Cost Of Nuclear Research Articles

Sustained cost declines in solar PV and battery storage needed to eliminate coal generation in India

Unabated coal power in India must be phased out by mid-century to achieve global climate targets under the Paris Agreement. Here we estimate the costs of hybrid power plants—lithium-ion battery storage with wind and solar PV—to replace coal generation. We design least cost mixes of these technologies to supply stylized baseload and load-following generation profiles in three Indian states—Karnataka, Gujarat, and Tamil Nadu. Our analysis shows that availability of low cost capital, solar PV capital costs of at least $250 kW−1, and battery storage capacity costs at least 50% cheaper than current levels will be required to phase out existing coal power plants. Phaseout by 2040 requires a 6% annual decline in the levelized cost of hybrid systems over the next two decades. We find that replacing coal generation with hybrid systems 99% of the hours over multiple decades is roughly 40% cheaper than 100% replacement, indicating a key role for other low cost grid flexibility mechanisms to help hasten coal phaseout. Solar PV is more suited to pairing with short duration storage than wind power. Overall, our results describe the challenging technological and policy advances needed to achieve the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement.

석탄발전소의 사회적 비용 추정 : 균등화발전비용 중심으로

Assuming a discount rate of 4.5% and a utilization rate of 80%, the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) of a coal power plant was found to be 144.52 KRW/kWh. Among the calculated LCOE components, the factors accounting for the largest proportion were the fuel cost of 51.37 KRW/kWh (35.5%), the carbon emission cost of 45.83 KRW/kWh (31.7%), and the construction cost of 22.1 KRW/kWh (15.3%). As the international coal price rises, the unit cost of fuel is also showing an increasing trend. Recently, the initial investment cost of private coal power plants has increased, and environmental costs (external costs) due to conflicts with local residents are also increasing. Analysis of the sensitivity of the estimated LCOE to a discount rate and a utilization rate found that change in the utilization rate has the greatest effect on the LCOE of coal power plants.

Optimal Selection of the Diesel Generators Supplying a Ship Electric Power System

It is very common for ships to have electric power systems comprised of generators of the same type. This uniformity allows for easier and lower-cost maintenance. The classic way to select these generators is primarily by power and secondarily by dimensions and acquisition cost. In this paper, a more comprehensive way to select them, using improved cost indicators, is proposed. These take into account many factors that have a significant impact in the life-cycle cost of the equipment. A realistic and detailed profile of the ship’s electric load spanning a full year of her operation is also developed to allow for a solution that is tailor-made to a specific case. The method used is highly iterative. All combinations of genset quantities and capacities are individually considered to populate a power plant, taking into account the existing redundancy requirements. For each of these and for every time interval in the load profile, the engine consumption is Lagrange-optimized to determine the most efficient combination to run the generators and the resulting cost. The operating cost throughout the year is thus derived. In this way, the method can lead to optimal results as large data sets regarding ship operation and her power system’s technical characteristics can be utilized. This intense calculation process is greatly accelerated using memorization techniques. The reliability cost of the current power plant is also considered along with other cost factors, such as flat annual cost, maintenance, and personnel. The acquisition and installation cost are also included, after being distributed in annuities for various durations and interest rates. The results provide valuable insight into the total cost from every aspect and present the optimum generator selection for minimal expenditure and maximum return of investment. This methodology may be used to enhance the current power-plant design processes and provide investors with more feasible alternatives, as it takes into consideration a multitude of technical and operational characteristics of the examined ship power system.

Solution for short-term generation scheduling of cascaded hydrothermal system with turbulent water flow optimization

For economic operation of hybrid power systems, short-term hydrothermal planning is a significant operation which is focused to reduce the fuel costs of thermal power plants while fulfilling the different constraints of electrical and hydraulic networks. This paper addresses a newly developed algorithm, turbulent water flow optimization (TWFO) to solve the hydrothermal scheduling problem. TWFO is based on the whirlpool phenomenon which is formed through turbulent flow of water in seas or oceans. To enrich the solution quality of TWFO and to avoid trapping into local optimum, a chaotic logistic map is employed in the algorithm. The proposed TWFO is used to offer an optimal hourly generation schedule of hydrothermal power system considering the spillage effects of hydro plants, and the valve point loading effects, transmission losses and multi-fuel sources of thermal power plants. Besides, a repair mechanism is applied to fulfil all the equality and inequality constraints and to govern the solutions in the direction of feasible search space. The superiority of the proposed TWFO is examined on three hybrid power systems and the results of TWFO are compared with the performance of recent heuristic approaches including monarch butterfly optimization, Harris hawks optimization, red fox optimizer, remora optimization algorithm, student psychology-based optimization, and other erstwhile approaches reported in the literature. Numerical results demonstrate that the TWFO shows a superior performance in comparison with other approaches.

Usage and efficiency analysis of electricity generated by PV power plant in a marina or industrial facility

In this study, the analysis of the usage efficiency and the time allocation to cover the initial investment cost of a PV power plant to be installed in an industrial facility having constant electricity consumption monthly and a yacht marina having fluctuating electricity consumption in a year (equal yearly electricity in each in total) within the installation assumption of same conditions of PV plant has been done. The PV power plant data with 680 kWp power and located at the same latitude as the yacht marina in the center of Mediterranean were used. For this purpose, it has been calculated that the PV power plant installed power required for the annual electricity need of the yacht marina will be 1357 kWp. With this power, 2,141,117 kWh of electricity has been produced annually and the yacht marina/industrial facility need has been supplied. In addition, the Net Present Value (NPV) was used to calculate the coverage period for the initial investment cost of the PV plant. In the calculations, it has been determined that the time to cover the initial investment cost is 4.31 years in the yacht marina and 4.37 years in the industrial facility. This result showed that installing PV power plants in marinas would be 1.5% more advantageous than other industrial facilities.

Preliminary assessment of tritium permeation and retention in the European Water Cooled Lithium Lead Test Blanket Module with TESSIM-X

• T inventory in the ITER EU Water-Cooled Lithium-Lead Test Blanket Module investigated. • T from vacuum vessel (gas, neutrals) and solute T in PbLi included in modeling. • Effect of neutron damaging on trap concentrations included in models. • T retention in the range of 0.75 g is expected over plasma operation period. • Comparison with the TMAP7 code performed. Tritium self-sufficiency is a key requirement for future fusion power plants. Therefore, it will be necessary to minimize tritium losses to the surrounding systems, such as the tritium breeding modules, plasma-facing components, cooling system, etc. These components and systems will act also as a tritium sink, as tritium will be retained in the metal walls in traps produced during manufacturing or induced by neutron irradiation. The design of the tritium breeding systems and plasma-facing components will therefore have a direct impact on the performance, operational safety and cost of any future power plant. Consequently, accurate modeling of tritium transport and retention in these systems is needed for future engineering designs of the tritium breeding systems and supporting safety requirements. In this work, tritium permeation and retention was modeled with the diffusion-transport code TESSIM-X for the current European WCLL (Water Cooled Lithium Lead) Test Blanket Module (TBM) for the ITER TBM Programme, with the inclusion of neutron-induced traps. Trap saturation is considered for dpa values of 0.25 and above, leading to an increase in trap concentrations relative to undamaged material of roughly a factor 3. The code was also benchmarked against the well-established TMAP7 code.

Design for Reliability of SiC-MOSFET-Based 1500-V PV Inverters With Variable Gate Resistance

1500-V photovoltaic (PV) configuration is the standard design in the solar PV industry. Extending the maximum dc voltage from 1000 to 1500 V can reduce the installation cost of the entire power plant. However, it may affect the reliability of the corresponding 1500-V PV inverters, due to the increased loading stresses, i.e., voltage stress and thermal loading of power devices. In this context, this article proposes a solution to the reliability enhancement of silicon carbide- <sc xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">mosfet</small> -based 1500-V PV inverters with variable gate resistance. This solution offers a possibility to adaptively adjust the switching speed to make a compromise between the switching power loss and voltage overshoot during commutation, thus enhancing the reliability. The evaluation results based on the mission profile of a 125-kW 1500-V PV system installed in Denmark indicate that the PV inverter with the proposed design, i.e., variable gate resistance, can improve reliability performance compared to the fixed gate resistance solution while ensuring a safer operating voltage margin.

Technical and Economic Evaluation and Development Policy Suggestions of LNG Power Plants

The return on investment (RIO) of a Liquefied natural gas (LNG) power plant is lower than that of conventional power plants with high pollution due to the “take or pay” supply mode of natural gas and the two-shift peak shaving operation mode in the LNG power plants. . In this paper, firstly, based on the characteristics of the gas turbine combined cycle (GTCC) unit for peak shaving and standby application, it is proposed to calculate the generation cost of LNG power plants according to the depreciation of operation life. Secondly, through the sensitivity analysis of power generation cost, it is found that fuel price and average efficiency are the first influencing factors. Next, to reflect the environmental protection characteristics of LNG power plants, the on-grid price included in the environmental value is put forward innovatively based on the calculation of the environmental cost and environmental value of natural gas power generation.

Business model of virtual power plant considering uncertainty and different levels of market maturity

In the context of carbon peaking and neutralization, virtual power plants (VPPs) that aggregate distributed resources have been developed on a large scale. VPPs are related to users, various energy service providers, and other subjects; however, currently there is a lack of business models to achieve win-win benefits for all subjects. This study first analyzes the design experience of foreign VPPs from three perspectives: marketing models, key market services, and future market mechanisms to attract customers, and summarizes the enlightenment for the design of VPPs in China. Secondly, the theory of the canvas model and its application in the VPP were studied. The business model of the VPP was designed from the initial, development, and mature stages. Finally, taking China's Sichuan, Shanghai, and Zhejiang provinces as examples, the example results showed that considering the resource aggregation cost and income of virtual power plant in two stages, the income of virtual power plant can be increased by 5.26%. The fluctuation range of deviation penalty cost considering the robustness of wind, photovoltaic, and electricity price was [6000,7000] less than [80009000] without considering the robustness. Moreover, compared with the unified business model, the differentiated business model has a faster decline in carbon dioxide emissions and coal consumption.

Province-level techno-economic feasibility analysis of baseload supply from hybrid renewable energy systems in China

To promote the large-scale deployment and grid integration of renewable-based power system, this paper investigates the province-level techno-economic feasibility of wind-photovoltaic-battery hybrid renewable energy system (HRES) for baseload supply application around China. Firstly, the power generation cost and grid parity potential of province-level standalone wind and photovoltaic power plants are assessed. Then, the optimal sizing of province-level HRESs aims to minimize the net present cost and meet the reliability constraint for baseload supply, which is solved by teaching and learning-based optimization. Finally, the techno-economic comparison between different system configurations, the correlation between HRES cost-effectiveness and resource potential as well as resources complementarity, and the grid parity potential of HRES for baseload supply are quantitatively analyzed. The results reveal that: (i) 84.4% of regions in China can achieve solar photovoltaic plant-side grid parity in 2022, while only 15.6% of regions can achieve wind power plant-side grid parity; (ii) HRESs in all regions are technically feasible but not cost-effective for baseload supply; (iii) wind-photovoltaic-battery HRES is the optimal configuration for most regions, indicating that the wind-solar hybridization is more reliable and cost-effective than standalone power plants; (iv) the economic performance of HRES depends mainly on the wind-solar joint resource potentials and the supply-demand relative deviation; (v) investment cost reduction and utilization of energy curtailment are promising to help HRES achieve plant-side grid parity for baseload supply. The findings of this paper can help policy-makers and investors optimally determine the national pathway of renewable energy transition.

Experimental study on simultaneous use of phase change material and reflector to enhance the performance of photovoltaic modules

Due to the increasing demand for energy in the world and the problems caused by fossil fuels, the use of renewable energy has become the focus of governments. Therefore, the study and use of renewable energy, especially solar energy, is an essential development program for all governments. There are massive efforts to increase the efficiency of photovoltaic (PV) technology which is rapidly developing, in order to decrease the capital cost of a solar power plant. In this paper, two methods for enhancing the efficiency of PV modules are considered: using phase change material (PCM) as coolant and integrating reflectors. The experiments were performed in Dezful, Iran, with very hot summers. The results show that, using reflector boosts the received irradiation by the PV panel, but at the same time, leads to increase the PV module temperature. Therefore, using PCM in order to decrease the temperature is justified. Among different tilt angles of the mirror, 30° presents the best outcomes. Then, this case was tested with one additional mirror on top of the PV module. So, the case of double mirrors was selected and bring about 4.1 % improvement in electrical output, in comparison with the conventional one. As the next stage, this optimum case was repeated by utilizing the PV module with PCM at its back side. 12.5 % enhancement of electrical output and 24 % reduction in entropy generation were calculated, in comparison with the conventional one.

The real cost of deep peak shaving for renewable energy accommodation in coal-fired power plants: Calculation framework and case study in China

To fulfill the commitment to carbon emission reduction, the grid penetration rate of renewable energy in China has increased rapidly. High penetration of renewable energy brings a significant challenge to the peaking ancillary services providers. In northern China, coal-fired units still play a significant role in peak-shaving, especially in areas where pumped hydropower, gas-fired power, and controllable load are limited. The current peaking ancillary service market in China cannot effectively mobilize the enthusiasm of peaking power plants. Fair calculation of the peak-shaving costs of coal-fired power plants is significant for formulating an ancillary service market mechanism. Current research on peak-shaving costs calculation of coal-fired power fleets is limited to the operating coal consumption costs, wear-and-tear costs, and the additional environmental costs (do not contain pollutant tax and ashes treatment). However, this costs calculation lacks consideration of the additional peaking coal consumption costs, the additional peaking environmental costs with pollution tax and ashes treatment, and the power output loss caused by the peak-shaving process. Therefore, this study proposes a novel calculating framework that includes all the potential peak-shaving costs of the coal-fired generating units mentioned above. To evaluate the proposed framework, a case study was conducted in a coal-fired power plant in Dalian City, Liaoning Province, China, in 2020. The results show that the total costs of peak-shaving in 2020 was only 4.96 million Yuan according to the existing method. However, according to the proposed costs calculation framework, the peak-shaving costs in 2020 should be 16.97 million Yuan. The power grid compensated 12.83 million Yuan to the power plant, and the real peaking net profits was -4.14 million Yuan, which means coal-fired power units are unprofitable under the current peaking compensation mechanism. Compared with the existing traditional costs calculation method, the proposed method could provide a more comprehensive and accurate costs accounting for the deep peak-shaving process of coal-fired units. This study may help formulate the benchmark and reasonable compensation in the peak-shaving ancillary service market.

Применение частотно-регулируемого электропривода для снижения эксплуатационных затрат собственных нужд ГРЭС

Economical operation of modern powerful boilers and condenser turbines of hydrorecirculation stations (GRES) is possible only when auxiliary installations (mills, crushers, cranes, conveyors, pumps, fans, etc.) are required for the preparation and transport of solid fuel, air supply to the chambers burning fuel and removing combustion products and ash from them, supplying water to boiler units, maintaining a vacuum in turbine condensers, water supply to the station, and much more. Recently, the specific costs of heat power plants used are 25-30% higher than those of power plants that use modern technologies. One of the priority areas for the development of modern energy in Russia is the technical re-equipment and reconstruction of obsolete operating hydrorecirculation stations with the extension of their service life and the replacement of the main and auxiliary equipment with new ones with improved technical and economic characteristics. The priority in this case is to increase the efficiency of fuel use, energy and resource saving. The article discusses the main causes of uneconomical modes of operation of electric drives during operation in the auxiliary system of JV Raichikhinskaya GRES. To improve the performance and service life of the multistage centrifugal feed water pump PE 270-150-3, the article proposes the use of a frequency-controlled electric drive. Keywords: AUXILIARY NEEDS, FEED WATER PUMP, ELECTRIC MOTOR, FREQUENCY-CONTROLLED ELECTRIC DRIVE

Using agricultural demand for reducing costs of renewable energy integration in India

While demand response is recognized as a useful tool for integrating renewable electricity, the related literature in developing countries has been limited. Meanwhile, the literature on demand side management (DSM) has ignored the value of agricultural demand as a demand side resource for integration of renewable energy. This article fills the gap by collecting agricultural load data from two distribution utilities in the Indian state of Gujarat and using it in a mixed-integer linear programming model to estimate the flexibility provided by agricultural DSM to the power system. Using a flexible load representation, the model chooses the optimal periods for agricultural supply subject to the constraints of meeting the irrigation needs of farmers and the marginal cost of electricity. This analysis shows that management of agricultural demand already reduces system costs by 4% or USD 6.09 per MWh of agricultural consumption. Going forward, with high shares of solar generation, shifting agricultural demand to daytime hours increases system flexibility. It reduces renewables curtailment by 4–7%, limits cycling costs of coal power plants, and reduces system integration costs by 22%. Agricultural DSM could be a cost-effective flexibility option in developing countries where only the least-cost options are economically viable.

On-sun testing of a 1 MWth quartz tube bundle solid particle solar receiver

Solid particle solar receivers (SPSRs) are receiving increasing attention for the high operation temperature, which offers the potential for reducing the cost of solar thermal power plants. The configurations of previous SPSRs suffer from the barriers of complicated structures and inferior thermal performances. There is an urgent demand to develop a SPSR lumped of a simple configuration, a lower cost and superior thermal performances. In this paper, a quartz tube bundle SPSR with a thermal power capacity of 1 MW was designed and developed. On-sun tests were conducted based on a solar power tower plant and the total on-sun operation time has exceeded 100 h until the writing of the paper. The experimental results show that the receiver configuration has strong resistance to the non-uniform incident irradiances, even to the transient overcast sky condition. The maximum outlet temperature of 872°C was obtained with 59 heliostats in operation, direct normal irradiance of 865W/m2 and residual time of 351 s. The maximum temperature increase per length reached 324°C/m.

Green Power Trade Behavior in China’s Renewable Portfolio Standard: An Evolutionary Game-Based System Dynamics Approach

To promote the consumption of renewable energy (RE), in 2019, China introduced the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) and adopted the weight of consumption responsibility to replace the quota index. This paper investigates the behavioral decisions of green power plants and power sales companies using evolutionary game theory. The results show that RPS becomes effective based on two rules: (1) the unit fine is higher than the transaction cost for power sales companies; and (2) the transaction prices of RE and Trade of Green Certificate (TGC) are greater than the unit transaction cost for green power plants. Taking Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region as an example, the scenario analysis method and a simple system dynamics model are employed to investigate the impact of fines on the green power trade behavior. With different fines, power sales companies are more sensitive than green power plants. These results provide some policy recommendations to promote the consumption of RE.

Optimal placement of fixed series compensation and phase shifting transformer in the multi‐year generation and transmission expansion planning problem at the pool‐based market for maximizing social welfare and reducing the investment costs

Multi-year generation and transmission expansion planning (MY-G&TEP) is a critical issue in power systems. The present paper considers the optimal placement of Fixed Series Compensation (FSC) and Phase Shifting Transformer (PST) proposes a pool-market-based mathematical model (MY-G&TEP) for maximizing social welfare (SW) and reducing investment costs of transmission lines and new power plants. Following the determination of optimal strategy, the present paper compares the usefulness of PSTs and FSCs in the MY-G&TEP problem in three scenarios. Since MY-G&TEP is a complex hybrid, mixed-integer linear programming (MILP), and nonlinear optimization problem, the YALMIP toolbox and CPLEX solver have been applied to find the optimal solution, a globally optimized solution is obtained. For evaluation, the proposed model has been tested on the IEEE 24-bus and IEEE 57-bus systems, and the simulation results indicate that the installation of PST and FSC not only improves market conditions but also increases the flexibility of MY-G&TEP, and adding these FACTS devices to the studied system leads to an increase in the network's performance and enhancement of objectives of the proposed model.

Costs of achieving emission limits in coal-burning power plants under the recent best available techniques regulation amendment: Evidence from national microeconomic data

Emissions limits for coal-burning power plants are gradually being tightened around the world, with additional requirements and consequently significant costs placed on existing power plants. Design that conforms to regulatory requirements require credible estimation of the associated abatement costs. However, the existing methods for estimating abatement costs do not estimate those costs using microeconomic data or take the need to retrofit current abatement technologies into sufficient consideration. Therefore, they fail to calculate the actual costs of compliance accurately and thus are not suitable for assessment of cost proportionality, which is the key principle of regulatory design. This paper introduces a straightforward and innovative methodological approach to quantification of abatement costs that can reflect the real-world situation at an individual power plant and allows assessment of proportionality in meeting emission standards. The approach is based on collection of detailed data at the level of individual plants and on the comparison of costs associated with various levels of emission reduction in defined scenarios. The approach is demonstrated by application to nearly 50% of the installed thermal power capacity of the Czech Republic. The results show that recent European regulations for coal-burning plant emissions incur high abatement costs for most power plants, despite having very little effect in terms of emission reductions.

Artificial Gorilla Troop Optimization for Optimization Operation of a Complicated Hydrothermal System

This study implements a novel meta-heuristic method called artificial gorilla troop optimization (AGTO) to handle the short-term fixed-head hydrothermal scheduling problem (ST-HTS). In the study, the constraints of reservoir and the fuel function of total generating electricity cost for thermal power plants are taken into account. AGTO is a newly published method and the main inspiration is based on the living practice of gorilla in nature. While tested by the hydrothermal power system, AGTO have demonstrated its striking performance to other state-of-the-art meta-heuristic algorithms and other popular algorithms. In this study, AGTO is implemented alongside with improved particle swarm optimization (IPSO) and tunicate swarm algorithm (TSA) for assessing the raw performance. The results obtained by these methods see that AGTO is a highly effective computing method for an engineering problem such ST-HTS besides IPSO and TSA in all compared criteria.

Comprehensive analysis and design of furnace oil-based power station using ETAP

High standards of living are linked with the availability of energy. Therefore, there is always a requirement to modify existing power generating systems or to add new systems to fulfill the increasing demands of energy. It is becoming a core issue in the South Asian region so that at least current standards of living could be maintained by controlling growing energy rates and shortening the availability of conventional sources. Furnace oil is a residue obtained in the process of distillation of crude oil in the petroleum industry. This furnace oil is applicable for power generation plants allied with the petroleum industry so that residue of oil refineries could be utilized. In this research, a furnace oil-based power plant is designed in electrical transient and analysis program (ETAP) software. Moreover, steady-state and transient analysis of the proposed design of the power plant are conducted to increase practical viability of model. Load flow is analyzed to depict the performance of the power plant model under load conditions. This model is further tested under the motor starting event to analyze the current drawn by the motor. This event helps to determine the permissible values of protective equipment installed in power plants. In the last, economic dispatch analysis is conducted to find the relative minima of generation cost of furnace oil-based power plant with respect to coal and hydel generation