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Will AI’s huge energy demands spur a nuclear renaissance?

Contracts with Google and Amazon could help, but bringing new types of reactor online will take larger investments — and time.

Davide Castelvecchi, Nature , 25vOct 24

Last week, technology giants Google and Amazon both unveiled deals supporting ‘advanced’ nuclear energy, as part of their efforts to become carbon-neutral.

Google announced that it will buy electricity made with reactors developed by Kairos Power, based in Alameda, California. Meanwhile, Amazon is investing approximately US$500 million in the X-Energy Reactor Company, based in Rockville, Maryland, and has agreed to buy power produced by X-energy-designed reactors due to be built in Washington State.

Both moves are part of a larger [??] green trend that has arisen as tech companies deal with the escalating energy requirements of the data centres and number-crunching farms that support artificial intelligence (AI). Last month, Microsoft said it would buy power from a utility company that is planning to restart a decommissioned 835-megawatt reactor in Pennsylvania.

The partnerships agreed by Google and Amazon involve start-up companies that are pioneering the design of ‘small modular reactors’, which are intended to be assembled from prefabricated pieces………….they still have a way to go before they become a reality.

Nature talked to nuclear-energy researchers to explore the significance and possible implications of these big-tech investments.

Could these deals spur innovation in the nuclear industry?

Building nuclear power stations — a process often plagued by complex permit procedures, construction delays and cost overruns — is financially risky, and betting on unproven technologies is riskier still…………..

 the details of the deals are murky, and the level of support provided by Amazon and Google is likely to be “a drop in the bucket” compared with the billions these start-ups will ultimately need, says physicist Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington DC. “The PR machine is just going into overdrive,” says Lyman, but “private capital just doesn’t seem ready yet to take that risk”.

Allison Macfarlane, director of the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and former chair of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), says that the speed of progress in computer science raises another question. “If we’re talking 15 years from now, will AI need that much power?”


Are there safety advantages to the small modular designs?

“The smallest reactors, in theory, could have a high degree of passive safety,” says Lyman. When shut down, the core of a small reactor would contain less residual heat and radioactivity than does a core of the type that melted down in the Fukushima Daiichi disaster that followed the cataclysmic 2011 tsunami in Japan.

The companies also say that the proposed pebble-bed reactors are inherently safer because they are not pressurized, and because they are designed to circulate cooling fluids without the help of pumps (it was the loss of power to water pumps that caused three of the Fukushima plant’s reactors to fail).

But Lyman thinks it is risky to rely on potentially unpredictable passive cooling without the backup of an active cooling option. And as reactors become get smaller, they become less efficient. Another start-up company, NuScale Power, based in Portland, Oregon, originally designed its small modular reactor — which was certified by the NRC — to produce 50 MW of electricity, but later switched to a larger, 77-MW design. The need to make the economics work “makes passive safety less credible”, Lyman says.

Do small modular reactors carry extra risks?

In some cases, small modular reactors “could actually push nuclear power in a more dangerous direction”, says Lyman. “Advanced isn’t always better.”


In particular, Lyman points out that the pebble-bed designs drawn up by X-energy and Kairos would rely on high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), which comprises 10–20% uranium-235 — compared with the 5% enrichment level required by most existing reactors (and by NuScale’s reactor). HALEU is still classified as low-enrichment fuel (as opposed to the highly enriched uranium used to make nuclear bombs), but that distinction is misleading, Lyman says. In June, he and his collaborators — including physicist Richard Garwin, who led the design of the first hydrogen bomb — warned in a Science article that a bomb could be built with a few hundred kilograms of HALEU, with no need for further enrichment1.

Smaller reactors are also likely to produce more nuclear waste and to use fuel less efficiently, according to work reported in 2022 by Macfarlane and her collaborators2. In a full-size reactor, most of the neutrons produced by the splitting of uranium travel through a large volume of fuel, meaning that they have a high probability of hitting another nucleus, rather than colliding with the walls of the reactor vessel or escaping into the surrounding building. “When you shrink the reactor, there’s less material in there, so you will have more neutron leakage,” Macfarlane says. These rogue neutrons can be absorbed by other atomic nuclei — which would then themselves become radioactive.

Will small reactors be cheaper to build?

The capacity to build components in an assembly line could drastically cut reactors’ construction costs. But there are also intrinsic economies of scale in building larger reactors, says Buongiorno. “Don’t believe people blindly” when they say smaller reactors will produce cheaper energy, he says: nuclear energy has a lot going for it, but “it ain’t cheap” — and that is unlikely to change significantly.

Will all of these efforts help to combat climate change?

…………….. whether building new reactors is the best way to rapidly cut emissions is debated. Macfarlane points out that solar panels and wind turbines can be deployed at a much faster rate.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03490-3

October 28, 2024 Posted by | energy storage, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

How data centres will cut carbon emissions, not increase them

It should be noted that low carbon waste heat from electricity is increasingly renewable in source and this will substitute for natural gas consumption. As a result, carbon emmisions will be lowered.

Hence not only can data centres reduce energy consumption overall by the indirect effects described above, it can also reduce them directly by substituting the low carbon waste heat for natural gas consumption that is normally used for heating

David Toke, Oct 23, 2024
https://davidtoke.substack.com/p/how-data-centres-will-cut-carbon


Yes, you read that headline the right way. Despite the torrents of nonsense you will hear from lots of places (and a lot of energy nonsense these days seems to be concentrated in the Daily Telegraph) data centres and that fellow monster AI is unlikely to bust the electricity grid. Indeed, it is, on balance, more likely to reduce total energy demand.

Nevertheless, lurid tales of the data centre/AI monster devouring power have been spreading, and, they have even been linked to companies such as Meta, Amazon and Amazon issuing press releases about how they are going to source power from another monster, new nuclear power plants. However, as in horror stories in general, these monsters are, at least in almost all cases, entirely mythical.

As a point of fact, despite the seemingly rapidly rising number of data centres in the USA electricity demand in the first half of 2024 was the same as it was two years previously. The UK’s electricity demand has been on a downward path for some time. The International Energy Agency has recently published an analysis saying that data centres will be a small proportion of future growth energy demand (see HERE). Now, there is a very strong case for saying that electricity demand will increase to a greater or lesser extent. However, it rests on increased electrification of transport (starting with Electric Vehicles) and also heat pumps. But I don’t suppose many Daily Telegraph readers are very interested in that.


In the USA lots of data centres are being built in Texas. In the UK London is the biggest hub, housing over 40 per cent of the data centres sited in the UK. Not many people seem to realise that they will not consume gigantic amount of power. Even fewer people know that the alleged super-monstrous AI (which is said to ravenously consume this data centre energy) may, in fact, actually reduce energy demand in various indirect ways.


In fact AI and data centres that feed AI are likely to generate economic growth in service industries – business applications – that have a low energy intensity. GDP is likely therefore to become less energy intensive, replacing output that would otherwise be more energy intensive. Moreover the energy usage of these less energy- intensive applications will be itself reduced through better energy management organised through AI. Goldman-Sachs (see here) estimates that AI will see ‘the economy benefiting, from enhancing office productivity and sales efforts, to the design of buildings and manufactured parts, to improving patient diagnosis in healthcare settings,’ etc This means that as the efficient use of energy in the economy increases faster than the demand for energy services, then energy usage will decline, not increase. AI processing centres will themselves reduce the power they use as they take advantage of new tools that are becoming available to reduce power consumption. See HERE.

One way in which energy efficiency is going to be increased is directly as a result of the application of AI itself to improve the way that energy is managed, especially in buildings. Andrew Warren, the Chair of the British Energy Efficient Federation (BEEF), says in the October issue of the Energy In Buildings Newsletter ‘According to management consultants McKinsey, AI has the potential to deliver energy savings of up to 20% in buildings and 15% in transport systems. Additionally, AI-driven solutions can help businesses reduce CO₂ emissions by up to 10% and cut energy costs by 10-20% – particularly so in the field of industrial energy management.’

The overall effect of AI-driven increases in data centre consumption is visualised using the chart below. The demand for energy servicesA (green line) represents increasing energy demand under conditions of earlier industrial periods, whilst the demand for energy servicesB (orange line) represents the demand for energy services under a AI influenced services dominated economy. As can be seen also the green line represents the trend towards energy efficiency improvements that occurs as the economy refines its equipment, buildings, plant etc to use energy more efficiently. The orange line represents the increase for energy services in a AI influenced services economy. The key point is that it grows at a slower rate than overall energy efficiency improvements. This leads to a decline in energy consumption overall.

Of course this chart [on original] assumes that the energy economy is structured as before in its energy supply technologies. Of course energy will be increasingly supplied by electricity technologies. This chart ignores this effect, but is constructed so that we can focus on the effects of AI and data centre.

On top of all of this there are opportunities for data centres to sell otherwise waste heat to neighbouring businesses and housing estates in district heating systems. Indeed, it was reported last year that ‘The UK Government has awarded £36 million ($44.5m) to a district heating system in West London which will share data center waste heat with up to 10,000 new homes’. This development is taking place in Ealing.

We should make this the norm rather than the exception with data centres. We should take a leaf from German practice. Under the German Energy Efficiency Act (approved in 2023) data centres are required to re-use an increasing amount of waste heat – at least 20 per cent for those data centres which come into operation from 2028. It should be noted that low carbon waste heat from electricity is increasingly renewable in source and this will substitute for natural gas consumption. As a result, carbon emmisions will be lowered. Hence not only can data centres reduce energy consumption overall by the indirect effects described above, it can also reduce them directly by substituting the low carbon waste heat for natural gas consumption that is normally used for heating.

The reaction in some circles to the (it seems) mythical monster of the threatening data centres and AI becomes all the more stranger when it comes to nuclear power’s role in the story. Mythical nuclear power stations (that is ones that are unlikely to be built) are hypothesised as the answer to this (non-) problem. US companies such as Google, Amazon and Meta have been sounding their support for new nuclear power. In fact their support seems to consist of usually of vague announcements of future support. You would think of course, that if more electricity is needed, then we need to issue more contracts for renewable energy. This is especially as nuclear power plant seem very difficult to organise. However, such thoughts do not feature strongly in the minds of many Daily Telegraph readers.

The only definite support new nuclear power is actually getting in the wake of the imaginary AI monster seems to come from Amazon who has pledged $500 million towards a 300 MW small modular reactor (maybe the sort of offering that can please Trump supporters). Quite how a smaller type of nuclear reactor is going to deliver much of an increase in power supplies compared to the booming construction of wind and solar plant does not seem to compute with the Trumpists either. But it falls in with the ever-mythical notion that cheap nuclear power is (again) just around the corner story that we have heard for so many decades. What’s changed now? Really, not very much in fact – but the mixture of monster AI power demands and nuclear power coming to the rescue is really like something out of a 1950s science fiction story. And that’s all it is likely to remain.

October 24, 2024 Posted by | ENERGY | Leave a comment

Small nuclear reactors won’t be ready in time for the needs of energy-guzzling needs of Artificial Intelligence.

As of last month, when [data centres] were classed as critical national
infrastructure, data centres are on a par with utilities, meaning the
government would step in were there a risk to connectivity. Nonetheless, as
Rohan Kelkar, the executive vice-president of power products at Schneider
Electric, puts it, the “lack of grid capacity puts UK’s AI and data
centre ambitions and energy transition goals at risk”.

So much so that we have seen the boroughs of Hillingdon, Ealing and Hounslow all rejecting
data centre projects in order to retain supply for housing. This is far
from a UK-specific issue. In Ireland, the pressure on the national grid
from computing needs is so acute they have had to pause some data centre
approvals over concerns that excessive demand from data centres could lead
to blackouts.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Big Tech companies are
also grappling with the energy conundrum: how to find low-carbon, reliable
sources of power for their power-hungry warehouses without jeopardising
customer needs or their net zero goals. Along with renewable energy and
improving battery storage, right now they all seem to be turning in one
direction: towards nuclear power. Microsoft signed a deal last month to
help resurrect a unit of the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania.
Amazon bought a nuclear-powered data centre earlier in the year. On Monday,
Google became the latest to announce a nuclear energy deal to meet the
needs of its data centres, looking at mini reactors developed by a
Californian company.

A cocktail of technological innovation means this
could happen in the UK, too. Rolls-Royce, the engineer, is at the forefront
of developing mini reactors and is already having conversations with
operators in the UK about their use. While mini nukes would not have been
commercially viable in the past, now that demand for data centres has
jumped exponentially, their potential use has become more feasible. Another
key component in the future marriage of computing and nuclear power is that
data centres are becoming less location driven because of improvements in
latency, the time it takes for data to travel from one point to another.


The immediate problem with the introduction of small nuclear reactors?
Rolls-Royce estimates that they remain a decade or more away, with none
currently operating and generating electricity in the UK. In the meantime,
connection to the “constrained” grid, remains all-important headache
for those looking to build data centres.

 Times 16th Oct 2024

https://www.thetimes.com/business-money/technology/article/nuclear-powered-data-centres-looking-to-become-cost-effective-qpgskj8xv

October 18, 2024 Posted by | ENERGY, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, UK | Leave a comment

Open AI Wants to Build Data Centres That Would Consume More Electricity Per Year Than the Whole of the U.K.

The Daily Sceptic, by David Turver, 14 October 2024

Over the past few months, the newswires have been hot with stories about the large-scale data centres that will be required to meet the needs of the forthcoming revolution in Artificial Intelligence (AI). How much electricity will these new data centres consume and what does that mean for the electricity demand forecasts underpinning the plans for Net Zero?

Recent Date Centre Announcements.

To give a flavour of the scale of data centre developments that are coming, it is helpful to look at recent announcements from large tech companies. Back in March, it was announced that Amazon had bought a 960MW data centre that is powered by an adjacent nuclear power station. In April, Mark Zuckerberg CEO of Meta that owns Facebook and Instagram said energy requirements may hold back the build out of AI data centres. He also talked about building data centres that would consume 1GW of power.

Last month, Oracle chairman Larry Ellison announced that Oracle was designing a data centre that would consume more than 1GW that would be powered by three small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). Then Microsoft also got in on the act when it announced it had done a deal with U.S. utility Constellation to restart the 835MW Three Mile Island (TMI) Unit 1 nuclear power plant to power its data centres. Anxious not to be left out, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google said they too were working on 1GW data centres and saw money being invested in SMRs.

Finally, Sam Altman of OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT has trumped them all by pitching the idea of 5GW data centres to the White House. Altman has been heard talking of building five to seven of these leviathans…………………….

Scale of AI Energy Demand

When companies bandy about such large numbers it is sometimes difficult to visualise just how big they are. For context, consider that a 1GW data centre would consume 8.76TWh of electricity each year. Seven of Altman’s enormous 5GW data centres would consume 306.6TWh. According to DUKES data (Table 5.6) the UK generated 292.6TWh in 2023. The plans for ChatGPT alone would consume more electricity in a year than the U.K., the sixth largest economy in the world, managed to generate. Now consider what the total demand is going to be when you add in the requirements the likes of Amazon, Oracle, Microsoft, Meta, Google and X…………………………………………..

October 17, 2024 Posted by | ENERGY, technology | Leave a comment

Nuclear – not the way ahead

12 Oct 24 https://renewextraweekly.blogspot.com/2024/10/nuclear-not-way-ahead.html

Renewable energies consistently outperform nuclear power in terms of cost and deployment speed and are therefore chosen over nuclear power in most countries’ – so says this years independent World Nuclear Industry status report (WNISR). It notes that in 2023, 5 new nuclear reactors (5 GW) started up and 5 were closed (6 GW), capacity thus declining by 1 GW. So overall it says that nuclear energy’s share of global commercial gross electricity generation declined from 9.2 % to 9.1%, little more than half of its peak of 17.5 % in 1996. In 2023, total investment in non-hydro renewable electricity capacity reached a record US$623 billion, 27 times the reported global investment decisions for the construction of nuclear power plants, with solar and wind power capacities growing by 73% and 51%, respectively.

Nevertheless, some countries are still pushing on with new nuclear, despite its poor economics, including the UK and Sweden. Sweden has mooted a new financing model but its critics say support for nuclear ‘is like throwing money down the drain’ since ‘the expansion of solar energy will make nuclear power obsolete and push it out of the electricity market by the 2030s’. In the UK, and also in France,  it has been argued that part of the reason for the political commitment to new nuclear is link between civil and military nuclear, with cross-funding and technical collaboration seen as beneficial.

However, be that as it may, Emeritus Profs. Stephen Thomas (University of Greenwich) and Andrew Blowers (OU) do not see nuclear civil power prospering in the UK, indeed they say that ‘it is time to expose the Great British nuclear fantasy once and for all.’ They claim that ‘no amount of political commitment can overcome the lack of investors, the absence of credible builders and operators or available technologies let alone secure regulatory assessment and approval. Moreover, in an era of climate change there will be few potentially suitable sites to host new nuclear power stations for indefinite, indeed unknowable, operating, decommissioning and waste management lifetimes. And there are the anxieties and fears that nuclear foments, the danger of accidents and proliferation and the environmental and public health issues arising from the legacy of radioactive waste scattered on sites around the country’.   

They go on to suggest backing off new nuclear projects. They do recognise that ‘abandoning Sizewell C and the SMR competition will lead to howls of anguish from interest groups such as the nuclear industry and trade unions with a strong presence in the sector. It will also require compensation payments to be made to organisations affected. However, the scale of these payments will be tiny in comparison with the cost of not abandoning them’. 

Certainly the cost of construction is vast- and expanding. The EPR being built by EDF  at Hinkley Point may in the event cost £35bn, with there’s still being a way to go- 2030 for unit 1 start up, maybe 2031 for Unit 2. And as industry commentators have noted ‘as the cost of Hinkley Point has increased, the backers have had to provide more funding. The souring of relations between Britain & China saw CGN stop providing any more money, leaving EDF to fund the shortfall. EDF has called upon the UK government to help out with the escalating cost but it has refused. EDF was fully nationalised in 2023, leaving the French taxpayer to pick up the tab for the cost overruns’. 

UK consumers will of course pay the high cost of the power when it comes on the grid. They will also be expected to shell out for the next EPR that is planned in the UK, at Sizewell, but this time in advanced of completion, under the RAB financing system. However, although the government has provided £5.5bn to move things along, the final (private) investment decision on Sizewell C keeps being delayed. EDF aimed to secure funding by the end 2024, but that may now be extended to 2025 – and EDF is still looking for £4bn to finish Hinkley Point!

All in all, with EDF’s finances in a mess, and few other companies keen to take risks with this technology, it looks a bit uncertain. Even the UK government seems to be having doubts, with plans for a new large project on Wylfa in Wales may be subject to a review.  Proposals are currently being considered for small modular reactors under a UK SMR competition, but the US NuScale PWR has just been eliminated from the race. It was once seen as the leader, but it had lost a US order. EDF had earlier dropped out. So that leaves Rolls-Royce, GE-Hitachi, Westinghouse, and Holtec Britain, with the newly formed agency, Great British Nuclear, expected to announce 2 winners later this year or early next year. Up to £20bn is at stake. However few see any power being available anywhere from SMRs until the early or mid 2030s. Despite a lot of hype, in reality it has been slow going. And there are risks. 

Overall then, the prospects for new nuclear in the UK, or indeed elsewhere, do not look too good. Even in China, renewables are expanding very much faster, with according to the WNISR/IRENA, at the end of 2023, there being over 1000GW of wind and solar and around 421GW of hydro in place, compared to just 53GW of nuclear. Given the scale and rate of deployment, and the costs, it’s pretty clear which should be the way forward in terms of energy supply there and everywhere else. 

Nuclear fission may have a small role to play in some isolated locations and in some applications, and fusion may be viable at commercial scale at some stage, but we have to be aware of hype and overselling in this area, and also in the wider nuclear debate, with nuclear sometimes being sold as the answer to climate change.  It’s not. As I have indicated in earlier posts, there is no shortage of studies from around the world confirming the view that nuclear is a costly and risky distraction from renewables, which are the main energy supply solutions to climate change. And Germany has shown how the exit from nuclear can be done, led by renewables. Although they do have some issues in terms of balancing, renewables, along with energy efficiency, demand management and storage, are the way ahead to an economically viable and sustainable energy future.

October 16, 2024 Posted by | renewable, UK | Leave a comment

Renewable Energy Surge Lowers UK Blackout Risk

The risk of blackouts in the winter months in the U.K. has fallen to its lowest in four years thanks to the rise of the country’s renewable energy capacity.

To ensure a steady supply of electricity to households, Neso will encourage consumers to reduce their energy use during peak times by offering financial incentives through its demand flexibility scheme.  

By Felicity Bradstock – Oct 12, 2024
https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Renewable-Energy/Renewable-Energy-Surge-Lowers-UK-Blackout-Risk.html

  • The UK has significantly reduced its blackout risk by increasing renewable energy capacity and diversifying its energy sources.
  • The closure of the UK’s last coal-fired power plant marks a major milestone in the country’s transition to clean energy.
  • The government is actively encouraging energy conservation during peak times to further enhance grid stability.

The U.K. has been gradually boosting its energy security by increasing its renewable energy capacity while continuing to produce natural gas. It has done this while also moving away from the ‘dirtiest’ fossil fuel, coal. The diversification of the U.K.’s energy mix is helping the island country to develop its resilience and help it accelerate the green transition. Now, the government must ensure that the country’s transmission infrastructure is prepared for an influx of new clean energy projects in the coming years, and can reliably deliver clean energy to tens of millions of households across the U.K. 

The risk of blackouts in the winter months in the U.K. has fallen to its lowest in four years thanks to the rise of the country’s renewable energy capacity. The National Energy System Operator predicts that the U.K.’s winter power supplies will outpace demand by nearly 9 percent this year. Neso is the new company in charge of keeping the lights on, which was bought by the government in September from National Grid for $825.5 million. The boost in the power supply margin is supported by the recent deployment of large-scale battery storage projects, small-scale renewables and imported electricity, according to Neso. 

As well as producing greater quantities of clean energy at home, the U.K. has also begun importing renewable energy from Denmark through the world’s longest high-voltage power cable – the Viking power link. This cable now provides clean electricity for around 2.5 million U.K. homes, showing the significant potential for clean power sharing across countries. 

The optimistic forecast comes in spite of the closure last month of the U.K.’s last coal­-fired power plant. At the beginning of the year, the Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal plant was used to provide 2.3 percent of the country’s electricity supply during a period of cold weather. Britain kept its coal facilities on standby following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and subsequent sanctions on Russian energy, mainly natural gas, to ensure there would be power even in the face of severe gas shortages. However, there will be no such backup this year, and, according to Neso, no such need for a backup. 

Gas reserves across Europe have been restored to around 95 percent full. The U.K. is no longer dependent on Russia for its gas, having doubled down on its long-standing relationship with Norway for its LNG supply. Britain will now import gas via Norwegian pipelines and tanker from the U.S. and Qatar during the winter months to use in its power plants, factories and residential buildings. To ensure a steady supply of electricity to households, Neso will encourage consumers to reduce their energy use during peak times by offering financial incentives through its demand flexibility scheme. 

The U.K. was finally able to close its last coal-fired power plant in September, a target which was stated during the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in 2021, after 142 years of reliance on coal. The U.K. was the birthplace of coal power, and it is the first G7 country to end coal production. The rapid transition away from a dependence on coal is impressive given that coal contributed 39 percent of the U.K.’s power in 2012. The U.K. established its first legally binding climate targets in 2008, which supported the phasing out of coal. In 2015, the then-energy and climate change secretary, Amber Rudd, stated that the country would stop using coal within the next decade. This has been made possible by the rapid expansion of the U.K.’s renewable energy capacity, with green energy rising to contribute over half of the country’s power in the first half of 2024, from just 7 percent in 2010. 

Most of the U.K.’s electricity came from renewable energy sources for the first time in 2020, at around 43 percent. The green energy mix consists mainly of wind, solar, bioenergy and hydroelectric sources. In 2023, wind power contributed 29.4 percent of the U.K.’s total electricity generation, biomass contributed 5 percent, solar power accounted for 4.9 percent and hydropower added 1.8 percent of the mix. While the U.K. is currently depending on a mix of homegrown green and fossil fuel energy, as well as imports of energy from renewables and natural gas, the government plans to dramatically increase its renewable energy capacity by the end of the decade to solidify the country’s energy security. This includes increasing offshore wind output to 50 GW and solar capacity to 70 GW, as well as developing new nuclear plants.

Investing in the diversification of the U.K.’s energy mix has helped the country boost its energy security, as well as move away from a heavy reliance on fossil fuels. As the U.K. undergoes a green transition, the government is working in collaboration with utilities and regulators to ensure that the country does not face shortages, particularly in the winter months. This is further supported by strong energy agreements with other countries in Europe, North America and the Middle East, which will help to alleviate the burden of instability associated with renewable energy sources.  

October 15, 2024 Posted by | renewable, UK | Leave a comment

Japan PM Ishiba eyes more renewables, less nuclear in energy mix

New leader plans stimulus package for ‘structural transformation of the economy’

 Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Saturday stressed Japan’s potential to
develop renewable energy sources and vowed to raise their share in the
country’s overall power supply, indicating he will prioritize
decarbonization as his government prepares an economic stimulus plan.

“Japan has large untapped potential for renewable energy development,
including geothermal, wind and small-scale hydroelectric power,” Ishiba
said in an interview with Nikkei Asia.

 Nikkei Asia 12th Oct 2024 https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/Interview/Japan-PM-Ishiba-eyes-more-renewables-less-nuclear-in-energy-mix

October 15, 2024 Posted by | Japan, renewable | Leave a comment

Renewables based systems are reducing blackouts in UK and USA!

David Toke, Oct 11, 2024, https://davidtoke.substack.com/p/renewables-based-systems-are-reducing

The truth is gradually emerging that far from threatening electricity systems with blackouts, renewable energy-based systems are preventing them for occurring! This has a lot to do with the fact that the installation of batteries to deal with renewable output variability has the side-effect of improving grid resilience. Solar power is also reducing possibilities for blackouts in hot places.

Batteries stopped widespread blackouts just three days ago, on October 8th in the UK, when, the UK-Norwegian electricity interconnector suddenly crashed leading to a loss of 1.4 GW of power. Without rapid action, frequency levels would have fallen leading to widespread blackouts as the system tried to preserve grid stability. But 1.5 GW of batteries rapidly clicked into service saving the day (see HERE). Of course the build-up of batteries in the UK is only happening because of the growth of renewable energy!

Similar stories of how blackouts are being averted are coming from other places with growing renewables penetration, including Texas and California in the USA. In both cases, earlier blackouts were caused by conventional power system problems, but widely blamed on renewables by anti-renewables lobbies. But now as renewables, and battery systems, proliferate further, blackout rates are actually being reduced.

Speaking about the October 8th UK incident, Roger Hollies from the ARENCO Group, who originally posted about the outage response on linkedin (HERE) commented: ‘It’s exciting to see batteries casually keeping the lights on whilst delivering diversity of activity to maximise revenue. I count 9 markets and services being participated in by these 12 batteries during this 50 min window alone! This complexity is only going to continue with Quick Reserve coming online later this year, local markets expanding, more renewables coming online and we STILL are not using the +/-3Gvar of reactive power the installed BESS fleet can supply!’

In California, the number of blackouts has been dramatically reduced over the last couple of years. ‘Batteries were the biggest reason California didn’t see the power go out’ says Benjamin Storrow (see HERE). There has been a very big increase in battery installation in California. This has been driven partly by a State-led investment programme. In addition, the increase in battery capacity follows on from the new opportunities in spreading production from the increasing quantity of solar panels over longer periods of the day.

Texas has been saved from a summer power blow-out by a combination of solar pv and batteries. Climate-change inspired hotter summers have put a strain on the Texas grid to cope with the rising demands for air conditioning to meet the summer heat spikes. Once again, solar pv and batteries have come to the state’s rescue. See HERE.

Of course a lot of work still needs to be adapt the electricity from its traditional centralised dispatch mode to a decentralised way of operation. These include incentivising longer duration batteries, something encouraged by a ‘cap and floor’ incentive system for batteries announced by the Government today. See HERE. Initiatives to replace the inertial load system provided by traditional centralised power plant with new inertial sources needed to support variable renewable energy are also in play, for instance promoted by Statkraft’s Guy Nicolson HERE.

Acknowledgement to Dave Andrews from the Claverton Group for the alert on the Norway link tripping event.

October 14, 2024 Posted by | renewable, UK, USA | Leave a comment

China to head green energy boom with 60% of new projects in next six years

China is expected to account for almost 60% of all renewable energy
capacity installed worldwide between now and 2030, according to the
International Energy Agency. The IEA’s highly influential renewable energy
report found that over the next six years renewable energy projects will
roll out at three times the pace of the previous six years, led by the
clean energy programmes of China and India.

It found that the world’s
renewable energy capacity is on course to outpace the 2030 goals set by
governments to roughly equal the power systems in China, the EU, India and
the US combined. Fatih Birol, the executive director of the IEA, said:
“If I could sum this [trend] up in two words they would be: China,
solar.”

Guardian 9th Oct 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/09/china-to-head-green-energy-boom-with-60-of-new-projects-in-next-six-years

October 12, 2024 Posted by | China, renewable | Leave a comment

Ukrainian energy minister censured over response to power grid attacks

Ahead of Ukraine’s third and most testing winter of the war, criticism
is mounting over the government’s slow response to Russia’s attacks on
the energy grid and its priorities when rebuilding.

Energy minister German
Galushchenko has come under fire for delaying by two years efforts to
decentralise power generation so it is less vulnerable to Russian attacks.
The energy ministry started taking steps towards building smaller power
stations only this summer, with the government announcing cheap loans to
attract investors in these projects. But critics say those efforts should
have started in 2022 soon after Russia’s full-scale invasion when Moscow
homed in on Ukraine’s energy grid and that hundreds of smaller
gas-powered stations or renewable energy projects could have been built in
this period.

“The energy ministry is not interested in decentralisation.
Rather, they are interested in centralisation, they want as much of energy
sector, particularly generation, under their state companies,” said an
energy official.

Galushchenko, say experts and officials, has instead
lobbied for the construction of large and costly nuclear reactors, which
take between seven to 10 years to build. Before becoming minister in 2021,
Galushchenko was vice-president of the state nuclear company, Energoatom.

 FT 30th Sept 2024. https://www.ft.com/content/69b56215-c373-45a6-b52e-c1ab403565d5

October 3, 2024 Posted by | ENERGY, Ukraine | Leave a comment

South Australia sets spectacular new records for wind, solar and negative demand

Giles Parkinson, Sep 30, 2024, https://reneweconomy.com.au/south-australia-sets-spectacular-new-records-for-wind-solar-and-negative-demand/

Records continue to tumble across Australia’s main grids as the spring weather boosts the output of wind and solar and mild weather moderates demand, but none are as spectacular as those being set in South Australia.

The state’s unique end-of-the-line grid already leads the country, and arguably the globe, in the integration of variable wind and solar, with an average of more than 70 per cent of its demand over the last year and a world-first target of 100 per cent net renewables by 2027.

On Sunday, at 9.35 am, the state set a new milestone, setting a new record share of wind and solar (as a percentage of state electricity demand) of 150.7 per cent, beating a record set on Christmas Day last year, when – for obvious reasons – there was little electricity demand.

As Geoff Eldridge, from GPE NEMLog, notes, this means that the rooftop PV, along with large scale wind and solar farms, were generating 50.7 per cent more power than the state’s total electricity demand at the time.

The scale of excess output was further crystallised later in the day with a new minimum record for instantaneous residual demand, which hit minus 927 megawatts at 12.35pm.

Eldridge says residual demand is what’s left for other generators to supply after wind and solar have met a share of the demand. A negative residual demand means wind and solar were producing more electricity than SA needed, resulting in excess renewable generation which can be managed by exporting and battery charging. The remainder is curtailed.

Of the surplus 927 MW, the state was exporting 685 MW to Victoria, while another 163 MW was being soaked up by the state’s growing fleet of battery storage projects, and 730 MW of output was curtailed. Prices at the time were minus $47/MWh, a good opportunity for batteries to charge.

A further 84 MW was being produced by a couple of gas generators – not because their power output was needed, but because the state, at least for the moment, relies on them for essential grid services such as system strength and fault current.

That will be reduced considerably when the new link to NSW is completed in a few years, and it will allow the state to both export more, and import more when needs be.

“Balancing the system with such high renewable penetration is challenging but necessary as the energy transition progresses,” Eldridge says. “Managing excess generation through exports, storage, and curtailment is critical to keeping the grid stable and efficient.”

It wasn’t the only record to fall over the weekend. In Queensland, the country’s most coal dependent state in terms of annual share of demand and generation, large scale solar hit a record share of 34 per cent, and coal output – in megawatt terms – hit a record low of 2,882 MW.

The Queensland coal fleet capacity is more than 8,000 MW, so that is about as low as it can run until more units are closed down.

In Victoria on Saturday, just before the AFL grand final, rooftop solar also hit a new record output of 3,164 MW – although it did not push operational demand down low enough for the market operator to enact Minimum System Load protocols and possibly switch off some rooftop solar panels to maintain grid stability.

It had flagged a potential MSL event on Friday but cancelled it in the morning. Those events will likely occur at other times in spring and over the summer holidays, although the market operator is now working on new rules for big batteries to avoid a potentially unpopular and unwieldy solar switch off.

October 1, 2024 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, renewable | Leave a comment

Chart: Solar power keeps beating expectations

Energy forecasters have long underestimated the speed at which solar power is growing around the world. It’s not the first time that’s happened. [charts on original]

By Carrie Klein, 27 September 2024, https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/chart-solar-power-keeps-beating-expectations

Canary Media’s chart of the week translates crucial data about the clean energy transition into a visual format. Canary thanks Clean Energy Counsel for its support of the column.

Solar is becoming predictable in its unpredictability — time and time again, experts have underestimated how much the clean energy source will grow globally. This year is no different.

The price of panels has continued to plummet and their efficiency keeps rising, while deadlines for meeting climate laws creep closer. The result? The world is installing more solar than ever before — at a pace that even many top energy analysts didn’t see coming, according to a new analysis by think tank Ember.

So far this year, 29 percent more solar has been installed than was at this point last year, per Ember. By the end of 2024, Ember says the world will be on track to reach 593 gigawatts of solar installations — 200 GW more than the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicted at the start of the year. That’s a significant underestimate: Those extra gigawatts alone represent more solar than the entire world built in 2021.

This year’s record-breaking solar installations follow another peak year in 2023, when installations grew by 86 percent over 2022.

Five countries account for the majority of solar additions: China takes the top spot, followed by the United States, India, Germany, and Brazil. In the U.S., utility-scale solar is driving the industry’s growth. Policy changes in India have helped encourage solar; this year, the country has already installed more solar panels than it did in all of 2023. In Germany, small-scale solar has grown thanks to lower panel costs and incentives for rooftop solar. Solar is also taking off in new markets, particularly distributed solar in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.


Cost is the main factor driving solar’s always-faster-than-expected ascension, says Kingsmill Bond, senior principal on the strategy team at RMI. As solar has become cheaper, it’s ​“not entirely surprising” that solar installations have spiked, Bond said.

“When technologies get cheap enough, they are like water flowing down a mountain. You don’t know exactly how the water will find a way down the mountain, but you know that it will find a way,” he said.

The solar industry’s success is putting the world’s climate pledges within reach. Annual solar installations will now have to show only ​“relatively modest levels of growth” to meet global goals, the Ember report notes. Recent BloombergNEF (BNEF) data sees a slight shortfall on the current trajectory but says 2030 goals are still entirely feasible.

Getting there, of course, won’t be simple. ​“Every single solar panel needs someone to put it up and needs planning permission in many countries,” Bond said. ​“Change is not easy, but it is nevertheless inexorable and driven by the internal logic of what happens when you get really cheap technologies available to 8,000 million people.”

Clean Energy Counsel is the only mission-driven law firm exclusively focused on renewable energy and clean technologies. From early-stage venture investment, offtake, site control, equipment supply, and EPC contracting, through project acquisitions, debt, and tax equity, we counsel clients through every stage of the project life cycle. Visit our website to explore how we can work together toward a sustainable future.

September 30, 2024 Posted by | renewable | Leave a comment

US nuclear plants won’t power up Big Tech’s AI ambitions right away

Reuters, By Laila Kearney and Timothy Gardner, September 25, 2024

 A plan by Microsoft, opens new tab to use the restart of a Three Mile
Island nuclear reactor to help power its expanding data centers reflects
the tech industry’s hopes nuclear energy can be a quick and
[?] climate-friendly answer to its massive electricity needs.

But it will be tough to swiftly meet soaring power demand from the data centers behind
artificial intelligence with new or resurrected nuclear reactors, as
companies will face high regulatory hurdles, potential fuel supply
obstacles, and sometimes stiff local and environmental opposition.

U.S. data center power use is expected to roughly triple between 2023 and 2030
and will require about 47 gigawatts of new generation capacity, according
to Goldman Sachs estimates, which assumed natural gas, wind and solar would
fill the gap.

Climate conscious investors and regulators are keen to ensure
this spike does not trigger a huge rise in greenhouse gas emissions. In
general, simply purchasing power from nuclear plants to run data centers
just means diverting it away from other consumers, creating competition for
supplies on the grid that could potentially drive up power bills.

In the meantime, the Three Mile Island project is posing a major test of public
appetite for expanded nuclear power. Talabi said four years is likely
enough for Constellation to address any technical issues at Three Mile
Island, which could be substantial when sensitive components such as steam
generators and reactor vessels have been closed for years.

 Reuters 24th Sept 2024, https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/us-nuclear-plants-wont-power-up-big-techs-ai-ambitions-right-away-2024-09-24/

September 26, 2024 Posted by | ENERGY | Leave a comment

Microsoft’s Three Mile Island deal: How big tech is snatching up nuclear power

The company paid for access to all the power made by the previously defunct nuclear plant

By Theara Coleman, The Week US,  24 September 2024

With artificial intelligence putting a damper on its clean energy goals, Microsoft is turning to nuclear power in a first-of-its-kind exclusive deal with a nuclear plant. The massive amount of energy needed to power artificial intelligence has contributed to a resurgence of interest in nuclear power, a turn for an industry on its way out over the last decade. But with Big Tech closing in on nuclear plants, some wonder what will be left for everyone else.

The symbolism of the deal

Three Mile Island, the dormant Pennsylvania nuclear plant at the center of the Microsoft deal, became “shorthand for the risks posed by nuclear energy after one of the plant’s two reactors partly melted down in 1979,” said The New York Times. The other reactor operated safely for years before ultimately closing down for economic reasons five years ago. With the Microsoft deal, a “revival is at hand.” Because of artificial intelligence, the tech giant needs massive amounts of electricity for its growing number of data centers, and the company has agreed to use as much power as possible from the plant over the next 20 years. The plant’s owner, Constellation Energy, promises to spend $1.6 billion refurbishing the reactor, hoping to restart it by 2028 with regulatory approval. The deal marks the first time “Microsoft has secured a dedicated, 100% nuclear facility for its use,” the Times said.

“The symbolism is enormous,” Joseph Dominguez, the chief executive of Constellation, said to the Times. Even though Three Mile Island “was the site of the industry’s greatest failure,” it can now be a “place of rebirth.”…………………………………………………………….

Unfortunately, tech’s bullish approach to securing nuclear power has some experts worried there will not be enough to go around. The owners of nearly a third of the country’s nuclear power plants were in talks with tech companies to meet the demands of the AI boom, The Wall Street Journal said. These deliberations could potentially “remove stable power generation from the grid while reliability concerns are rising across much of the U.S,” and the electricity demand is driven up by new tech like AI, the outlet said. Instead of helping to add new green energy solutions to meet their “soaring power needs,” tech companies would be “effectively diverting existing electricity resources.” That could raise prices for other customers and “hold back emission-cutting goals,” said the Journal.

Amazon Web Services closed a similar deal earlier this year, acquiring a data center campus connected to Talen Energy Corp.’s nuclear power plant on the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania for $650 million. The arrangement raised concerns among clean energy advocates and regulators, specifically the the state’s consumer advocate, Patrick Cicero, who said he was worried about cost and reliability if big companies snatch up all the plants. “Never before could anyone say to a nuclear-power plant, we’ll take all the energy you can give us,” Cicero said to the Journal.
https://theweek.com/tech/microsoft-three-mile-island-nuclear-power-big-tech

September 25, 2024 Posted by | ENERGY, USA | Leave a comment

Record solar boom

The world is on track to install a record-breaking 593 gigawatts (GW) of
new solar capacity in 2024, according to analysis by thinktank Ember. This
would be up 29% on 2023 levels and nearly six times the amount added just
five years ago. In addition to established leaders, such as China, Europe
and the US, Ember said there was strong growth in new markets, such as
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, in 2024. It added that solar growth continues to
outpace many forecasts for the industry, “put[ting] ambitious climate
pledges within reach”.

Carbon Brief 20th Sept 2024

DeBriefed 20 September 2024: Europe’s worst storm for ‘two decades’; Record solar boom; How China talks about its energy transition

September 24, 2024 Posted by | renewable | Leave a comment

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