclear modernization. This alignment with national policies and regulatory frameworks ensures EDF's activities support France's strategic energy goals.
EDF was essentially bankrupt. That's the reason, everything else was just a nice side effect.
Re:Why stop nuclear power? (Score:4, Interesting)
The reality is that the production by nuclear power plant changes only within 20% over the day and not even necessarily following demand.
You do know that when making wild claims, it is best to provide data about them? I'll show you how you can do that, free of charge.
You can see France power output on RTE website [rte-france.com]. Just today, they will go from 48GWh to 62GW, that's a 30% increase in power output. However, as explained here [world-nuclear.org], not all nuclear plants are changing their power output: this is mainly related to where they are in the fuel cycle. For instance, and I quote: "when the fuel cycle is around 65% through these reactors are less flexible, and they take a rapidly diminishing part in the third, load-following, aspect above. When they are 90% through the fuel cycle, they only take part in frequency regulation, and essentially no power variation is allowed (unless necessary for safety)."
Which means that ~half of the nuclear plants are used in load-following mode, while most of the others just play a part in the frequency regulation. Refueling and maintenance planning is used to allow that to run smoothly.
Which is why your claim is wrong.
EDF was essentially bankrupt. That's the reason, everything else was just a nice side effect.
It goes beyond that. One of the reasons EDF faced difficulties (which isn't the same as bankruptcy, as you stated) is due to the workings of the electricity market: they were compelled to sell a substantial portion of their nuclear electricity at a reduced rate to facilitate artificial "competition," only to later purchase back their own electricity at market prices. This is the operational model for about 99% of alternative electricity "providers," and it amounted to a significant rip-off.
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The problem French nuclear has is that there is a floor to their load following ability. They can't ramp down to anywhere near 0% output, without coming to a full stop and lengthy re-start process.
So when renewable energy is plentiful and cheap, either they idle at say 50% and pay someone to take their energy away, or they shut down for some weeks and maybe do some maintenance.
It's only going to get worse as renewable capacity grows, and there is no real solution. There are some paper designs for reactors t
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If only you had the numbers correct, we could take you seriously. But you don't, despite being shown the papers with the actual figures. If you can't be bothered to read or remember them, there's really no reason to take you seriously.
Regarding paying someone to take their energy away... That's the specialty of solar and wind farms, isn't it?
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Modulating nuclear = Economic Suicide. (Score:2)
>> There is nothing inflexible about it.
Yes there is. A nuclear plant needs 4 hours to ramp up/down fully. You need correct predictions about loads, and many many other things to go just right to modulate a grid based on nuclear plants. France showed that it is feasible in principle, but it is not done on a daily bases because it is too impractical, and the economic consequences are bad...
Nuclear electricity has a slim chance to try to be competitive only if run continuously at high output.
When you de
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Yes there is. A nuclear plant needs 4 hours to ramp up/down fully. You need correct predictions about loads, and many many other things to go just right to modulate a grid based on nuclear plants. France showed that it is feasible in principle, but it is not done on a daily bases because it is too impractical, and the economic consequences are bad...
Ok. We'll take your word for it, instead of the actual paper [world-nuclear.org] that talks about that...
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France is a Science Fiction Paradise. They managed to do something no one else on the planet is able to do.
There is nothing special about France. They are not clever than others, there is no reason others can't do what they did.
No idea why you are so uneducated that you do not grasp that.
Talking about uneducated, you never provide any scientific fact about your claims. Your opposition is ideological. Think about that.
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The prices are heavily subsizides by the state
Which is another way of saying that France alone pays for its externalizes. France still has very low CO2 emissions for its electricity compared to almost every other industrialized nation, certainly the large ones, and has done for decades.
They saved a vast number of lives by investing in nuclear earlier, so I guess they are "paying" the price for that now somehow...?
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The prices are heavily subsizides by the state to compensate for the cost of the aging nuclear reactor fleet.
Extending the life of existing nuclear plants is amongst the cheapest deal there is. France pays far more for its fleet than it would otherwise due to reprocessing to make plutonium for nuclear weapons.
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Is it though, really?
The electricity price is determined, in part, on how much uptime any plant has. Say that a plant cost 3G USD to build and then another 3G USD in lifetime costs (fuel, maintenance, staff). Let's further assume it will produce 1GW of effect for 50 years, that is an estimated 100% output of 438 000 GWh and given that the plant has a total cost of 2G USD during the lifespan, that is roughly a production cost $13.698 per MWh.
Now let's assume it only runs 50%. That is a production cost of $27
Re:Why stop nuclear power? (Score:4, Insightful)
Economics. Nuclear power is exceptionally expensive, even at its cheapest. Modern solar and wind are almost comically cheap.
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Economics. Nuclear power is exceptionally expensive, even at its cheapest. Modern solar and wind are almost comically cheap.
Markets don't always converge to optimal solutions when left to their own devices. I see no reason to assume allowing intermittent renewables to play to their logical conclusions would be optimal from either grid stability, cost or environmental perspectives.
Cheap intermittent sources eat away at volume fucking over ROI of dispatachable sources.
The more intermittent renewables the less value they provide due to oversupply which is self limiting.
ESS with current technology can only help on the margins. It
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Do you have citations for your statement?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The final cost of the plant is estimated at $6.1 billion
Re:Why stop nuclear power? (Score:5, Insightful)
From your own link, they started construction on Unit 1 in 1973, and began operation in 1996, 23 years later.
Unit 2 did even better, starting construction in 1972, and starting to produce electricity in 2016, a mere 44 years later. It almost immediately broke down when some of the gear installed in the 1970s failed.
Imagine pitching that to investors. "Give us $6.1 billion and you might see a return half a century later!" Meanwhile the renewable guys are showing payback times of just a few years.
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Meanwhile, China is aggressively building nuclear reactors in complete and utter defiance of your rock solid logic. Your society sucks balls if it can't build nuclear plants within a rational time frame. (China sucks balls, but is still better than your society at this particular endeavour)
In other words, the costs are artificial and completely non-commensurate with other forms of power such as coal or natural gas.
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Maybe China doesn't care so much about safety, or cost. Generally speaking though, you are right, China is better than everyone else at infrastructure projects. You only have to look at their rail and road building, or setting up entire new cities in preparation for people migrating. It's on a scale and at a price we can't even comprehend.
Re:Why stop nuclear power? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait.... While I agree with you about lifecycle costs being the proper way to account for things. and also agree that we need more nuke power, you're making a really weird point here.
At the end of a wind turbine's ~20yr life, you have to pile up the carbon fiber blades somewhere. Maybe bury them if you don't want to look at the stack of them. They're inert, require no special handling, and their biggest problem is that a stack of them is an eyesore (as you link to). Either turns out to be very cheap, helping make the whole life cycle cost (in $, energy, or carbon) of wind power is comically cheap compared to all other options. I'm on the road at the moment so don't have cites for you, but I know that googling it gets you a lot of fluff bits then some honest to god whitepapers with all the details if you scroll a bit. Why? Because it's a homework exercise for an intro physics class I teach that freshmen can handle.
Intermittently dealing with smaller but much more dangerous spent fuel is an unsolved problem (at least in the US) because politics killed Yucca Mountain, which while imperfect, was the best of a lot of bad options. Then when you're plant is EoL, you need years and billions to decommission it, because a lot of it needs special handling, and a lot more of it is many tons of concrete that you're going to either leave sitting in piles to look at, or to bury it (does it look better than the turbine blades that offend you? Not sure). Whole lifecycle costs for nuke are on the comically high side of things. Still worth it to provide a base power option though, especially if they were to both reviving a national waste storage project.
Re: Why stop nuclear power? (Score:2)
The fact that dry casks leak is what killed yucca. The fact that vitrification is difficult and hazardous and thus expensive killed yucca. Politics? Try physics.
Because it is wasteful (Score:2)
>> Why stop nuclear power?
Because:
1) Running a nuclear plant when the electricity is not used wastes fuel for nothing, and creates waste you have to process. Not the case with Solar, Fusion fuel from the sun is absolutely free, and waste does not change when you modulate output.
2) Nuclear plants have to throttle and stop in hot weather anyway because of reduced cooling capability in hot weather.
During big heat waves last year, over half of france's nuke plants were shut down for a month because of lac
Re: Because it is wasteful (Score:2)
Old windmills need to be disposed of. Old solar panels need special handling.
Meanwhile, all the nuclear waste typically gets stored in a small area on site. The amount of waste is negligible.
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>> The amount of waste is negligible.
Nope.
Time for GPU Mining again ... (Score:2)
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How about let's produce some aluminum or green hydrogen?
Its free, lets do all 3.
Really? (Score:2)
French will pay you to take electricity and Bitcoin miners aren't front and center reversing the trend?
Really?
The story must go deeper.
huh. NPPs are more "maneuverable" than i thought (Score:5, Interesting)
I was under the impression that nuclear power plants could not vary their output very quickly. i.e. that once you turned them down it would take days to weeks to turn them back up. But that's apparently no longer the case. 5% capacity change per minute. From 2011 EU paper:
Modern nuclear plans with light water reactors are designed to have strong manoeuvring capabilities.
Nuclear power plants in France and in Germany operate in load-following mode, i.e. they participate in the
primary and secondary frequency control, and some units follow a variable load programme with one or
two large power changes per day.
The minimum requirements for the manoeuvrability capabilities of modern reactors are defined by the
utilities requirements that are based on the requirements of the grid operators. For example, according to
the current version of the European Utilities Requirements (EUR) the NPP must at least be capable of daily
load cycling operation between 50% and 100 % of its rated power Pr
, with a rate of change of electric
output of 3-5% of Pr per minute.
from 2011 (https://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/reports/2011/load-following-npp.pdf)
via https://www.reddit.com/r/Nucle... [reddit.com]
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While better than nothing, that is still very slow and may well be too slow to actually do full load-following. Before, nukes could not do it at all, so it is an improvement.
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That's 0-100 or 100-0 in 20 minutes. That's not "very slow".
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Indeed, and an on site battery setup acting as a buffer would allow this to be far more responsive still.
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hey, you can do 0-1000% (or higher!!) in just a seconds, if you really want to.... but i don't recommended it! :D
you probably can't drop too much, so 0% as bottom is probably too low... it also as the temperature difference is lower, you can extract less and less energy. probably those 5% are under the "perfect" range, outside that range, you probably get lower values. I also suspect that increasing 5% is much easier than dropping 5%
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I also suspect that increasing 5% is much easier than dropping 5%
Or you can actually read about it and learn a few things: Load-following with PWR nuclear plants [world-nuclear.org]
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You keep banging that "load following" drum but I have to wonder if you actually read the article you keep linking, or just searched up "load following nuclear" or whatever and just went with the first link you found.
According to your link, PWR reactors can only participate in load following (throttled output) for the earlier part of their fuel cycle, meaning roughly half of their operational time they are incapable of load following.
=Smidge=
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According to your link, PWR reactors can only participate in load following (throttled output) for the earlier part of their fuel cycle, meaning roughly half of their operational time they are incapable of load following.
Don't misrepresent the facts. Here's the actual quote from the article: "PWR plants are very flexible at the beginning of their cycle, with fresh fuel and high reserve reactivity. An EdF reactor can reduce its power from 100% to 30% in 30 minutes. But when the fuel cycle is around 65% through these reactors are less flexible."
This indicates they engage in load-following approximately 65% of the time between refueling cycles.
The good news is that nuclear plants are not all refueled simultaneously for obvious
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Now, how do you increase solar or wind output during nighttime or when wind speeds are low? Ah... right.
1.) Offshore wind is far less affected
2.) Night-time is a low-usage time
3.) I guess you have never heard about power storage. Hint: In any sane concept you do not use solar or wind "raw". You use it with hydro, battery or gravity storage.
But here is a question: How do you increase nuclear output when the river is too cold or too hot? France, in those cases, runs to its neighbors and buys power at high prices...
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How do you increase nuclear output when the river is too cold or too hot?
If you require this outcome for strategic purposes, you simply modify the legislation to allow the discharge of hotter-than-expected water. France is exceptional in this regard: they prefer purchasing power at high prices (since their neighbors are still heavily reliant on fossil fuels) rather than disrupting the biodiversity of their rivers.
Apparently, Germany doesn't care too much about CO2 emissions, seeing how they still emit 8 times more than France per kWh.
3.) I guess you have never heard about power storage. Hint: In any sane concept you do not use solar or wind "raw". You use it with hydro, battery or gravity storage.
Ah, so you want to compare apple to oranges?
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That is "very slow". And no, it does not necessarily "full stroke" and even if, it does not include a "cold start" or "cold shutdown". For France, what the nukes can typically do is more 50-100% and that is only with relatively fresh fuel for the quoted speeds. Compare that wo water, which can do 30% per second (!) for one example I found and that is 0-100%.
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What tragic event is going to occur over a few minutes? We're talking 20 from full power to complete shutdown. It's 10 minutes to go full to half.
Why exactly do we require power plants to be able to instantly ramp power up a down?
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The only plants that go from 0 - 100 in minutes are gas turbines.
Some hydro does it sub-minute. Solar cells do it sub-second. Wind and solar with battery storage are effectively sub-second. Wind and solar with pumped storage can effectively be sub-minute.
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Before, nukes could not do it at all, so it is an improvement.
Yeah. They have only been doing that since 40+ years now [world-nuclear.org]...
Please refrain from sharing incorrect information.
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You should read about the limits stated in your own reference. Suddenly things are not looking so good.
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You should read about the limits stated in your own reference. Suddenly things are not looking so good.
Mmm, a *wink wink* comment from gweihir. Let me post a comment with the same level of arguments:
You should read the actual article, and suddenly things are indeed looking good. As proven by the fact that France has been doing load-following with its nuclear plants for decades now.
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The issue is that they can vary output within a limited range, 50-100% in your example. If you look at demand vs renewable availability, some places like Spain and California are already at the point where there is 0% demand from nuclear for hours on end, day after day. So even cycled down they are still producing hundreds of expensive megawatts that nobody wants.
Get an electric car and enjoy free driving! (Score:2)
Your car battery can make up for the lack of battery storage in the grid.
Australia's Electricity Pricing (Score:3, Interesting)
Australia regularly goes negative as you can see here.
https://aemo.com.au/aemo/apps/... [aemo.com.au]
We used to have nice cheap government produced electricity.
Then the states started going broke and selling their power stations off... that was the start of price rises.
Then came renewables, which is code for, rip me off some more.
https://reneweconomy.com.au/gr... [reneweconomy.com.au]
Once China turns off the iron ore/ aluminum tap, Australia will be in a world of hurt with ludicrous house prices, high wages, NDIS theft etc etc.
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It's most of Europe actually, the article and comments single out France but prices were negative (at least!) in Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Span, Portugal, Netherlands and Austria this last weekend
https://i.imgur.com/bZ6PZL1.pn... [imgur.com]
https://www.rte-france.com/en/... [rte-france.com]
I guess it's more fun to write about nooooooooks rather than the massive overprovisioning of renewables that we need to have something sufficient on average.
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Because people keep saying we need nuclear power, but nuclear power doesn't fit in with modern grids very well.
It truly would be a disaster if we over-provisioned renewables so much that energy was basically free most of the time /s
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Because people keep saying we need nuclear power, but nuclear power doesn't fit in with modern grids very well.
It truly would be a disaster if we over-provisioned renewables so much that energy was basically free most of the time /s
No it fits well, it can produce power when needed and be scaled down when not. Works at night or when it's not windy. Pretty nifty.
Free energy isn't actually possible, this shit actually costs money. But because supply isn't capable of matching demand in time, we end up with this nonsense where it's "free" or negative at times but then goes through the roof when the sun isn't shining.
Really ? + Dumb European Market (Score:2)
By the way, do you know how dumb the electricity market is ? At least from the French point of view, which should be identical in other European countries.
EDF, the historic national producer, has regulated prices, toward clients, but also alternative "producers".
I put quotes because these third parties signed contracts when created, stated that they must invest to produce their own
funny that... (Score:3)
my bill keeps going up
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the european union is united but really not, it seems.
they are united when it's for their convenience, but all of them consider electricity a "critical infrastructure" and shouldn't rely on foreign states
and really this is the key in renewables. the earth spins, so there's going to be windy or it's going to be sunny somewhere at some point. the only way for renewables to work is to have a worldwide grid (or at least maybe an eurasian grid?), where wind in siberia will be powering a kettle in madrid. and a f
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We know why Germany wants to import energy from Russia, they closed all of their nuclear power plants.
Wait, What? (Score:2)
With negative rates for power during nontrivial portions of the day, I'm genuinely at a loss to explain why residential and commercial electrical service per kWh in France costs 150% of what it costs in map-dot Christiana Tennessee.
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They're in Mexico.
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Probably. Chinese QA, such as it is, is pretty bad. Given a choice I'd take the Mexican built car over the Chinese.
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I say let the market decide.
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Because solar and wind energy generate power simultaneously across most European countries, they often overproduce when demand is low. However, during high demand, they can't produce power at will (since we can't make the sun shine at night or the wind blow on demand). This leaves countries with two main options:
- Burn fossil fuels, as Germany does (coal/lignite/gas).
- Use nuclear power, as France does.
Some countries, like the UK, use a mix of both (27% gas and 21% nuclear in their 2023 electricity mix).
Reg
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They do. And it works very well, because the different European countries have very different energy profiles: France nuclear heavy, then solar with some wind; Germany solar and wind (and, still, a stunning amount of coal!), the UK wind, solar and gas, Norway mostly hydro both pumped and not.
But, like the battery storage, the wires take a limited amount of power. Which is why people are building more and more links. These will be synergistic with increased battery storage on both sides of the links. Over th