Colorado Should be First in Line for one of These Plants

Westinghouse targets $75bn (10 plants) US nuclear expansion

From the Financial Times:

Westinghouse is in talks with US officials and industry partners about deploying 10 large nuclear reactors to meet the goals of President Donald Trump’s executive orders, which aim to unleash an American atomic energy renaissance.

Vogtle Plant

So… why isn’t Colorado, Xcel, the PUC, someone on the phone to Westinghouse asking to be one of the 10? In the present testimony for the Xcel JTS proceeding there’s no discussion of actively going for nuclear. It’s “on the list” of possibilities which means - not happening.¹

Want Datacenters?

From Utility Dive:

Talen Energy has entered into a 1,920-MW power purchase agreement with Amazon Web Services to supply data centers in Pennsylvania from the independent power producer’s majority-owned Susquehanna nuclear power plant, the company said Wednesday.

…

Talen expects to earn about $18 billion in revenue over the life of the contract at its full quantity, according to an investor presentation. The contract, which runs through 2042, calls for delivering 840 MW to 1,200 MW in 2029 and 1,680 MW to 1,920 MW in 2032.

Colorado talks a fair game about bringing datacenters here. Pennsylvania is making it happen. Big Tech is not stupid. They know wind & solar are too variable for their needs. So they’re going nuclear where they can and gas where nuclear is not an option.

It’s fine if Colorado doesn’t chase datacenters. But if they do want to, nuclear is the way to do it. Or Colorado can fall back to CCGTs for datacenters, which would put to death the goal of 80% carbon free power.

Wind & Solar True Costs

At $7.5B for 1 GW of 24/7/365 power that’s a steal. Coal and Hydro can beat that. Gas can match that, depending on the cost of gas over the next 80 years. Wind & Solar can’t deliver 24/7. Even with a budget busting number of batteries Wind & Solar + Batteries can’t deliver 24/7/365.

From Latitude Media:

On Tuesday, the Boston-based climate group published a 32-page report outlining the risks of relying too heavily on LCOE² to determine what kind of energy sources to build.

The findings break down into four main points:

1. Electricity bills are shaped by a combination of generation, storage, transmission, and distribution costs — and LCOE only captures a sliver of that total.

2. Technologies with higher LCOEs, such as nuclear reactors or geothermal plants, can reduce total system costs because they require fewer new power lines than equivalent-sized solar or wind facilities.

3. LCOE excludes qualities such as reliability and dispatchability.

4. And, finally, better tools for regional planning already exist.

Just look at Ontario’s decision to invest in SMRs, said Kasparas Spokas, CATF’s electricity program director.

“Ultimately, the decision was made off a system-cost assessment,” Spokas told Latitude Media. “The SMR itself per megawatt-hour is a higher-cost resource than the alternative portfolio they were looking at, which had solar and wind. But when taking into consideration some of the other important factors… it led the government to go with a higher-levelized-cost resource.”

…

As an article Forbes magazine published in February illustrates, LCOE is typically misapplied to boost intermittent renewables such as wind and solar over firm resources such as nuclear and geothermal without considering the other costs associated with weather-dependent generators.

…

Unlike markets for goods like wheat or electronics, where substitutes abound, electricity has few viable alternatives. Storage technologies, such as batteries, remain costly and limited, unable to support seasonal needs, leaving utilities reliant on traditional generation (e.g., natural gas, coal, nuclear) to fill gaps left by intermittent wind and solar.

Wind & Solar Screw Up the Power Market

From Climate etc.:

During Winter Storm Uri in February 2021, ERCOT prices surged to $9,000/MWh as renewables underperformed and demand soared. As discussed in the first posting, doing well most of the time is not enough. The challenge in providing costly backup during peak shortages exposes the limitations of power markets, as explored below.

This is a great article where it goes into the incredible complexities of pricing power due to the issues around intermittency & reliability. The author lists 10 types/categories of power on the market and how each is used to handle the limitations of a free market for a product that cannot be cheaply stored.

Colorado Needs to Face Reality

I get it that the Polis Administration, including the CEO and PUC want an all renewable of wind and solar³ providing 90% of our power. It’s a beautiful dream. I agreed with that dream back in November before I dug into all this.

But we live in the real world. The laws of Physics apply. The limits of Finance apply. And the ratepayers in Colorado will suffer if the Polis Administration continues down this road to make our electricity expensive & unreliable. And to add insult to injury, we’ll almost certainly still be emitting CO2.⁴

The only people that can take the lead on this are Governor Polis or Bob Frenzel.⁵ And Xcel makes more money if we don’t go with nuclear, so better to have someone who is not focused on maximizing the CAPEX for Xcel.

Governor Polis,⁶ please for the sake of the rate payers of Colorado, the economy of Colorado, and to effectively address global warming - tell your CEO that one of their primary jobs is to determine if we can be one of those 10 plants. And how solid that 7.5B price tag is.

1. At a minimum it’s suffering from Analysis Paralysis.

2. Levelized Cost of Energy

3. And batteries. Lots and lots of batteries.

4. Batteries won’t get us through all wind doldrums & overcast skies. So we’ll be using SCGTs as backup. They’re heavier emitters than CCGTs.

5. CEO of Xcel Energy.

6. The legislature also has an important role to play here.