No more nuclear or coal?

A Scientific American article provokes a lot of reaction

An article in the recent April edition of Scientific American discusses the statement of Jon Wellinghoff that the U.S. will never need to build another coal or nuclear power plant. He claims that all of the new capacity that is required could be delivered by new wind, solar, and biomass plants and — in a transition period — new natural gas plants. 'Nuclear and coal plants are too expensive,' he claims.

Jon Wellinghoff is the new chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. With this statement, he goes beyond those of other Obama administration officials, who have strongly endorsed renewables and energy efficiency, but also say nuclear and fossil energies will continue to play a major role.

Scientific American noted that Wellinghof’s statement generated some sceptical reactions from leading experts at universities, research institutes, and energy associations. A lively debate on this topic has also taken off on the Power Globe expert forum (see April 2009 - Week 4).

Is baseload an anachronism?

Jay Apt, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, reacted to Wellinghoff by saying renewables are not suitable for delivering baseload because of their intermittent character. This provoked Wellinghoff to respond that 'Baseload is an anachronism'.

According to Wellinghoff, the claim that 'We need baseload' is like saying 'We need mainframes' for computing. He maintains that the 'baseload' concept comes from the time when we had cheap but inflexible nuclear and coal plants, and flexible but expensive natural gas plants. When wind is the cheapest source, though, it will be dispatched first, and that requires a completely different approach. We will have 'distributed generation' just like we have 'distributed computing'. According to Wellinghoff, 'The technology for renewable energies has come far enough to allow this vision to move forward.'

The 'We need all technologies' adage

Another reaction comes from James Owens of the Edison Electric Institute. 'As we intensify the transition to a low-carbon future, we need to have all generation options on the table,' he says, 'including advanced nuclear, advanced clean coal with carbon capture and storage, as well as natural gas.'

This is the 'We need all technologies' adage that has become more or less a consensus in the electrical energy world, but again, Wellinghoff does not agree. He reminds us that we need to go for the cheapest solution, and that is certainly not nuclear, he claims. According to his figures, a new nuclear power plant costs $7,000 a kilowatt, which is more than solar energy. 'Coal plants are sort of in the same boat, although they are not quite as expensive,' he observes.

Externalities due to intermittency?

The discussion has continued on Power Globe. On that forum, the conversation quickly moved towards the question of to what degree the intermittency of wind energy is an issue and how large the share of wind in the energy mix can be. One forum participant stated that the intermittency of wind energy is in fact an externality which should be internalised by a kind of 'intermittency tax'. Another participant reacted to this with the statement that big nuclear and coal plants require more 'back-up' than wind farms. The spinning reserve on the grid must indeed be tuned to the size of the biggest single generator. If that generator unexpectedly drops out, back-up should still be provided. If wind farms are spread over a large enough geographical area, they are less likely to drop out all at once and thus require less back-up.

This is a flat contradiction of the James Schlesinger and Robert Hirsch column in The Washington Post, 'Getting Real on Wind and Solar'. 'Why are we ignoring things we know?' they ask. 'Solar and wind electricity systems must be backed-up 100 percent by other forms of energy to ensure against blackouts.'

Spain and Denmark as positive examples

All of these claims resulted in an extensive discussion on Power Globe on the dispatchability of wind energy. European experts tried to convince their American counterparts with the positive examples of Spain and Denmark. Both of those examples are being countered by contradictory arguments. Spain is not comparable with the U.S., one participant claims, since the Iberian Peninsula is virtually an island in the electrical grid. Because of that, they need a large percentage of back-up generation capacity anyway, which makes the connection of a large number of wind farms easier. The case of Denmark is refuted as an example for the U.S. for exactly the opposite reason. Because of its strong connection with the German grid, it can and does import large amounts of electrical energy from abroad to compensate for shortages on days with little wind.

Maybe we understand less than we think

Can we do without coal or nuclear? It is easy to make a statement on this topic based on what you believe and to cite a few pro or con factual arguments in answer to this question, but it is extremely difficult to give a well-founded answer that takes all aspects into account. Revis James, director of the Electric Power Institute, states that 'It is just not clear yet how fast renewables can be added without creating reliability issues. No one knows what the magic number is. There is a lot that is still not understood about the implications of a large share of renewables.'