It's hot in Ontario. Demand is projected to hit 21,883MW and our 5,000MW wind fleet is producing 6MW. Wind isn't saving anything. Meanwhile, our nuclear fleet is producing 10,106MW, the largest single source, gas is 2nd at 5,442MW.
Ontario built four nuclear plants (Pickering A, Bruce A, Pickering B, Bruce B) with an average time from shovel to breaker of 6.25 years, representing 10,564MW of capacity, capable of producing 83.3TWh year; 6.9TWh/month at 90% CF.
During the winter months, the capacity factor of solar in Ontario can be below 4%. It was 3.85% in January of this year for example.
To generate 6.9TWh using solar in January, you'd need 242,304MW of capacity plus 14+hrs of battery storage; 133,000MWh+ of storage.
Firstly, this is not fitting right next to users. Nanticoke solar is 8.86 acres per MW, so that's 2.15 million acres using ground mount (8,700 square kilometres), which is larger than Algonquin Park (7,653 square kilometres). For comparison, Pickering is 180 acres.
Secondly, due to the scale of the over-build, this would be far from cheap. Even if we assume a capital cost of HALF of what Nanticoke cost (2.432M/MW) of 1.22M/MW, that's $296 billion dollars in solar.
Then we add batteries.
Oneida (which isn't even online yet, so a current project) was $800,000/MWh. Let's reduce that to $600,000/MWh for the sake of this exercise. That's another $79.8 billion for something with an undetermined lifespan and likely would need a 10 year amortization period.
In comparison, for the sake of this exercise we'll assume that Bruce C ends up being overly expensive at $35 billion for 4,000MW; $8.75M/MW. Scaled-up, that's $92.4 billion for our 10,564MW of capacity, 1/4 the cost.
@LizzieB78294459@cherylpounder Front door across from the home hardware. (Back door is the pub). Expect to be greeted by a few old farmers in manure stained boots drinking horrible coffee. But holy frig it is so worth it.
@dorfman_p That’s excellent news! We should sell them some #CANDU reactors to burn the spent fuel. Then, we can sell them some #MOLTEX reactors to burn the CANDU’s spent fuel. … and THEN we can reprocess it and start the cycle all over again!!!
@DecoupleMedia The only duct tape purchased by OPG/Bruce Power is procured to a “low halogen” specification. We use it frequently for waste management, and it is preferred that sulphur etc is minimized from contacting pressure boundary materials. (It’s also always bright yellow in my exp…)