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Monday, July 27, 2015

Let's See Where This Goes -- July 27, 2015; Cost Of Intermittent Energy

Penn Energy is reporting: a nuclear power plant in Missouri is shutting down over a "non-emergency" leak.
The Ameren Corp. nuclear power plant in central Missouri was shut down for the second time in eight months Thursday after a "non-emergency" leak was found in the reaction control system.
The shutdown occurred at 1:15 a.m. at the plant near Fulton.
Ameren officials are investigating the cause. Trammel said it was unclear when the plant would restart.
This is a 1,900 MW power plant.

Presidential-wanna-be Hillary Clinton wants to replace this plant with solar panels. At $3 million / MW, the cost to replace this nuclear plant with a solar plant would be $3 million x 1,900 = 57 with 8 zeroes, almost $6 billion. Okay. Whatever. At $4.5 million / MW (see below) = almost $9 billion. Okay. Whatever. [I often make simple errors in arithmetic and my calculator doesn't always have enough zeroes when it comes to solar energy costs.]

From google: As of November 2014, Topaz Solar Farm was the largest PV solar plant in the world at 550 MW. The Desert Sunlight Solar Farm is a 550 MW solar power plant in Riverside County, California. Other large plants are under construction.

The Topaz Solar Farm supposedly cost $2.5 billion ($4.5 million / MW). The develop had to acquire 25 square miles and then went back and acquired another 640 acres.  

Any electricity produced by this plant has to have a "conventional" power plant for a) night-time hours; b) cloudy days; c) two to four hours of start-up time every morning when the solar panels are coming on line. 

By the way, speaking of high-cost solar energy. Does anyone remember this story? -- Where Tim Cook (Apple) paid $6.5 million / MW solar power, this was just earlier this year:
It was just announced this afternoon, apparently during Tim Cook's presentation, that Apple is building another 130 MW solar farm to power in central California. Forbes is reporting
First Solar said Tuesday it’s signed a 25-year contract with Apple to deliver solar electricity from a yet-to-be-built project in central California.
Apple “has committed $848 million” for 130 megawatts of energy from California Flats Solar Project in southeast Monterey County, said a press release.
$848 million / 130 MW = $6.5 million / MW.  Disclaimer: you may want to check my arithmetic. I often make simple arithmetic errors. But the story says $848 million for 130 MW of energy; if that's correct, and if $6.5 million / MW is correct, that's horrendous by anyone's standards. See story below. But again, I could be wrong. Deserve Sunlight is costing not enough twice $848 million and is getting way more than 130 MW.

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