This is the public repository for all code in fulfillment for the M.S. Thesis for Pradyumna Rao. The thesis is advised by Professor Bri-Mathias Hodge of the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Research explored in this repository pertains to exploration of penetration of Small Modular Reactors (SMR's) in power grids with high-renewable penetration using MGA (Models to Generate Alternatives).
- What cost scenario of SMR expansion in high-renewable systems with a carbon cap of zero can beat H2 and DAC total system costs?
- What mix of NR-HES and SMR + thermal storage has a lower system cost than a pure SMR mix in a high-renewable system with a carbon cap of zero?
- How do current market structures affect capacity payouts and profitability for low carbon generators? Do we need to amend current structures to improve incentives for low to zero carbon generation?
Building on the work of Anne Barlas during her M.S. Thesis, the first aspect of the thesis is understanding the production cost modeling of an optimal system including H2 and DAC in a zero carbon cap. This will serve as a baseline comparison for modeling scenarios for SMR penetration.
The production cost modeling takes the outputs of capacity expansion modeling by Anne Barlas using NREL's ReEDS to model annual operations using PowerSimulations.jl.
Based on a paper by Steigerwald et. al, tabular data was found on the construction cost, O&M etc. for several SMR prototypes
For the first part of the thesis, we sked the following questions.
- Can we confirm the NPV values of the paper with data from Texas?
- What is the payoff difference between DE-LU 2020 and 2022?
- How do SMR's penetration and payoff look like in future scenarios modeled by Cambium?
Price data for Historical texas analysis was obtained from ERCOT historical RTM prices. Future scenario hourly price data was obtained from Cambium 2022 was used for NPV analysis. Data for DE-LU prices in 2022 and 2019 was obtained from SMARD.de.