For at least North Carolina, solar power is cheaper than nuclear
A North Carolina non-profit has assembled a report that compares the cost of solar energy kilowatt hours with the cost for nuclear energy. Using several sources, the authors found that this year was a cross over year. Right now, the costs for solar power and nuclear power are about even but in the coming years, the cost of power from solar installations will begin to decline while the cost from proposed nuclear installations will rise.
The organization North Carolina Waste Awareness and Reduction Network (NC WARN) used the methodology found at the end of this article to calculate the difference between solar and nuclear energy. In addition to the differing cost of kilowatt hours, the report also looked at what each of the two would mean in terms of jobs and efficiency.
While solar panels can be used to provide both hot water and electricity with little more than sunlight, nuclear and coal plants provide energy while consuming enormous amounts of water and creating waste heat. In other words solar is more efficient than nuclear.
Solar power can be installed for individual use or for utility energy generation. The cost of both types of installations has fallen quite a bit over the years. In 1998 the cost of solar energy was approximately twelve dollars per installed watt. By 2008 the cost had dropped to eight dollars per watt. Two years later, we are looking at twelve to nineteen cents per kilowatt – a remarkable drop.
Solar installations can be built in a short amount of time depending on size. The installations will provide local jobs as they are doing today. A nuclear reactor on the other hand, will take 10 or more years to build. The costs for building a nuclear reactor are continuing to climb.
As mentioned previously, no nuclear reactor has gone into service within the last 10 years. Thirteen planned reactors are still under construction after 20 years. The Vogtle power plant costs have gone from $660 million to $8.87 billion. The projected cost per kilowatt has risen from seven cents per kilowatt to between fourteen and twenty-two cents per kilowatt. The cost is expected to rise even further by the time the new nuclear reactors are built.
Then there is the discussion of who exactly will benefit from building the nuclear reactor. Michael T. Eckhart of ACORE (American Council On Renewable Energy) relayed the following conversation:
Then, I had a conversation recently with some friends in the nuclear power business and asked where the nuclear power plants would come from if we DID begin to build them. The answer was amazing. The super-pure stainless steel will come from Germany, and it would be fabricated into steam-supply-systems in China, and the overall contractor would probably be Mitsubishi from Japan, and the construction contract would probably go to a firm in Korea that would send workers to the U.S. Well, I said, what’s in it for the U.S.? They laughingly said: “the spent fuel.”
Nuclear power plants are still being planned and promoted by big utilities like Duke Power and Progress Energy in North Carolina even though studies show that building solar or wind installations would result in increases in power generation on a quicker scale and for a lower price.
Currently, the projected costs of both solar and nuclear are more than people are paying today. Whereas solar power is expected to drop further towards current rates, nuclear will continue to climb higher and higher.
Several states have instituted plans to increase the amount of energy generated from renewable energy. For example:
• Hawaii’s goal of 40% renewable power is supplemented by an efficiency goal of 30% by 2030.
• California, which will meet its 20% goal in 2010 or 2011, has an executive order, now about to be reinforced by legislation, to
raise this to 33% by 2030. This commitment to renewable energy, added to existing hydroelectric output, will bring the state’s
renewable electricity to nearly half of total generation.
• Colorado was ahead of schedule to meet its 20% goal, which was then raised to 30% by2020.
• New Jersey’s Energy Master Plan earlier called for 3200 MW of wind capacity and 1500 MW of solar capacity — all by 2020. In 2010, the solar requirement was increased to approximately 4000 MW.
• Alaska has adopted a renewable electricity goal of 50%.
• New York seeks a 15% efficiency gain and a 30% share for renewable electricity by 2015.
• Maine’s renewable electricity goal is 40% by 2017.
Currently North Carolina has a commitment of 12.5 percent. Most of the higher renewable energy goals have come from states that allow competition between utilities for customers business. In North Carolina, there may be several energy companies but they each have monopolies in their business areas. When you move into a house, you get the power company that comes with it.
I guess the old saying, “if it was good enough for my daddy, it’s good enough for me” still applies. How sad when something so much better exists.
The full report can be downloaded from here.
The following sources were used to calculate the respective costs of solar and nuclear energy:
Historical installation costs (per watt) were collected from solar industry sources and public research organizations — most notably the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Present installed costs for solar generating capacity were calculated by collecting installed cost data from North Carolina installers. Future cost projections were sampled from published industry analyses
and third-party studies (see citations for Figure 1). The authors made further projections from 2010 to 2015 by applying a regular rate of decline to the Department of Energy Solar America Initiative base projections for 2010. Dollar amounts are reported in 2010$.1For kWh prices of nuclear generated electricity from 2001–2008, the authors rely on the Cooper (2009) study of nuclear price trends. Nuclear kWh price projections from 2009–2020 are made by applying a 1.67% annual price level increase to the average of Cooper’s 2008 projections.2 Refer to Appendix B for the purpose of comparing this conservative estimate of nuclear price escalation
to recently observed trends. The authors derived solar cost per kWh using the following calculation:Capacity factor indicates the percentage of hours in a year that a solar installation generates electricity output. A reasonable industry standard for North Carolina is 18%, given the state’s solar insolation profile. This figure will vary slightly as a function of site and module specifics — including shading, roof pitch, and whether or not the photovoltaic unit includes a “sun tracking” device. Before kWh calculations were made, the authors adjusted actual generating capacity by a derating factor (15%) to reflect the line-loss that occurs when a central inverter converts direct current (DC) to alternating current (AC) for use. 15% is a consensus derating factor, although interviewed installers cited rapid improvement in inverter efficiency and/or the use of microinverters
on the back of each PV panel — both of which are limiting line-loss to less than 10% and as little as 3%.Amortization factor reflects the annual payment due on each borrowed dollar of investment. The amortization factor, for given parameters borrowing rate (i) and amortization period in years (n),
is calculated:
The Historic Crossover 17 Project Cost ($) × Amortization Factor
Capital Cost ($ per kWh) = Generating Capacity (kW) × Capacity Factor (%) × 8760 hours
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