Low electricity costs are a problem for all electricity plans, not only nuclear.
Renewables are even more susceptible to this because the weather affects all renewable plants of the same type similarly across wide geographic areas, so there will be times when they all generate more than is needed and nothing can be done about it. What's worse, the output is unpredictable, so there's little opportunity for some business to base its operation on renewable electricity generation patterns.
At least the weekend demand drop is predictable, so businesses can use this predictable opportunity to reduce their costs and thus reduce the impact the weekends have on the profitability of nuclear and similar dispatchable plants.
Low is relative, in most areas a 3c/kWh wholesale price is wildly profitable for solar and a massive loss for nuclear.
Renewables very much provide surplus power at scale, but they don’t always provide that massive surplus. So, Solar could provide 3/4 of its power when wholesale prices are below 1c/kWh and the economics still end up working out over the year. Meanwhile every other source of power needs to deal with electricity being increasingly cheap for most of the day.
> At least the weekend demand drop is predictable, so businesses can use this predictable opportunity to reduce their costs and thus reduce the impact the weekends have on the profitability of nuclear and similar dispatchable plants.
There’s almost nothing nuclear can do to reduce its costs when demand is low for a few days. They still need to pay interest, still need security guards, the reinforced concrete is still aging etc. They do major maintenance when seasonal demand drops normally in the spring or fall, but they don’t have any way to make use of downtown over weekends because weekends are so frequent. In a world with cheap electricity for 1/3 the day and cheap electricity 2/7 days a week and cheap electricity for 3-6 months out of the year, they need very high prices the rest of the time to break even.
Batteries fed cheap solar power can provide relatively cheap peaking power whenever you want. That’s going to effectively be the maximum daily wholesale price per kWh long term.
Wind/Hydro and possibly some Nuclear might survive in that kind of an environment, but most industry insiders think Nuclear is basically doomed outside the far north without truly massive subsidies.
While it would be nice if all the required nuclear or storage was installed decades ago, (1) we don't need to do this transition overnight, (2) a decade is on the optimistic side for rolling out new nuclear on this scale so it's not much of an improvement in that regard, and (3) most of the existing power infrastructure can be kept running until the batteries are available, and we get to keep looking at storage supply in the supply is still growing appropriately for the targets.
>Low electricity costs are a problem for all electricity plans, not only nuclear.
No, it's worst for the more expensive, capital intense sources.
Gas is expensive but not capital intense. An idled plant doesnt lose too much because fuel costs dominate. Solar/wind is capital intense but not expensive - idling is cheap if the whole thing is cheap.
Nuclear power is capital intense and expensive. Idling burns through a lot of cash.
Renewables are even more susceptible to this because the weather affects all renewable plants of the same type similarly across wide geographic areas, so there will be times when they all generate more than is needed and nothing can be done about it. What's worse, the output is unpredictable, so there's little opportunity for some business to base its operation on renewable electricity generation patterns.
At least the weekend demand drop is predictable, so businesses can use this predictable opportunity to reduce their costs and thus reduce the impact the weekends have on the profitability of nuclear and similar dispatchable plants.