Wärtsilä: Wind power can be made as stable as nuclear power and clearly cheaper

One of the consequences of the energy crisis is that nuclear power has risen to the heart of the conversation again. Many people think that Finland is too dependent on electricity imports and that the country needs more stable domestic electricity production.

The reality dawned when the powerful import connection of a large nuclear power plant from Russia had to be cut off last May. Since then, electricity has been expensive in Finland. There are of course other reasons for the price level.

Energy industry according to a recent attitude survey, 83 percent of Finns support nuclear power. In 2016, there were 59 percent of supporters. Thursday LUT University said it is building a new small reactor.

Fortum and Helen are now together considering the conditions for building a new nuclear power plant.

The discussion is also heated elsewhere. In Sweden, the new government ordered the energy company Vattenfall in the fall to start studies on the additional construction of nuclear power.

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1,800 megawatts of new wind power have been built per year.

To the same At the time, Finland is still waiting for the new triple reactor in Olkiluoto, started 17 years ago, to finally be commissioned. Cracks found in the power plant’s feed water pumps have delayed the commissioning of the power plant by even months again.

While waiting for Olkiluoto, new wind power is growing at a tremendous speed. In just one year, 1,800 megawatts of new wind power has been built in Finland, while the electrical output of the Olkiluoto triple is 1,600 megawatts.

The nominal power of wind and nuclear power cannot be directly compared. Wind turbines produce on average only one third of the electricity compared to a nuclear power plant of the same power.

Let’s take it so a fairer point of comparison. During the construction of the Olkiluoto nuclear power plant, Finland’s wind power capacity has increased from approximately zero to 5,000 megawatts. On average, it is already enough to produce the electricity of a new nuclear power plant.

The construction of wind turbines has cost roughly five billion euros. The construction of the new reactor in Olkiluoto costs more than double the amount.

But still the problem of wind power compared to nuclear power is that the production varies randomly depending on the weather. The average production volume does not heat up at all when it is calm. Therefore, wind power as such is not a steady basic power of the electricity system.

To be like nuclear power, wind power needs a lot of regulating power to kick in when there is no production.

Regulating power is currently obtained from domestic hydropower and by importing electricity from other Nordic countries. But these sources may not be enough even this winter, let alone in the coming years, when the amount of wind power will increase even more.

So where does the control power come from?

Marine engines and Wärtsilä, which manufactures electrical storages, has developed one answer. Wärtsilä’s experts have calculated that it is possible to build stable electrical power on the basis of wind power, and it will be significantly cheaper than new nuclear power.

Even if wind power were combined with hydrogen production, motor power plants that use hydrogen to produce control power and batteries, the price of the basic power produced by the whole would be cheaper than with a new nuclear power plant.

“We compared it to building a new Olkiluoto 3, i.e. a 1,600 megawatt nuclear power plant. And that the same steady capacity would be built with wind, a small amount of batteries, electrolyzers and Wärtsilä engines”, Director of Energy Business Development Ville Rimali says.

Rimalin the calculation is based on the fact that the combination of wind power-hydrogen-motor power plant-battery can produce electricity every moment of the year with a constant power of 1,600 megawatts – just like nuclear power.

Therefore, the amount of wind power in the calculation is drastically overestimated compared to the required average electricity production. No less than 7,200 megawatts would be built.

“Still, the cost of electricity with the wind option would be 64 euros per megawatt hour. The cost of electricity produced by a similar nuclear power plant would be 78 euros per megawatt hour. The cost difference is 190 million euros per year,” says Rimali.

Calculations final results depend on assumptions. Rimali has used the assumed final price of the Olkiluoto triple reactor for nuclear power, i.e. about 11 billion euros. It’s based on World Nuclear Reportin to the estimate for 2019. The estimate is hardly exaggerated, at least.

French state energy company EDF told in January The price of the Olkiluoto sister reactor under construction in Flamanville, France has already risen to 12.7 billion euros.

Isn’t it are the much talked about small nuclear power plants supposed to become significantly cheaper? They are intended to save at least on security systems and the economies of scale of serial production.

Read more: Fortum and Helen interested in building small nuclear power plants in Finland

“This is what is claimed, but it is difficult to imagine why the construction of nuclear power plants would essentially become cheaper as the size decreases, when the prices of materials are constantly rising. There are no small nuclear power plant products on the market yet for which we know the actual price level. On the other hand, the price of onshore wind turbine technology continues to fall,” says Rimali.

The prices of electrolysis equipment used to make hydrogen can also be imagined to decrease. Their market is just getting started.

“Furthermore, there are well-known challenges associated with the schedule of nuclear power construction. We need more emission-free electricity production quickly and the solutions already exist. The first small nuclear power plants will be operational at the end of this decade at the earliest,” he says.

Rimalin in the calculation, there is so much wind power that it is enough to cover over time 89 percent of the electricity production required by a constant power of 1,600 megawatts.

“In this way, 89 percent of the electricity is obtained directly from wind turbines, one percent is obtained from batteries and 10 percent is produced through hydrogen with engines. This 89 percent can be produced very cheaply, which means that the necessary control power can cost relatively much and still be more profitable than nuclear power,” says Rimali.

All in addition, the system would produce additional electricity and hydrogen to be used for other purposes as well. Heat is produced as a byproduct of electrolysis, which can be used as district heating, for example. The value of heat has not been taken into account in the calculation.

“There is also an advantage in having the system decentralized. In these geopolitical times, that also matters,” says Rimali.

Counting the proposed solution is such that it supports Wärtsilä’s own business, i.e. the sale of hydrogen-burning engine power plants and battery solutions. Wärtsilä will also pilot such a model in Vaasa in the next few years.

The idea is that the electrolysis equipment uses electricity to turn water into hydrogen when it is windy and there is plenty of electricity. The hydrogen is put into storage. When there is calm and more electricity is needed, the hydrogen is burned in a hydrogen engine, whose generator converts the energy back into electricity.

The efficiency of such electricity production is low. About 72 percent of the original electrical energy is wasted in the intermediate stages if the waste heat is not utilized. But it doesn’t matter if hydrogen is made when electricity costs nothing or the price even drops to negative, and control electricity is produced when the price of electricity is at its highest.

The greater part of the pending green projects, i.e. hydrogen produced by solar or wind power, aim at something other than control power. Hydrogen is refined into liquid fuels or used as a raw material in industrial processes such as carbon-free steel.

But it is entirely possible to use hydrogen as a control force as well, if it is found to be necessary. According to Rimal, Wärtsilä’s engine power plant burning pure hydrogen will be ready for use in 2025.

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Adding import connections is the cheapest.

of LUT University professor of solar energy Christian Breyer considers Rimal’s calculation realistic and even cautious.

“The International Energy Organization estimates the price of electricity produced with new nuclear power to be even higher. The profitability challenge for small modular reactors is even greater, because as the size decreases, the scale advantage brought by the large size is lost,” Breyer commented by email.

Option for own adjustment power or new basic power is the construction of new import connections. In northern Norway and Sweden, there is usually enough hydroelectricity to meet the wind and solar power regulation needs of Finland as well.

Currently, the problem is the limited import capacity. 2,400 megawatts of transmission lines from Sweden have been in use since Olkiluoto 3 started up.

Fingrid’s head of strategic network planning Mikko Heikkilän According to

The next 800 megawatt line to northern Finland is already being prepared for construction in the early 2030s. There is a 1,000 megawatt connection between Finland and Estonia, and additional capacity is planned there as well.

If the conclusion of the energy crisis is that we want to ensure self-sufficiency in electricity production in all conditions, and more domestic regulating power is needed in addition to border lines. A hydrogen engine is one option for that.

In any case, perhaps tens of thousands of megawatts of wind and solar power are going up in Finland. Finland is one of the cheapest countries to build renewable electricity production.

New energy system theorists, on the other hand, think that the whole concept of basic power is becoming old-fashioned.

Professor Breyer says that with the hydrogen economy and the electrification of society, the energy system will become so flexible in its consumption that the need for energy storage or actual control power will decrease.

“The basic power concept is 20th century thinking. An energy system based on renewable electricity is much more flexible,” he says.

However, just this winter, basic strength and the lack of it feel like very 2000s topics.