https://decarbonization.visualcapitalist.com/the-cheapest-sources-of-electricity-in-the-us/
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I would have thought hydropower would be the cheapest.
intercst
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They were but it costs a lot to tear them down.
I don’t see hydroelectric power on the graphic. Hydroelectric Power is by far the cheapest. The Grand Coulee Dam produces 21 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity each year. It’s been in operation for 80 years and the construction cost of the 1930s spread out over that time is minuscule. Furthermore, the Grand Coulee Dam can produce power at anytime, it is not subject to variables of wind or sunlight. It doesn’t require batteries to store power for night time production.
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Grand Coulee does have minimum and max instream flows and irrigation release requirements. Most hydro dams do, unless they are pumped storage. You can’t just start and stop whenever you want.
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You can starts and stop the generators, tho, so you can control the electrical output within minutes.
And technically all the water behind the dam counts as “storage”, just like electrons in a battery. You can call on it “on demand”, unlike solar and wind.
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Here we are again, comparing apples to ball bearings…
Apples, it is said, are better than ball bearings because you can eat an apple. That may be true, but there are certain machinery applications where ball bearings work much better than the same number of apples, even if the apples are cheaper.
The comparisons of the Levelized Costs of Electricity (LCOE) between energy sources is often misunderstood and misused. See the following article from former New York Times writer Matthew Wald.
From the link:
LCOE has been useful for a long time, but it was never intended to deal with intermittent energy sources. Essentially, it calculates what it costs to build and run a power plant and then figures out how much electricity it will be called upon to produce over its lifetime. It divides the former by the latter, and then comes up with a single number that can be used to compare coal, gas, hydro, and nuclear power facilities.
The problem is that the underlying assumption of the LCOE calculus—so obvious that it was seldom stated—was that any given power plant would run when needed, and not run when not needed, and thus that the production would have value. In the days before solar and wind, that assumption was correct. A utility could calculate how many hours a year it was likely to need a gas peaking plant, or a baseload coal plant.
But the technique doesn’t take account of the fact that a kilowatt-hour varies in value according to market conditions, a problem for generators that can’t choose when they run, like wind and solar, which run when mother nature says it is time. Wind, and especially solar, have fratricidal tendencies; that is, when they are at maximum production, they tend to flood the market and push down prices. During the best production times, they are bleeding each other, economically.
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_ Pete
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That is not that way that works. If the dam is releasing water, for whatever reason but probably irrigation, is is going through the turbines and generating power. One cannot simply “turn it on on and off”. There are all sorts of flow, wildlife, flooding, and yes - power base load, regs to follow.
V - BuRec Engineer - 10 years.
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That isn’t true. Hoover Dam always releases water down stream but stops producing electricity when the water level drops below 950 feet sea level. They call it the inactive pool level. But under treaty they have to release water to Mexico, also they are mandated to release water to Arizona and California under the Colorado river compact.
From Google AI:
Yes, hydroelectric power can be considered an "on-demand" energy source because hydroelectric plants with storage reservoirs can quickly adjust their power generation to meet fluctuations in electricity demand, allowing them to respond rapidly to increased needs and provide power almost immediately when required; essentially making it a flexible energy source that can be turned up or down as needed.
**AI Overview**Yes, a hydroelectric dam can spill water without generating electricity if the water level in the reservoir rises above the dam’s spillway, causing excess water to flow over the top, even if the turbine generators are not actively producing power; this typically happens during periods of high water flow like heavy rain or snowmelt.
Many hydro dams spill or divert depending on demand. In the spring when there are heavy rains, several of the dams here along the TVA spill without production, otherwise they would flood the rivers or overproduce and put wear and tear on the turbines.
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In other news, the US government recently awarded a contract for $1 billion to supply government facilities with nuclear power from Constellation Energy.
From the link:
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON, Jan 2 (Reuters) - Constellation Energy has been awarded a record $1 billion in contracts to supply nuclear power to the U.S. government over the next decade, the company said on Thursday.
Constellation, the country’s largest operator of nuclear power plants, will deliver electricity to more than 13 federal agencies as part of the agreements with the U.S. General Services Administration.
The deal is the biggest energy purchase in the history of the GSA, which constructs and manages federal buildings, and is among the first major climate-focused energy agreement by the U.S. government to include electricity generated from existing nuclear reactors.
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Perhaps nuclear power isn’t so expensive, after all?
_ Pete
This graph is for new power generation costs. New massive utility grade hydro-electric dams are very expensive. That is why we are not building massive hydro-electric projects in this country.
It is not on the graphic because there are no recent estimates of how much a new Grand Coulee Dam would cost. The graph is only for new construction of electricity generation.
Looking at the current cost of Grand Coulee electricity or of any other existing power generation is not the purpose of the graph.
That is only $100 million per year. Natural gas supplies 10 times more electricity to the U.S, government.
Didn’t you say the same thing about Nuclear?
While I concur that new massive hydroelectric dams are expensive, that’s not why we aren’t building them anymore. The reason is that we’ve already built them- or at least all the good ones. There is a physical limitation- the rivers and the adjacent topography. The U.S. built nearly all of their good sites out years ago, and most of the later sites were increasingly flawed with greater and greater costs. The only remaining sites left are either terrible with unacceptable cost-benefit ratios/risk profiles or have been rejected for other reasons (inside National Parks or such). If you want to see what can happen when you build on a bad site, look up the Teton Dam.
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As an engineer I see that as a minor point. The major point is that the electricity generated by renewables is the cheapest. The work around for the intermittent generation is solved by energy storage. The costs for solar + energy storage and wind + energy storage are listed in the graphics. Thus solar and wind with energy storage are still the cheapest new build electricity in the US on par with combined cycle natural gas power plants.
Utilities will build wind and solar with energy storage because they they do not need to rely on expensive natural gas being pushed hundreds of miles through pipelines with compressors. Remember all the problems the polar vortex that Texas and the Midwest suffered through when their natural gas pipelines and compressor stations froze.
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Of course I said that! That is why we do not see any Vogtle 3&4 type nuclear plants being considered in the US. They are looking at restarting some large nuclear plants, but I think those efforts will be too costly. Maybe the US government will pay for their restart, but they do not look like good investments to me with all the upgrades and new equipment requirements.
But it is in your list that you posted. Strange they wouldn’t put Hydro in there also.
I totally agree with your post. I was going to add that to my earlier post, but I think that even if there were some suitable sites the cost would kill those projects.