AHC- Coal not main electricity source USA

Ultimately the United States is 50% nuclear, 30% coal, 10% petroleum, and 10% hydroelectricity.

Perhaps some of the funding goes to Puerto Rico and they don't have a big fiscal crisis caused in part by the high price of oil needed to power their power plants?
 

Delta Force

Banned
Perhaps some of the funding goes to Puerto Rico and they don't have a big fiscal crisis caused in part by the high price of oil needed to power their power plants?

Islands don't have too many options for power generation. Natural gas imports require very expensive infrastructure, and coal fired power stations aren't very flexible in their output. You could build coal or nuclear for baseload, but it's probably less expensive to use petroleum to meet the peaker and intermediate demand.

Until natural gas production and electric power station technology improved, it wasn't uncommon for petroleum to be the low cost option for peaker or intermediate power in some areas of the United States. A combination of improvements in production, power station technology, and new clean air regulations since the 1990s have helped natural gas become the low cost option. In some cases it has even displaced nuclear power generation.

The electricity market has gone through quite a lot of changes since the 1960s.
 

Delta Force

Banned
Loosely to this thread, but how close are renewables to being cheaper than coal IOTL?

It depends on the meaning of the word cheaper.

Right now, all new generating assets except for geothermal are more expensive than grid power. That means it is generally less expensive to use whatever generating assets already exist than to replace them with anything new. Geothermal hasn't really been coming online to replace existing facilities due to legal issues, and since new power costs more than old power capacity is only going to be added to meet new demand or renewable energy requirements.

If you want to build a new facility, geothermal is the cheapest option in terms of levelized costs (total life cycle costs divided by total power production), followed by natural gas and wind which are very close in price. New hydro is a middle space, and then coal and nuclear are a step up and cost about the same. Everything else is very expensive. It's like this:

Geothermal: $40 per MWh range
Wind/Natural Gas: $70 per MWh range
Coal/Nuclear: $90 per MWh range
Advanced Coal, CCS technology, biomass, solar, offshore systems: over $100 per MWh

The really accurate data can be seen here, and I can get you facility construction costs if you're interested in that too.

Among existing facilities that have been depreciated, hydropower is still the cheapest form of energy, followed by nuclear and then coal. Non-hydro renewables don't really have a service life beyond depreciation, they are more fragile than the hydro and thermal power stations that have been traditionally used. After 20 years you really need to replace one.
 

Delta Force

Banned
Note that nuclear has the potential to be much less expensive. Almost every nuclear power station ever built has been a one-off custom design with little commonality between them. It is estimated that mass produced nuclear reactors could have a capital construction cost comparable to coal fired facilities. Since the largest cost of nuclear power is the cost of the reactor itself, that obviously leads to dramatically reduced levelized costs. One study estimated that mass produced nuclear reactors could produce power in the $50 per MWh range, which would make it a very competitive form of energy.
 

Delta Force

Banned
If you're wondering about carbon capture and sequestration technology, I think it doesn't really have a future. The economics are very dubious. The prototype units have levelized costs comparable to solar thermal and other very expensive forms of power generation. The concept is also reliant on a price on carbon and needs to be built in areas capable of actually storing the carbon.

CCS is something of a misnomer too, because it doesn't even capture it all. If the captured carbon is used to boost petroleum or natural gas production at nearby wells it is even more leaky, with only 50% actually being stored.

There's also the issue of depleting fossil fuels. By the end of the century we won't be using fossil fuels, one way or the other.

Nuclear is a much better option than CCS for the niche they are designed for. You don't need a carbon price, and nuclear energy can be an important part of the energy system of humanity and any civilizations that follow for the next several million years. With nuclear reprocessing and breeder reactors, there really is enough fuel to last that long, just on Earth.
 
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