In MWe, 2,667 tidal turbines equals one Hinkley C

[Paul Mobbs]

On Sat, 2016-09-24 at 22:56 +0000, Zardoz Greek wrote:
> 
> ie. how does cost of 2,667 tidal energy rigs compare to Hinkley?
> Assuming this £37bn figure for Hinkley C is correct 


That's heavily dependent upon the cost of the finance, not 
just the cost of the hardware.


These days finance is one of the major costs of any public 
project. E.g. UK trains are about 30% more expensive than the
rest of Europe in part because they rely on private finance.


PFI's are the worst example where projects can 40% to 50% more
expensive due to the reliance on private capital rather than 
public bonds.


E.g. the finance for Hinkley is coming from French and Chinese
governments -- i.e., it's very cheap, compared to other options
artificially so. If they had to pay the market rate for high-
risk long-term finance it could cost a lot more.


In contrast MayGen has got £25 million for initial development
from the Government, but will be expected to raise commercial 
funding for the project -- which could add 20%-30% to its 
overall cost because of having to pay interest on the 
bonds/loans.


Funnily enough this is what Corbyn's been talking about 
recently. Rather than giving QE to the banks, give cheap 
finance to infrastructure developments that create longer-term
benefits for the economy -- rather than short term benefit for
bank shareholders.


That's also where EU state aid rules get in the way -- because 
the bankster lobby don't want to be done out of the lucrative
infrastructure capital finance business.


Bottom line, if we take Hinkley at the optimistic £18 billion
-- i.e., £18,000 million, the turbines could cost £6.7 million
a piece and be cheaper than Hinkley. Given development costs 
of £25 million, I think they're likely to be a lot cheaper 
than that -- perhaps £4-£5 million, which is roughly 
comparable to large wind turbines.


As yet I've not seen full cost projections for what their
total development cost will be. Building one turbine costs a
lot. If they can develop a system for mass manufacture, the 
cost could be rapidly reduced.


On top of that is the grid connection cost -- which again 
depends upon where they are built.




P.


-- 


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(Edward Burrough, 1659 - from 'Quaker Faith and Practice')


Paul Mobbs, Mobbs' Environmental Investigations 
3 Grosvenor Road, Banbury OX16 5HN, England 
tel./fax (+44/0)1295 261864


public key -- http://www.fraw.org.uk/mei/public_key_2016.asc


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