California green energy policies need nuclear options

By Leonard Rodberg, especially for CalMatters

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Of course, California could swear off the use of fossil fuels and shut down its nuclear plants, running entirely on wind, water and solar.

All it takes is getting used to weekly power outages.

Some energy forecasts are difficult; this one is not. We can estimate how much electricity each solar panel and wind turbine will produce and when they will produce it. We can then plug these numbers into a computer, along with environmentalists’ optimistic predictions of future electricity demand, to see how supply and demand match up on an hourly and seasonal basis.

Even with a significantly increased battery storage capacity to smooth things out, the match is poor.

California will generate plenty of renewable energy at times, but grid operators will still face tough choices — like turning off generators when there’s too much sun and little demand, or firing up fossil-fuel-based gas turbines when there’s no sun or wind at all.

During most of the year, especially in late summer and in December and January, solar and wind power will meet demand for a few hours, but do not have enough excess to charge the batteries.

California can generate as much wind and solar power as it uses overall, but not when it’s needed. To keep the electricity flowing, the state would actually need up to 80 gigawatts of gas-fired backup capacity — far more than it has today — or risk recurring shortages.

Eighty gigawatts is huge. Current peak demand in California is just over 52 gigawatts, but by 2050, millions electric vehiclesheat pumps and energy-intensive data centers — demand for electricity will be much higher.

Keeping all that backup generation on standby won’t be cheap. The costs of maintaining this fossil fuel capacity must be added to the already high costs of intermittent renewables such as solar and wind.

A system powered solely by sunny, windand hydro is not an engineering strategy; it is a belief system. Zeal and energetic reliability do not mix.

Some proponents of an all-renewable energy future have done so suggested unrealistic scenarios to power California while eliminating carbon emissions. Our recent research shows that their plan for California would leave it without power at least 50 days a year.

The state’s official energy plan isn’t much better. A new grid simulator — the Hourly Electricity Grid Analysis, or HELGA — compares expected demand with renewable generation on an hour-by-hour basis. This shows that California’s plan would worth nearly a trillion dollars however, the grid is still required to burn nearly as much natural gas as it does today.

Like every other state, California will need large zero-carbon generators that operate regardless of the weather to meet its climate goals.

Realistically, that means nuclear power.

A fleet of advanced reactors operating around the clock could provide reliable carbon-free electricity. New designs — like Bill Gates’ Sodium molten salt thermal storage reactor — are designed to ramp up and down in response to grid demand. Others will work continuouslypowering the network or booting storage systems as needed.

California can achieve its climate goals, but not through blind adherence to ideology. Clean, reliable energy is possible, but only if the state faces the reality of what it takes to get there.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.