IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/energy/v280y2023ics0360544223015013.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Dispatch analysis of flexible power operation with multi-unit small modular reactors

Author

Listed:
  • Alhadhrami, Saeed
  • Soto, Gabriel J
  • Lindley, Ben

Abstract

The relevance of nuclear power plant flexible power operation (FPO) is rising due to increased penetration of variable renewables. Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) such as NuScale are envisaged to have multiple units on one site. This provides opportunities for coordinating FPO between units, but also introduces challenges as common services (e.g., refueling equipment) must be shared between units and fuel loadings may be standardized. It is therefore important to quantify whether FPO with SMRs is economically beneficial. This paper quantifies the economics of FPO on different timescales to analyze refueling outages of such multi-unit SMRs. A 24-h price-taker profit maximization of SMR operation is first solved considering revenues from wholesale power and ancillary service (AS) markets. The results are then used to find the most profitable operation strategy over several years for multiple units at the site accounting for the physics and materials limits on NPP operation, including refueling outages. Results show a small but appreciable participation of nuclear into AS, contributing 4% of revenues. Due to the longer fuel cycle, over a decade of operation the units’ refueling outages drifted by 3 months, ultimately leading to refueling during summer.

Suggested Citation

  • Alhadhrami, Saeed & Soto, Gabriel J & Lindley, Ben, 2023. "Dispatch analysis of flexible power operation with multi-unit small modular reactors," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 280(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:280:y:2023:i:c:s0360544223015013
    DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2023.128107
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544223015013
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.energy.2023.128107?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lykidi, Maria & Gourdel, Pascal, 2015. "How to manage flexible nuclear power plants in a deregulated electricity market from the point of view of social welfare?," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 167-180.
    2. Levin, Todd & Kwon, Jonghwan & Botterud, Audun, 2019. "The long-term impacts of carbon and variable renewable energy policies on electricity markets," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 53-71.
    3. Borenstein, Severin, 2000. "Understanding Competitive Pricing and Market Power in Wholesale Electricity Markets," The Electricity Journal, Elsevier, vol. 13(6), pages 49-57, July.
    4. Maria Lykidi & Pascal Gourdel, 2017. "Optimal management of flexible nuclear power plants in a decarbonising competitive electricity market: The French case," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) hal-03659252, HAL.
    5. Dong, Zhe & Li, Bowen & Li, Junyi & Guo, Zhiwu & Huang, Xiaojin & Zhang, Yajun & Zhang, Zuoyi, 2021. "Flexible control of nuclear cogeneration plants for balancing intermittent renewables," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 221(C).
    6. Gabriel J. Soto & Ben Lindley & Ty Neises & Cory Stansbury & Michael J. Wagner, 2022. "Dispatch Optimization, System Design and Cost Benefit Analysis of a Nuclear Reactor with Molten Salt Thermal Storage," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(10), pages 1-23, May.
    7. Lauren Pouret & William J. NUTTALL, 2007. "Can Nuclear Power be Flexible?," Working Papers EPRG 0710, Energy Policy Research Group, Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.
    8. Shen, Wei & Chen, Xi & Qiu, Jing & Hayward, Jennifier A & Sayeef, Saad & Osman, Peter & Meng, Ke & Dong, Zhao Yang, 2020. "A comprehensive review of variable renewable energy levelized cost of electricity," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    9. Kahvecioğlu, Gökçe & Morton, David P. & Wagner, Michael J., 2022. "Dispatch optimization of a concentrating solar power system under uncertain solar irradiance and energy prices," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 326(C).
    10. Cany, C. & Mansilla, C. & Mathonnière, G. & da Costa, P., 2018. "Nuclear contribution to the penetration of variable renewable energy sources in a French decarbonised power mix," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 544-555.
    11. Pascal Gourdel & Maria Lykidi, 2015. "How to manage flexible nuclear power plants in a deregulated electricity market from the point of view of social welfare?," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) hal-01477134, HAL.
    12. Jenkins, J.D. & Zhou, Z. & Ponciroli, R. & Vilim, R.B. & Ganda, F. & de Sisternes, F. & Botterud, A., 2018. "The benefits of nuclear flexibility in power system operations with renewable energy," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 222(C), pages 872-884.
    13. Mignacca, Benito & Locatelli, Giorgio & Sainati, Tristano, 2020. "Deeds not words: Barriers and remedies for Small Modular nuclear Reactors," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    14. Cany, C. & Mansilla, C. & Mathonnière, G. & da Costa, P., 2018. "Nuclear power supply: Going against the misconceptions. Evidence of nuclear flexibility from the French experience," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 289-296.
    15. Pascal Gourdel & Maria Lykidi, 2015. "How to manage flexible nuclear power plants in a deregulated electricity market from the point of view of social welfare?," Post-Print hal-01477134, HAL.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Taler, Dawid & Kaczmarski, Karol & Dzierwa, Piotr & Taler, Jan & Trojan, Marcin, 2024. "Optimisation of the cooling of pressurised thick-walled components operating with fluid at saturation temperature," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 290(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dong, Zhe & Liu, Miao & Zhang, Zuoyi & Dong, Yujie & Huang, Xiaojin, 2019. "Automatic generation control for the flexible operation of multimodular high temperature gas-cooled reactor plants," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 11-31.
    2. Lykidi, Maria & Gourdel, Pascal, 2017. "Optimal management of flexible nuclear power plants in a decarbonising competitive electricity market: The French case," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 171-185.
    3. Crampes, Claude & Renault, Jérôme, 2019. "How many markets for wholesale electricity when supply ispartially flexible?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 465-478.
    4. Srikanth Reddy & Lokesh Panwar & Bijaya Ketan Panigrahi & Rajesh Kumar & Lalit Goel & Ameena Saad Al-Sumaiti, 2020. "A profit-based self-scheduling framework for generation company energy and ancillary service participation in multi-constrained environment with renewable energy penetration," Energy & Environment, , vol. 31(4), pages 549-569, June.
    5. Loisel, Rodica & Lemiale, Lionel & Mima, Silvana & Bidaud, Adrien, 2022. "Strategies for short-term intermittency in long-term prospective scenarios in the French power system," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    6. Lauer, Markus & Thrän, Daniela, 2017. "Biogas plants and surplus generation: Cost driver or reducer in the future German electricity system?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 324-336.
    7. Chen, Yingwen & Chen, Liuliu & Li, Peiwen & Xu, Yuan & Fan, Mengjie & Zhu, Shemin & Shen, Shubao, 2016. "Enhanced performance of microbial fuel cells by using MnO2/Halloysite nanotubes to modify carbon cloth anodes," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 620-628.
    8. Scharff, Richard & Amelin, Mikael, 2016. "Trading behaviour on the continuous intraday market Elbas," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 544-557.
    9. Jiang, Di & Dong, Zhe, 2019. "Practical dynamic matrix control of MHTGR-based nuclear steam supply systems," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 695-707.
    10. Dong, Zhe & Pan, Yifei, 2018. "A lumped-parameter dynamical model of a nuclear heating reactor cogeneration plant," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 638-656.
    11. Zhe Dong & Yifei Pan & Zuoyi Zhang & Yujie Dong & Xiaojin Huang, 2017. "Modeling and Control of Fluid Flow Networks with Application to a Nuclear-Solar Hybrid Plant," Energies, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-21, November.
    12. Zhe Dong & Miao Liu & Di Jiang & Xiaojin Huang & Yajun Zhang & Zuoyi Zhang, 2018. "Automatic Generation Control of Nuclear Heating Reactor Power Plants," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(10), pages 1-18, October.
    13. Crampes, Claude & Renault, Jérôme, 2018. "Supply flexibility in electricity markets," TSE Working Papers 18-964, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    14. Dong, Zhe & Zhang, Zuoyi & Dong, Yujie & Huang, Xiaojin, 2018. "Multi-layer perception based model predictive control for the thermal power of nuclear superheated-steam supply systems," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 116-125.
    15. Dong, Zhe & Pan, Yifei & Zhang, Zuoyi & Dong, Yujie & Huang, Xiaojin, 2017. "Model-free adaptive control law for nuclear superheated-steam supply systems," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 53-67.
    16. Mezősi, András & Felsmann, Balázs & Kerekes, Lajos & Szabó, László, 2020. "Coexistence of nuclear and renewables in the V4 electricity system: Friends or enemies?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    17. Rodica Loisel & Lionel Lemiale & Silvana Mima & Adrien Bidaud, 2022. "Strategies for short-term intermittency in long-term prospective scenarios in the French power system," Post-Print hal-04568072, HAL.
    18. Teirilä, Juha, 2020. "The value of the nuclear power plant fleet in the German power market under the expansion of fluctuating renewables," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).
    19. Yuan, Mengyao & Tong, Fan & Duan, Lei & Dowling, Jacqueline A. & Davis, Steven J. & Lewis, Nathan S. & Caldeira, Ken, 2020. "Would firm generators facilitate or deter variable renewable energy in a carbon-free electricity system?," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 279(C).
    20. Dong, Zhe & Liu, Miao & Guo, Zhiwu & Huang, Xiaojin & Zhang, Yajun & Zhang, Zuoyi, 2019. "Adaptive state-observer for monitoring flexible nuclear reactors," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 893-909.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:280:y:2023:i:c:s0360544223015013. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/energy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.