Tesla says Dutton’s nuclear plan will result in “severe” curtailment of rooftop solar

Tesla has warned that Australian households face “severe curtailment” of their rooftop solar PV systems under the federal Coalition’s nuclear power plan.

The warning comes in Tesla’s late submission to the select committee on nuclear energy, where it says there is no room for both technologies to operate at the same time.

Tesla says there will be no room in the grid for more than 2 gigawatts of baseload.

The federal Coalition has said that it wants to build 14 gigawatts of “always on” nuclear.

Tesla said nuclear is a complex technology to integrate into the power system, with constraints around ramping and load following, meaning it acts as a traditional baseload supply.

Any large-scale build out of this type of inflexible baseload supply, Tesla said, would be impacted by minimum generation levels, resulting in either low-capacity factors for the nuclear plants, or severe curtailment of cheaper rooftop solar and renewables.

The Smart Energy Council, and federal climate and energy minister Chris Bowen, have also warned that rooftop solar systems could be curtailed more than 60% of the time to accommodate the planned fleet of nuclear power plants.

They note that there is already little room for large fleets of baseload power plants, given that the output of rooftop solar has already reduced “operational demand” to new lows of around 10 gigawatts.

Dutton’s nuclear power plan includes at least 700 MW of nuclear power capacity in the town of Collie, where the existing coal fired generators are being replaced by some of the country’s biggest battery storage facilities.

Those batteries are being built because rooftop solar is already reaching shares of 85% of total demand and eroding the case for baseload.

In South Australia, where the Coalition also wants to build a small nuclear reactor, rooftop solar has reached a peak of 112.9% of state demand.

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