Value chain · CLM-1080
In plain terms
On the utilities' usual accounting the 1980 satellite could not beat coal or nuclear; on Boeing's whole-life accounting, which counted forty years of fuel, it cost less than half as much; and the economists said either way it would soak up a tenth to a quarter of the country's growth capital.
The claim as recorded
The programme's comparative economics as presented in April 1980 reached opposite conclusions by method. Argonne's levelized-cost comparison: "1. The SPS will have little chance of competing favorably, on a levelized cost basis, with improved conventional technologies over a wide range of fuel prices. 2. The SPS has a better chance of competing with near-term technologies, i.e. coal gasification/combined cost ... 3. The SPS may compete favorably with advanced technologies such as fusion, central station and decentralized photovoltaic. However, large uncertainties exist about the future costs of these systems" (the page prints "combined cost"); only the high-growth scenario "is capable of accepting a full implementation of sixty SPS units by 2030 if the SPS is limited to no more than twenty-five percent of installed capacity", and building 20 or 30 units instead "could add as much as fifteen percent to the average unit cost"; Rand, on Argonne's 2 April 1980 year-2000 prices, "if the graphs are taken literally there is zero chance of an SPS being competitive with coal in the year 2000". Boeing's lifetime-expenditure comparison over 40 years and 1,600 x 10^9 kWh, with SPS at $2,340/kW and plant factor .92 against coal $1,000 and .72 and nuclear $1,300 and .76: capital related $63B, $39B, $64B; fuel 0, 105, 93; O&M 2, 14, 6; total $65B, $158B, $163B; cost per kWh "4.0 cents, 9.8 cents, 10.1 cents", so that "SPS costs would have to be increased by $100B ... before the option is clearly not competitive". Carnegie-Mellon's macroeconomics: 10 GW a year of SPS after 2000 needs "$20-$50 billion" a year more investment than coal, "10-25% of the investment increment dedicated to economic growth", cutting GNP growth "by 0.2% p.a. to 0.5% p.a.".
Evidence behind this: T3, four economics abstracts reaching opposite conclusions by method: levelized cost, a rendered lifetime-expenditure figure, and a macroeconomic estimate.
Scope and limits
Argonne's Figure 3 (the levelized ranges) is a figure, not rendered here; Hopkins's "zero chance" is his reading of a bar chart with ranges. Boeing's coal capital "$100/KW" in text is $1,000 in its own figure; the cents per kWh are the figure's own (65/1,600 = 4.06, 158/1,600 = 9.9 and 163/1,600 = 10.2 by division, printed 4.0, 9.8 and 10.1).
What it assumes
Boeing's real fuel escalation of "6%/YR IN 1978 DECLINING TO 2%/YR BY 2020" (PDF p.617 / printed 597, Figure 4 legend; the halftone digit read at zoom 12 as 6, probable, where the text layer prints 8); Argonne's utility weighted cost of capital.
Where it comes from
PDF p.170 / printed 147, normalised: conclusions 1 to 3 as quoted; "The SPS, fusion and terrestrial photovoltaic systems are more sensitive to variations in capacity factor". PDF p.169 / printed 146: "Low costs for the central station photovoltaic and SPS technologies assume a reduction in solar cell costs from the nominal $37.80/m2 (1978) to $21.60/m2 (1978)"; the twenty-five percent sentence; PDF p.170: "reduced implementation could add as much as fifteen percent to the average unit cost". PDF p.171 / printed 148, Table 1, render read: SPS silicon 60 units 1978 nominal 3,340 $/kW, year-2000 low 3,139, nominal 3,646, high 16,698; "2000 High/2000 Nominal 4.58"; coal 549 and 762, LWR 712 and 1,100. PDF p.620 / printed 600: "if the graphs are taken literally there is zero chance of an SPS being competitive with coal in the year 2000"; "DATA SOURCE: Preliminary (April 2, 1980) results from Argonne National Laboratory" (PDF p.622 / printed 602); PDF p.621 / printed 601: "funding for the SPS program should not remain at a value which is almost two orders of magnitude less than that which goes to fusion". PDF p.615 / printed 595, Figures 2 and 3, render read: as stated; "Adding the remaining costs, and dividing the total by the total number of kilowatt-hour generated (1600 x 10^9 for all systems)"; PDF p.616 / printed 596: "SPS costs would have to be increased by $100B (over the value shown in Figure 3) before the option is clearly not competitive with the given nuclear power cost projection". PDF p.631 / printed 611: "The extra investment required to build 10 GWe of SPS per year after the year 2000 - as compared to the cheapest alternative (coal) - would be in the range of $20-$50 billion, or 10-25% of the investment increment dedicated to economic growth. It could apparently cut potential GNP growth rates below the target level of 2.3% by 0.2% p.a. to 0.5% p.a."
Basis: levelized mills/kWh; billions of dollars lifetime; cents/kWh (no price year found for Boeing's figures on PDF pp.615-616); per cent GNP growth
Related records
- Answers question
- QST-021 not published in this release
Cite this
energyaperture.com/c/clm-1080
CLM-1080, Energy Aperture, as of 1980-04.
Connected records
Other published records linked to this one. A list, not a judgement.
- Also from SRC-449
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