Westinghouse sees a tech disrupter in its eVinci microreactor

Re:Westinghouse sees a tech disrupter in its eVinci microrea... by quickthrower2 on Thursday November 24, 2022 @05:45AM (#33729817)

There is the small issue of transmission and maintaining that. But surely it is better to also use the grid for when you peak over 5MW at dinner time when people turn on their ovens, lights and other appliances and also to be able to sell back to the grid at other times. Unless you have batteries.

But your argument is solid for a factory with constant 24/7 load where a single building might consume all that power.

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Re:Westinghouse sees a tech disrupter in its eVinci microrea... by amluto on Thursday November 24, 2022 @02:10PM (#33735124)

The spreads are egregious, though. You can buy from PG&E for several hundred dollars per MWH. You can likely sell to them for a couple dollars per MWH. No, you do not get NEM for your neighborhood nuclear plant.

Or you can overprovision, discard unused output (or try to do something useful — even just heating up a big heat reservoir is useful for district heating if you feel like building out a system to deliver the heat), and still potentially win on overall price.

Large grids are economical when reasonably run. They are not economical when poorly run.

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Re:Westinghouse sees a tech disrupter in its eVinci microrea... by quickthrower2 on Thursday November 24, 2022 @02:23PM (#33735233)

That is horrendous. Battery it is!

Residential solar plans in Sydney would buy power back for about 5c US / kwh so $50 / mwh

Although I think their hand might be forced to encourage solar. They used to pay crazy high amounts.

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