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Discontinuity critical for ‘tale of two technologies’ (nuclear, solar) and a clean-energy future

February 21st, 2018 · No Comments

Nuclear power was going to provide electricity ‘too cheap to meter’.  Many around the world, decades ago (many today), viewed peaceful nuclear power as the path forward to, well, solve more or less all the world’s problems.  While nuclear power provides over 10 percent of the world’s electricity, those dreams remained dreams (if not utter fantasies).

Today, many are looking to solar energy’s plunging prices and are already analyzing ‘what can you do with it when it becomes too cheap to meter’. There are many who see solar as the path to, well, solve more or less all the world’s problems (from monopoly power to climate change to economic disparity to …).  As solar provides little more than 1 percent of the world’s electricity, many see these dreams as little more than fantasies (even as many see them as reality coming at us at full speed).

An interesting set of parallels which suggests that there might be value to exploring these two low-carbon electricity sources for potential lessons — technical, business, financial, communications, and policy.  This is a conversation that Varun Sivaram opened with A Tale of Two Technologies: What nuclear’s past might tell us about solar’s future.

While quite interesting to read, this interesting read is also quite troubling.

For example, in this ‘tale of two technologies’, Sivaram raises a concern that solar power’s pace of penetration could stall, perhaps combined solar and wind electricity plateauing (hitting a penetration ceiling) in the 10 percent of total electricity demand, and thus cripple our chances to achieve a climate-friendly energy system.  Core to this, for Sivaram, is ‘value deflation’, with solar’s value (financial and in energy terms) falling with greater penetration as its production is limited to just a few hours per day and thus a high-solar penetration grid could have solar providing more than 100% of demand as the sun shines and zero percent in the night. While mentioned, Sivaram gives short-shrift to all of the developments (policy, business model, technical) to address this very set of challenges — from pricing to drive time-shifting demand; to larger grid interconnections to move power across regions; to smart devices; to a variety of storage options ranging from electric cars to Tesla Powerwalls to new pumped hydro storage to a range of technical leap-forward opportunities (such as in hydrogen production and storage).

Sivaram also asserts (okay, concludes from his research) that nuclear and solar are natural — necessary — partners for a low-carbon future. In short, that nuclear power can easily flex to meet electricity demands when solar isn’t producing.  Clearly, this point is at odds with how nuclear power currently operates: baseload power that is rather inflexible in terms of ramping up and ramping down production to meet short-cycle demand signals. While it is possible to develop nuclear power systems that can work effectively at just a few hours a day at full output and much of the day sitting idle, this simply doesn’t reflect the operating realities of the world’s nuclear power plants.

Sivaram raises concerns that solar could be locked into a less-than-optimal silicon based technology for a number of reasons.  For example, Sivaram looks at investments in solar R&D, highlighting that the cutthroat nature of the Chinese firms fighting for market share has fostered a very low level (1 percent) of internal investment. He also discusses how market conditions could create lock-out for new market entry. With that, he raises a parallel for how Admiral Rickover’s choice of light-water reactors locked out alternatives from the nuclear power marketplace.

Sivaram’s piece is intriguing with the call to look at the parallels with nuclear power for lessons to strengthen solar’s future; even amid disagreement it sparked thinking. When doing analogies, however, a critical tool is to make sure and clear not just continuity but also discontinuity, to foster understanding of where/why the analogy might fall short. To a certain extent, Sivaram does this as per these paragraphs:

The two energy sources are complementary — intermittent solar power that only works when the sun shines will likely come to depend on the reliability of nuclear energy to balance out its fluctuations in a decarbonized electricity system. Both are necessary for a global clean energy transition. And only by learning the lessons from nuclear’s meltdown can solar avoid its own.

This isn’t an obvious comparison. Accidents, activists, and ascending costs have plagued nuclear, stymieing plans for new reactors across the developed world. From this perspective, the history of nuclear power has very little to do with how the future of solar power might unfold. It’s hard to imagine a solar farm melting down and inciting an equivalent political backlash as was seen after Fukushima, for instance, while the costs of solar have steadily fallen and will likely continue to decline.

This, however, falls seriously short of laying out discontinuities such as:

  • Scalability
    • a solar panel is a panel, whether next to a yurt off the grid or with 10,000s in a multi-mw field.
    • in commercial applications, nuclear power plants are measured in 100s of megawatts to gigawatts and, despite some great cartoons, aren’t deployed to power cars or provide lights on camping trips.
  • Generations / evolutionary time scale
    • the time between nuclear power plant generations is, essentially, well over a decade. There is learning and development, but it is slow and long-term.
    • solar power systems, when considered what is deploying around the world, are changing rapidly. What is ‘deployed’ one year might be, at least in some components, obsolete the next.
    • ANALOGY: an appropriate analogy here might be evolutionary: nuclear power is large mammals and solar might be insects. Solar power might have orders-of-magnitude more ‘generations’ with innovation and learning than nuclear power. (In this analogy, information technology (software) might be bacteria …)
  • Learning curve/speed:
    • due to scale and generation time, nuclear learning curves for reduced costs take long time and are constrained (if they are ever achieved).
    • solar’s curve is steep, with rapid change and innovation across its systems.
  • Risks as factor
    • Nuclear power is, inherently, a high-risk endeavor with very serious safety concerns. Every single component is (or at least should be) seriously studied and tested as part of a system-of-systems, which slows innovation and raises development costs.
    • Solar is relatively low-risk domain and components (whether racks, wires, monitors, panels, etc …) can be developed with relative independence from developments from other components.
  • Security/Political Constraints:
    • due to security (weapons/proliferation and outright safety) issues, nuclear power is highly ‘constrained’ and controlled (regulatory, political, treaty).
    • solar is a wide-open space, with very limited constraints on technological development and transfusion.
  • Market entry
    • Nuclear has limited ‘innovator’s dilemma’-like market entry options (Navy ships (CVN/SSN/SSBNs) perhaps the clearest one) to prove new technologies, to enter in small scale in market-valuable ways to prove commercially and reduce risk..
    • Solar can carve out from high-cost markets (islands, off-grid, high-cost markets) and can be introduced at small scale en route path for innovation.
      • And, as per technology components above, it is very easy to demonstrate new components to enable ‘piecemeal’ innovation that is an element of the over industry’s dizzying innovation path.
      • And, people can take equipment from a lab and test it in real-world conditions without much bureaucratic challenge and at (relatively) low cost.
  • Competitive landscape:
    • Nuclear power has relatively few players, with about a dozen serious players globally (Russian, Chinese, European, American) who have the designs for and capacity to construct a nuclear power plant.
    • Solar has a raft of players. While panels are dominated by a relative few, these panel producers don’t control inverter options, control systems, racking, storage, installation, and other components of the solar eco-system.

When considering the serious nature of discontinuities between nuclear power and solar power, the case for the analogy seems weakened.  It is still of interest to see if parallels and lessons exist, but these discontinuities suggest serious caution in drawing those lessons. With that caution in mind, read Sivaram’s Tale of Two Technologies as a tool to understanding how to better strengthen the potential for a clean-energy future.

Note: Alejandro Nunez has some interesting thoughts on Sivaram’s piece in a twitter thread which includes interesting comments and interactions from several others.

 

 

Tags: Energy · Innovation · solar