Barry Brook referenced an interesting look at relative costs for new off-grid electricity:
It is often claimed that small-scale renewable energy, such as solar photovoltaic panel arrays, will fill an important future energy niche by providing much-needed electricity to developing nations and other remote regions (such as the outback of Australia). That’s a seemingly reasonable argument, but how do the numbers stack up? Below, Gene Preston (SCGI member) provides […]
[From Remote solar PV vs small nuclear reactor – electricity cost comparison]
The thought experiment compares a 5kW peak load fixed solar array + batteries, with the $5000/kW estimated delivery cost from a 125 MWe genIII nuclear plant (the Babock & Wilcox ‘mPower’). The solar example is roughly 15 times more costly. But the two examples are non-comparable for obvious reasons. The scale of the solar installation is something an NGO might well fund. The nuclear option needs either existing or new grid. It would take some very long-horizon investors to finance the nuclear option.
Being off the grid is expensive, whether Africa or remote Australia.
In the comments David Walters wrote this succinct briefing on how a grid is grown in a poor, electricity-free region:
5 October 2009 at 1.34
You’all missing the bigger picture! Such solar implementation are NOT grid connected. They run *exactly* that 14 hours a day….actually it’s more like 4 hours for the peak/name plate capacity. Most to NOT have batteries and those batteries only last about 5 years anyway then they, their lead and acid, get tossed in the Savannah someplace. Africa, BTW, is a major used-battery dumping ground.
So realistically, solar systems are “light-switch†compatible (not refrigerator, no lights when you need it, no power on demand). Even with batteries you get those dust storms and very cloudy tropical periods with weeks of cloud cover.
The smallest of reactors being discussed this year…and what a year it is!…are ALL grid compatible. In fact, they are great in *starting grid infrastructure*.
You take a 50MWe reactor. You build a grid that can serve…at least 100,000 – 200,000 people. You are asking yourself…WAIT! 50MWs isn’t going to serve this many people. You would be oh-so-wrong. This is because initially, that is for years, instead of 200 to 1000 KWhrs/month like we all do in Perth and Dallas, the average use, per month, might be about 25KWs…for that ONE light the average non-electrical-non-connected-to-the-grid-but-now-connected-to-the-grid-family might have. So *over years* they start adding some important appliances: a *small* affordable TV set, a small, say, 12 cu ft. refrigerator, and, maybe, one or two lamps.
This is who grids are build. This region of 100k/200k people spend *most of their investment* on such a low usage distribution grid around the new nuclear reactor. Assuming the economy gets better, people’s living standards rise *some* because of access to regular electrical power, you start investing more money into this small grid to buff it up as people start using more power. A larger refrigerator, maybe an electric hot-plate. Middle class elements might go for AC here and there.
Now two things start to happen. Based on rising expectations…the load increases and:
1. We can add another reactor module and
2. We start interconnecting the grid to perhaps larger reactors around the main capital city to develop a truly national grid that can back each region up.
The solar cells some well meaning European or American NGO donated years before? Well, they are broken down to use on kid’s remote controlled toy cars and other worthwhile distractions.
David
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