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James Wimberley's avatar

Meanwhile, back on the solar farm, Chinese pv module prices fell 42% in 2023. Reuters: “At the end of 2023, China's annual production capacity for finished solar modules was 861 gigawatts (GW) equivalent [...], more than double global module installations of 390 GW. […] Production capacity is expected to increase by a further 500 or 600 GW this year.”

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-solar-industry-faces-shakeout-rock-bottom-prices-persist-2024-04-03/

At a generous 4:1 ratio to account for the different capacity factors, Chinese pv production capacity equates to 215 1-GW nuclear reactors per year at end 2023, 340 reactors per year this December. The pampered and shrinking nuclear industry is a mere pimple on the backside of the solar giant. The Australian government could go to Longi or Jinko today and buy 16 GW of panels, enough to balance Dutton’s four reactors by God knows when, for delivery in 12 months, and they would get a quotation by return of post.

Ah, intone the nuclear fans, “the sun doesn’t always shine”, as if grid managers had not thought of the fact. You do need to firm solar with storage, as you indeed have to do with nuclear reactors that shut down regularly for maintenance. If you were trying to match the output curve of a reactor with solar, you would need 1:1 daily backup, very expensive. But the flat output curve of a must-run reactor is itself is a problem for grid managers. Their ideal generator is both reliable and flexible: a shopping list met today only by gas, geothermal, hydro and batteries. Gas pollutes, geothermal is scarce (hydrothermal) or jam tomorrow (hot rocks), so hydro and batteries it is.

The curve they need to match is sine-wave daily load, not nuclear’s flat output. For solar you need eight hours’ or so of backup, not 24. This turns out to be doable and affordable. Adding cheap wind energy, typically with variation inversely correlated to solar on a cycle of weeks not hours, complicates the picture without changing the conclusion. Adding hydrogen generation is a strange Rube Goldberg scheme that complicates the picture without offering lower costs or greater reliability. WWS has solved the problem, people. Get on with it.

A personal footnote. I recently added to my rooftop solar, and looked for the first time at the five-minute daily output. It was still 170 watts – 4% of peak output – just before sunrise and after sunset, from light backscattered by the whole sky. In a way, the sun doesn’t actually need to shine for pv to keep working.

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Mercurial's avatar

But we can build nuclear, apparently, merely through Peter Dutton's willpower. Oh and a huge government (ie. taxpayer) subsidy.

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