Abu Dhabi Commissioning Nuclear Power in 2018
Abu Dhabi is commissioning a new set of nuclear plants for the first time in 2018, that will generate 25% of its power. I find this a bit hard to understand, since it’s happening just as countries like Germany and Italy are decommissioning their nuclear power. Also, Abu Dhabi has huge peaks; their ratio of peak to average load is one of the largest on Earth, due largely to air conditioning, which represents 85% of load — even more surprising for a country that has huge energy needs for water desalination and the petrochemical industry.
Making matters worse, they don’t seem to be able to handle these peak loads too elegantly. It’s not uncommon for transformers to burst into flame, turning people out into the streets to sleep where it’s much cooler when the A/C goes out. This, in turn, negatively affects production, when people can’t get a good night’s sleep.
Holy cow.
So, I asked the speaker: “Why on Earth do they want nuclear (that doesn’t scale up and down according to load)?”
“They like ‘big,’” he answered. “They want to make one deal and have a solution – large enough to make it possible for them to crank up their air conditioning so they can show off their furs.”
Wow. I thought we had idiotic extravagances here. It’s quite a world.
Interesting… did he say what the ratio of peak to trough or peak to average demand was? I also agree that nuclear is strange… CSP would be a much better match for A/C driven peaks, and could be “big” , too. But maybe a tiny country Abu Dhabi does not have enough domestic land for CSP, and aren’t willing to import electricity from a neighboring emirate.
He didn’t provide the peak:average ration, and I didn’t ask; I felt I was hogging the Q&A at times. 🙂
Good point about CSP and land mass.
I didn’t know that about their not wanting to buy power, but I’m sure you’re right. This is what makes this transition so difficult: all the idiosyncracies of the 180 countries involved.
“Why on Earth do they want nuclear (that doesn’t scale up and down according to load)?”
And here is the answer.
France gets about 80% of its electricity from nuclear power. They have designed their nuclear power systems so that they can follow changing loads thereby proving that it can be done. It does, however, increase operating costs somewhat and results in uneven use of the uranium fuel. Also, changing load too quickly shortens equipment life.
It should be noted that coal burning power plants (which should be phased out) also have difficulty with load following. Their output has to be changed very slowly else the life of the equipment is significantly shortened.
One reason that changing output quickly shortens equipment life is that it causes thermal stresses in the steam turbines. Even the life of transformers is shortened by variations in load.