They do supply this info from NZ companies
eg the largest power generating company in NZ. Wind was producing power 96.0% of the time (compared to hydro at 91.3%)
I doubt nuclear will match that uptime?
Wind was not producing steady power 96% of the time, just non-zero. If you apply the same standard, then system-wide nuclear, coal, hydro etc all produce power 100% of the time.
I've shown you NZ data before. Even there, system-wide wind output varies dramatically. The only reason wind works in NZ is that your geography gives you gobs and gobs of hydro storage. Only a tiny fraction of the rest of mankind has that luxury.
On a pure per KWH cost basis wind power is competitive. The first phase of the London array with 175 3.6KW turbines will produce at a cost of 8-8.5 pennies / KWH. The average price of electricity in the UK is 10-11 pennies / KWH.
If the London array had been on-shore, construction cost would be halved, but electricity production would be lower too, so it would still cost 6-6.5 pennies/KWH.
You're right about storage, although I think you underestimate the magnitude of the problem. There's a reason why nuclear and coal plants just burn away excess capacity energy at night without anyone buying it - storage is so expensive that not even free electricity is worth storing.
The "pure KWH basis" that you and other enviro groups use is completely irrelevant, because without that low cost storage, every kWh of wind used for demand actually increases the net cost per kWh of non-wind electricity production since other forms of generation have to reduce capacity factor to give wind farms business. You're not saving 10-11p per kWh by replacing it with 8p per kWh wind, you're only saving the fuel cost, which is ~0 for nuclear and almost zero for coal (because cycling that often is
costly for coal plants). Basically, you only save fuel cost for natural gas plants while wind is blowing, so the true cost of wind depends on how much of your generation is with gas turbines.
Say you had 10GW daytime peak demand. You build 7GW of nuclear/coal baseline at 8c/kWh. You also build 3GW of natural gas to handle the daytime peak, so it runs at maybe 50% CF (i.e. it's turned off at night), and costs 20c/kWh. On average, 1.5 GWe (17.6%) of your electricity comes from natural gas, and overall average cost is (7GW * 8 + 1.5GW * 20) / (8.5GW) = 10.1c/kWh.
Now you decide to build 3GW of wind as well, and can get 30% CF from it if you use everything it generates, which averages to 8c/kWh. However, it only reduces your natural gas plant consumption during the day; moreover, reducing its output by 30% while retaining its capacity raises its levelized cost to 23c/kWh. So now electricity cost is:
(7GW * 8 + 0.9GW * 23 + 3GW * 40% * 8) / (8.5 GW) = 10.3c/kWh
So you can pretend that wind is generating 1.2/8.5 = 14% of your electricity, but in reality it's only displaced 7% (and thus effectively costs 16c/kWh) because the other half is wasted at night. If you want to make use of that, you can reduce your baseline to 4GW and increase the natural gas to 6GW, but now your cost of electricity goes over 12c/kWh.
Wind power is halving power production cost every 15 years. Even if the compressed air/adiabatic heat stores don't pan out, in 15 years time it will be economically feasible to produce syn-gas (hydrogen or ammonia), and use that for power generation when it isn't windy.
Wind power costs have flattened and even risen in recent years:
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/5354
Unless something revolutionary comes up, like high altitude wind, wind is not going to get much cheaper. It will always need roughly the same amount of materials as today.
... I can only guess how numbed by shock the guy filming this must have been. Also very sad to think how many perished that day and are still missing or will never be found.
