Since I’ve been incautious enough to mention the N-word in the previous post, I’ll open another sandpit specifically devoted to discussions of the merits, and otherwise, of nuclear power. Any mention of this topic on other threads will be deleted and will risk bans or restrictions on the offender
Update Since it’s still going, I’ve moved it up, which should reopen comments
John Quiggin 
@Fran “We can make that more expensive but this won’t change demand.” That’s an interesting view of demand. To take an obvious example, I’d suggest that the number of petrol stations open in the early hours of the morning is quite responsive to price signals. In fact, many people manage to survive living in places where petrol stations close at night because it’s not profitable for them to open. As I’ve already observed, the fact that lots of industrial processes run on a 24-hour basis is largely a response to existing off-peak prices that provide an incentive to do this. That’s socially costly relative to the more uniform price that would arise if we added a substantial amount of solar power into the mix.
What frustrates me about all the anti-renewables advocates I’ve encountered, including here, is the apparent belief that if we can’t replicate existing consumption patterns we are doomed. I’m old enough to remember doctors who made house calls, and football tickets cheap enough to buy out of pocket money. Those things are gone, but that hasn’t stopped living standards improving.
If someone can point me to a anti-renewables analysis that takes a serious look at the role of prices, I’d be very glad. Otherwise, I have to conclude that, despite the vast volumes of pixels spilled here and elsewhere, you literally don’t know what you are talking about.
@Chris O’Neill
I’m truly fascinated by people who assert that variable pricing will be politically impossible then advance nuclear power as the politically palatable solution.
To take the point more seriously, suppose that you could opt in to a plan where you paid the market price, announced a day in advance (our current pool doesn’t do this, but lots do). On peak price days ($10000/MWh) you’d save $10 for every kWh not used. If you were willing to turn off the air-cond on perhaps 7 hot days a year you could halve your power bill. I suspect a lot of people would go for this. Certainly, no one seems to miss the days of predictable (always high) air fares.
@jquiggin
Not so fast. A constant source has a reasonable correlation with a load like this. The correlation could be defined as the average value of the product of supply and load divided by some suitable denominator so that it equals the ratio of average to peak load. The ratio of average to peak in that system is near 70% I guess so this is a long way from zero correlation.
No, even if you assumed that solar correlated perfectly with load for 12 hours a day (which of course it doesn’t, especially in winter) and that the load for the other 12 hours was half the average load during the daylight hours then my measure of correlation would be 67%. So with a ridiculously optimistic assumption, and ignoring seasonal variation of solar as well, solar still doesn’t match the correlation of a constant source.
Except the only difference will be that it will be scarce much more often with a solar system, e.g. from April until October during peak hour and for an average of more than 12 twelve hours a day.
@jquiggin
OK, we could tell people the choice is either variable renewables with extremely variable (and high) electricity prices or nuclear with far less variable, and lower, electricity prices. I’ll start thinking variable sources are onto something when someone, anywhere in the world starts smelting Aluminium with a variable supply of electricity.
Chis O’neill,
Your under informed on the nature of baseload solar systems. If the system is rated as baseload then that is what it delivers. Aluminium production is a small load in a national system, there are only a handfull of them and they operate well inside the performance envelope of the delivered output. There are other industries that prefer constant delivery such as the plastics industry and chemical processing industries, again these are only a proportion of the full energy demand. There are many other very large energy consuming industrial processes that ramp their consumption according to electricity price. One of these is steel smelting for scrap metal recycling, another would be rock crushing. There are plenty examples of both kinds of users, more than enough to provide the variabiliy of demand to match fluctuations from a totally renewable system. And variable pricing is the natural market mechanism to enable people to decide how to operate their businesses.
@Chris O’Neill
To be slightly more correct, what matters is covariance. The covariance of constant supply with varying demand is zero. Any system with positive covariance will do better than that.
@Chris O’Neill
If we controlled the population, then the amount of energy needed for industry would be relatively stable and particular demands for high capacity (eg aluminium smelting) would be much easier to meet.
There is no doubt that a environmentally sustainable society will have higher costs because the damage to the environment occurs through cheap and nasty, short-term, economic choices. Pure economic rationalism contradicts the environment and human rights.
In the case of aluminum smelting, surely if there is a huge environmental benefit, industry should be restructured so that smelters operate at full capacity only at night time. Capitalists will winge about this of course and less aluminum will be produced but that is a necessary trade-off, a cost that boosts wealth in the long run.
What a incredibly bad logic presumably in an effort to throw dust into peoples eyes. Aluminum smelting only needs renewable electricity. It was developed in USA during the 1940’s based on hydro electricity.
If switching to renewable energy imposes a 100% increase in electricity costs, as electricity is around 20% of aluminum costs, the price of aluminum only goes up around 30%.
So, in this scenario, we get rid of fossil and nuclear, but have to pay 30% more for aluminum. When this is embedded in downstream products – the net cost increase will be less depending on the proportion of metal used.
But this is the choice society needs to make.
America
@jquiggin
Covariance and correlation themselves are the wrong measure. For example, if the demand and supply are constant and equal then the covariance is zero. Does this mean the supply is badly suited to the demand? Of course not. So covariance itself is completely inappropriate. A more appropriate measure is one based on the product of supply and demand with an appropriate normalization. For example, if supply and demand are equal then the integral of their product divided by the mean of the integrals of their squares would be 1 or 100%. This measure is related to correlation but of course is not the same. By this (appropriate) measure, wind and solar “correlate” poorly with present demand so a lot of demand “management” (with consequent impact on cost) would be required to match supply and demand.
@Chris O’Neill
Are you trying to say that the managers of electricity supply corporations want to have a measure such that their work is minimised?
Prof Quiggin’s point is concerned with economic management and not with corporate management.
Chris O’Neill said:
Chris O’Neill, you obviously didn’t change your mind as a result of any arguments put forward on this thread, or the previous nukes vs renewables threads.
Your opinion was quite clearly set in its present position before the current bloviation began, so my statement is still true. I sincerely hope you changed your mind based on something more robust than a bunch of assertions on a blog thread!
@Tim Macknay
How do you know?
What do you mean by “current”? You mentioned “this thread, or the previous nukes vs renewables threads” above. If this is what you mean by “current” then you are wrong.
I certainly wouldn’t change my mind based on any of your assertions which I know for a fact are false.
@Ernestine Gross
No.
If the term baseload offends perhaps we could call it the 40% of peak demand which is a steady minimum. Another percentage is 11% the amount of Australia’s electricity supply consumed by the aluminum industry. Demand shifting must have practical limits. I recall during the WA gas explosion saga business owners said they couldn’t call employees in without knowing there was a full days work for them. Back in the era of sailing ships the crew would hang around the tavern waiting for a favourable wind to set sail. I don’t see that coming back eg an aluminium smelter waiting for a wind farm to pick up enough watts.
One of the claimed benefits of the NBN is increased telecommuting hence lower transport energy demand but we’ll see. I suspect for another 20 years or so traditionally minded bosses will regard it as bludging. Mention has been made of flexi-pricing by advanced smart meters that will supposedly charge electric cars when the wind is blowing hardest. To ‘prove’ this the Victorian govt will conduct a trial in which people are lent an electric car. Hell I’d flog an electric car if I only had to pay for the electricity and not the $30-$40k sticker price. The other major bias is that the in-reality coal dominated grid is unlikely to experience any major powerdowns during the trial. My guess is that time-of-use demand shifting will reduce peaks by a few percent, nothing like the 20% and more that some are claiming.
Yup. That’s where it stands.
Chris O’Neill said:
Oh, now I get it, you’re saying you changed your mind about some side issue, not the central issue of this interminable debate, which can be summarised as “renewables don’t work – nukes is teh answer” vs “nukes is teh evil – renewables is teh answer”.
I don’t recall any comment of yours in this or the last few similar threads where you took a position other than the “nukes is teh answer” side – hence my confusion about your point.
Fair enough, you changed your mind about a side issue based on a bunch of assertions in a blog thread.
Not really sure why you are determined to engage in that degree of pedantry, though.
(actually Tim, I think Chris is on the “Nukes is teh evil” side). Not that it matters, one little bit.
I think that’s Chris Warren, wilful, not Chris O’Neill. But I agree that it doesn’t really matter. 🙂
” If the term baseload offends perhaps we could call it the 40% of peak demand which is a steady minimum.”
So, lets wait until we’ve replaced 60 per cent of the always-on supply, and then start arguing about what to do about the rest.
And supposing aluminium smelters really need an always-on supply, the price of aluminium will go up, and demand will go down. This kind of price change happens for all sorts of reasons (eg currency fluctuations and the economy does not collapse.
Again, I read the comments of the anti-renewable people here and I think they must come from a planet where patterns of production and consumption have been unchanged since time immemorial.
I’m still wondering PrQ … how much demand do you think would vanish/be timeshifted in there were no off-peak or shoulder rate?
Suppose the wholesalers were forced to maintain prices from midnight to midnight? How much would demand fall, in your opinion? What do you base this conclusion on?
How would such a regulation affect seasonal peak prices?
@Tim Macknay
No, you don’t get it.
You obviously weren’t paying attention here.
Far too much aluminium is lost, not recycled. There is far too much produced for this reason as well as to supply the ‘growth’ which needs to become redundant in the developed world.
No attempt is made to recover waste heat during either smelting or recovering alumina.
The industry appears indolent. The best thing that could happen to it, and therefore the world, is for the price of electricity to rise steeply. This will force the manufacturers to get off their butts and implement some efficiency improvements. They couldn’t give a stuff about recycling of course but a rise in price will make the rest of us care.
I found this promising new process which will reduce capital costs by up to 80%, power costs by 40%, eliminate fluoride emissions and reduce other emissions significantly.
http://www.newsmaker.com.au/news/2467
@jquiggin
At least some of them understand that covariance is a completely inappropriate measure for how well electricity supply matches demand.
O.k. I accept your answer. My next question is: Who, in your understanding, would ‘manage demand’?
My mistake. You, and wilful at #17 above, are correct.
This comment was directed to Chris O’Neill, needless to say.
@Salient Green
At least we’re all in agreement that the price of electricity will rise steeply with a complete switch to renewables.
@Fran Barlow
“Suppose the wholesalers were forced to maintain prices from midnight to midnight? How much would demand fall, in your opinion? What do you base this conclusion on? ”
You are completely missing the point. I am trying to be helpful with the following questions.
Suppose you have a solar hot water system that can be boosted either by peak or off-peak electricity. Given the current prices for peak and off-peak electricity, which booster connection would you choose?
Suppose you have a solar hot water system that can be boosted be electricity. Suppose there is only 1 price for 24 hours. Would you care whether your booster is connected to peak or off-peak electricity?
Suppose you not only have a solar hot water system, connected to an off-peak electric booster but also have a washing machine but only outdoor drying facilities.
(a) In your estimate, how often per year would your washing time not coincide with sun shine?
(b) In your estimte, how often per year would your off-peak electric booster waste electricity by heating at night while you do your washing during day-time hours?
What would you do if night-time electricity prices were higher than day-time prices? Would the current common sense meaning of ‘off-peak’ remain unchanged?
What technical options would you, as the owner of a solar hot water system, have to reduce reduce expenditure on electricity and under which conditions?
Have you considered that all prices are interrelated even if one or several prices are administratively determined? When ProfQ says that currency values change every day, what does this mean for other prices?
PS: I’d be most grateful if you were to correct my typing errors – fair trade?
@Ernestine Gross
I might switch to gas I suppose,
I tend to do some of the load overnight, not because of offpeak but so I can get the clothes out on the line before work and get the full benefit of line drying.
Probably nothing much different. I’d leave my fridge and 2 freezers on. The PC would have to stay on as I use it at night. The TV would be on when we were watching it. So would the lights in the rooms we were in.
I’d just pay the higher price.
I don’t imagine others would be much different. How this would affect business and other users of power is unclear. I imagine hospitals and shopping centres and overnight industry would be unchanged.
Typos: [estimate]
Prompted by my unanswered question on the actual elasticity of off-peak demand I thought I would begin some inquiries of my own. As links put posts into the s**m trap, I won’t post them but simply quote (allowing people to look them up)
This article: An energy efficient Australia? Easy (Dyer, A Climate Spectator July 2010)
Dyer defines at least one objective at 180 degrees to Quiggin:
This should not be a complicated issue. There are two basic problems to solve: One, we need to reduce the average electricity consumption per capita; second, we need to move demand during peak times to off-peak times, to increase the average to peak load ratio. In places like South Australia, this ratio is below 50 per cent – one of the worst ratios in the world.
Dyer wants to discourage peak usage and shift demand to off peak. He says off-peak isn’t long enough or cheap enough.
Remarkably, in states like Victoria and NSW, many premises already have a variable tariff meter – known as a “time-of-use” tariff meter. These meters record the use of power in peak and off-peak times, so that the customer can be easily encouraged to put off heavy electricity consuming activities until off-peak times (ie. during evening and weekends).Our house in Melbourne has such a meter and we have certainly modified our behavior to minimise power costs and shift load to the off-peak times.
But, the retailers do not seem to promote this tariff and, if anything, provide dis-incentives for customers to stay or switch to this tariff. Our electricity retailer charges a premium of around 8 cents/kwh, over and above the standard flat tariff, for electricity we consume during weekdays for the privilege of being on this time-of-use tariff. This discrepancy is quite a barrier to getting customers that already have a time-of-use meter installed to move from a flat tariff to one based on time of use.
And the off-peak period doesn’t kick in until 11pm in the evenings (midnight during daylight savings), making it virtually impossible for most households to take advantage of lower tariffs when shifting load during the shoulder, evening period. 8pm or 9pm would make much better sense, and the meters are easily able to be changed to fit this model.
Whether he is right or not, it’s still not clear in Dyer’s view how elastic demand is or how much is time-shiftable.
Looking elsewhere I find this:
Domestic Electricity, Demand Elasticities, Vicortiran Energy Market (2004)
Yet growth in energy demand, particularly during summer has been attributed to increased ownership and utilisation of air conditioners. While other high energy consuming appliances such as clothes driers and dishwashers have remained stagnant or even dropped slightly, ownership and utilization of air conditioners has increased dramatically. In 2001 close to 60% of households owned air conditioners, up from 40% in 1996
If a substantial part of demand is in A/C usage, it seems unlikely that price alone would discourage any but the really poor to cut usage. During the 2009 heatwave I visited the home of one of my son’s friends and they had both the plasma screen heating the room and the A/C cooling it, during the evening shoulder (about 8pm) It’s hard to imagine them deciding they couldn’t afford to do this and perhaps to cool themselves down during the day instead.
So I’m still left with a basic question: how much power demand will be abated or shifted to peak time if a substantial impost on the cost of off-peak power relative to peak power were imposed?
Self-evidently, if the amount of power shifted were trivial, then the need to generate power during the off-peak would persist. If substantial parts of the peak load were taken by renewables such as solar thermal and wind, then one would want the scope to charge a premium price (since they wouldn’t be cheap) but reducing the price during the peak load period would not help.
What we might get was a more expensive system (per unit of power delivered) in which people used marginally less power per capita but in which most of our thermal fossil hydrocarbon capacity remained as it was. Clearly, this would not be an adequate solution if environmental feasibility was a serious predisposing factor.
Maybe “Vicortiran” should be Vitorrican”
But I could be wrong.
I don’t agree with Dyer at all. I’m happy to be efficient with my use of energy, but limit the scope of my useage, not at all. That is why with the GenIIPV system we have set the basic system output at a robust level. Better to overproduce where the source is free than under produce. In the so doing we have created the incentive to convert to electrically powered transportation. And demand for EV’s is going to come on like an iPod wave from what I am seeing. The batteries are there now, the motors are just phenomenal, the performance is raising eyebrows in all transport sectors other than the very heaviest carriers.
With this transition now under way the notion of containing of electricity consumption is nonsense.
@Chris Warren
Personally, I like the sound of Vitorrican rather more as well. 😉
“It’s hard to imagine them deciding they couldn’t afford to do this and perhaps to cool themselves down during the day instead.”
Maybe you need to try harder. At $25/hour for a 2.5kWh AC system during peak ($10 000 MW) and $4/hour for a plasma screen, I find it easy to imagine that genuinely cost reflective prices would lead to some pretty big changes.
“A more appropriate measure is one based on the product of supply and demand with an appropriate normalization.”
Such as E[XY]-E[X]E[Y] perhaps?
Re your comment #24, this kind of snarky topic-change leads me to the conclusion that you don’t i have an answer but aren’t willing to admit it.
@jquiggin
PrQ quoted me on coextensive use of a plasma screen and AC unit:
Then continued:
At the time I thought they were nuts to be doing both whatever the cost, but at those prices a lot more than profligate use of power would shut down. Really, the easiest thing to get rid of in this scenario is the plasma TV, but what you really need to get rid of is the AC which costs 6 times as much.
Of course, in heatwave conditions (which on that evening applied — it was 30+ outside) you are just going to pay to run the AC, unless you are of very limited means.
And I am still trying to work out how much off-peak demand you believe is capable of being shifted from off peak to peak, or else being simply discarded so as to permit the shut down of some fossil hydrocarbon outside the peak/shoulder.
Here’s something new for you pro-nukers: Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy – Australia.
@wilful
Not that new I fear. And this comment there annoys me:
He was not a Greenpeace co-founder. This is an old canard trotted out by the disinformationist scribblers of the anti-mitigationists. Moore has nothing whatever to do with Greenpeace these days and hasn’t for years. That they are running this on their front page is offensive to all of us who want robust mitigation.
Thanks for drawing this to my attention. I will be letting them know my views. I would urge others to do likewise.
@jquiggin
Still completely inappropriate since this will be zero with constant and equal demand and supply. I suggested E[XY]/sqrt(E[X*X]E[Y*Y]) but E[XY]/(E[X]E[Y]) might be OK.
It was a response to something that was pretty snarky.
I’m not sure exactly what you’re referring to but the whole point of this is that 100% (mainly uncontrollable variable) renewables is not an answer that is going to make a lot of people happy.
@Fran Barlow
Some more on Patrick Moore:
Patrick Moore, was once associated with GreenPeace Canada, has for more than 20 years been in bed with the anti-environmental lobby. He actually comes from a fishing family.
He set up a salmon fishing company (Quatsino Seafarms Ltd) in the late 1980s, allying himself with the worlds ocean miners. In 1990 he offered his services to counter ‘ineffective PR’ by big polluters offering a ‘green audit’ program which would tick off companies as clean for PR purposes. This led to the founding of “greenspirit” to “incorporate the environmental agenda” into government.
In 1991 he hooked up with a PR firm to become director of the British Columbia Forest Alliance to promote logging of forests in Western Canada. Unsurprisingly, the PR firm — Burston Marsteller — also had the Argentinian junta as a client working to improve [its] international image” and boost investment. At the time the junta was involved in the disappearance of about 35000 people by death squads. Defending himself Moore said “people get killed everywhere”.
Here’s what this pro-logging advocate thinks of Brazilian rainforest:
His buddy in this was climate change denier Marc Morano (communications director for the Republicans on the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works; promoter of the Nixon-style Swiftboat liars campaign to stop John Kerry in 2004) who was doing a film about it.
These days he is working to improve the image of the food and dairy industry.
Telling it is that it is the Greenpeace connection he mentions and not his more recent work.
@Fran Barlow
Given that off-peak currently costs about half the price of peak, I would guess that demand would decline 25-50 per cent under uniform pricing and more if there were a price premium for night-time power.
As an illustrative example, with uniform pricing, no-one would use an off-peak hot water system, so (assuming 8 hours off-peak) demand from current users would decline by at least 66 per cent (more if you assume that the system works harder when hot water is being used).
As regards AC, bear in mind that it isn’t a zero-one choice. You can set the thermostat a bit higher, take off some clothes and cool down with beer (using the fridge as a storage technology!). I expect (haven’t checked) that the energy cost is a quadratic function of the difference between room temperature and ambient temperature, so a few degrees warmer (say 7 degrees of cooling instead of 10) could cut the cost by half.
Chris O’Neill @ 28 said “At least we’re all in agreement that the price of electricity will rise steeply with a complete switch to renewables.”
It’s rising steeply already in response to large increases in the coal price in recent years and you aint seen nothin yet re the escalating price of coal.
The same will happen with Uranium come large scale use of it for electricity generation.
The price of the Sun’s energy however will not increase in price and the technology to harness it is rapidly decreasing in price.
@Salient Green
Only true (to some degree) in the case of photovoltaics. I’m sure it will be used when it’s cheap enough. Since price appears to matter to you, you will no doubt not suggest people buy it while it’s still expensive.
The cost of Uranium is only a small fraction of the total cost of nuclear electricity, even when only 1% of the Uranium is actually consumed. If Uranium becomes used on a large scale, I don’t think they’ll keep wasting 99% of it. Thus Uranium appears to be the only energy source that won’t be causing a steep increase in prices except for photovoltaics some time in the future while the Sun shines.
Chris O’Niell @46, PV is being used and despite it’s high price. This is because it is elegant, simple, clean, quite sustainable, low maintenance and very long lasting. The self sufficient aspect is also very appealing.
Contrast all that with nuclear power.
The other forms of renewable energy such as wind, wave, tidal, solar thermal, biomass and geothermal all have far more likelihood of widespread uptake than nuclear power for many of the same reasons as PV.
If coal subsidies were to end now, and a substantial price put on carbon now, and all technologies named in the previous para given equal assistance, what do you reckon Australia’s mix of electricity generation would be in 10 years time?
My prediction is that Nuclear power wouldn’t stand an organism’s chance in a meltdown of being in the mix let alone producing large amounts of power.
In any case, what we need is to push hard an end to coal subsidies (including the current, coal-oriented pricing system) and a substantial carbon price . Then we can forget about hypotheticals and see which technology (or set of technologies, including conservation) emerges as the least-cost solution.
Absolutely, JQ. And so what is the state of the play from your perspective?
This is true compared to all other technologies. However, under capitalism or market socialism, real estate sites with good solar orientation will sell for a premium, compared to sites with little solar access. As population or energy demand increases, this solar premium will rise. So in this sense the cost of the Sun’s energy could rise.
So the real answer has to include controls on the population. Also it is not possible to consider biofuels if population and energy demand keep rising.