[HN Gopher] For the first time, renewable energy generation beat...
___________________________________________________________________
For the first time, renewable energy generation beat out coal in
the US
Author : doener
Score : 294 points
Date : 2023-04-02 07:57 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.popsci.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.popsci.com)
| tjbiddle wrote:
| My comment isn't directly related to the OP, but figured it'd be
| an interesting insight to share as it's very recent for me.
|
| Just finished a motorbike trip in Laos. Fun fact, their largest
| export is electricity.
|
| Would've never guessed that, right?
|
| 90% of the electricity they generate is exported to neighboring
| countries - mostly Thailand.
|
| 80% is renewable - Go Laos!
|
| But wait, it may be renewable... but turns out the government is
| corrupt and constantly sells rights to the highest bidder wanting
| to build a dam for hydroelectric wherever they want, and usually
| without any sort of environmental survey - oops. It's the driest
| country I've been to in a while, many villages had their water
| access completely destroyed due to upstream dams.
|
| Just a cautionary tale as "renewable" doesn't necessarily mean
| better - green-washing is absolutely still a thing out there and
| we should be sure to thoroughly vet information before assuming
| it's more viable solution for us.
| revertmean wrote:
| It's also worth noting that dams aren't just built for
| electricity. They're also built to control flooding and to
| control water supply. I'm not saying that's the case in Laos,
| but it does happen.
|
| People can live without electricity, but it's difficult to live
| without water.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| I cringe each time that I hear a foreigner complain about
| China's Three Gorges Dam as an "environmental damage". The
| number of people who have died from floods on those rivers in
| the last 2000 years in mind-boggling. Yes, it generates a lot
| of electricity, but it is dual purpose to also control
| flooding. People can live without
| electricity, but it's difficult to live without water.
|
| This part is also interesting. While traveling in developing
| countries in East/South/Southeast Asia, the driest places and
| always the poorest. The only way to overcome is irrigation.
| The wealthiest places find a way to move water from wet lands
| to dry lands.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > While traveling in developing countries in
| East/South/Southeast Asia, the driest places and [sic]
| always the poorest
|
| s:East/South/Southeast Asia:the United States:
| sremani wrote:
| If flood control is the main concern, then the size of the
| dam does not have to be that of Three Gorges -- there are
| many things that went into three gorges and Vanity of CCP
| is a significant part of them.
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| CPC
| starkd wrote:
| People can live without electricity, but only for very brief
| periods of time. If we had to go extended periods, I don't
| think it would be a stretch to say civilisational collapse
| would be immanent.
| [deleted]
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| I don't think it is helpful to celebrate countries that won the
| "geography birth lottery" and have huge rivers that are easy to
| dam. See: Laos, Paraguay, Norway, Austria, etc. Nothing is
| "amazing" that they are mostly green energy.
|
| Also, for other readers, Laos is a repressive "communist"
| dictatorship. It is no surprise that the gov't welcomed Belt &
| Road programme by China (with high interest loans!) to build a
| giant dam that enriched few at the expense of many. This is
| green washing at its very best.
|
| The future of green energy is mostly about solar and wind. Yes,
| there are _some_ places with easy-to-dam rivers remaining (sub-
| Saharan Africa), but they are few and far between.
|
| It is still crazy to me that North Africa is not covered in
| solar panels that export to Europe. Same for Australia, South
| Africa, and many Gulf countries. Sunshine and wind is the "new
| oil" of the 21st Century. They can export to neighboring
| countries or produce green hydrogen.
| runarberg wrote:
| > Laos is a repressive "communist" dictatorship
|
| The same exact story can be said about Iceland, which is very
| far from being a communist dictatorship (and it bears
| mentioning that Laos government is not repressive compared to
| many capitalist democratic governments; I don't know where
| you would get that from except preconceived biases).
|
| Iceland sells majority of its renewable energy to foreign
| aluminum companies. Along with fish it is the biggest export.
| The government is corrupt and constantly sells rights to
| build factories to bidders while neglecting environmental
| impacts. Whole towns are often run by a single Canadian
| aluminum company. And the green origin certificates is then
| sold to EU countries (just like indulgence was sold by the
| Catholic church), so "green" energy consumers are buying in
| Germany, are actually just coal power, where the energy
| company bought the origin certificates from Iceland.
|
| See, you don't need to be communist, nor a dictatorship, to
| do industrial scale greenwashing
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| It's happening. Should happen faster, honestly.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xlinks_Morocco-
| UK_Power_Projec...
| timwaagh wrote:
| You think the energy transition can be achieved without harming
| people? Yes if you are a river fisherman you do not live in the
| right century. Nor do people living in mountain villages. There
| are those who will get cancer from working in a nuclear fuel
| reprocessing plant. Still it's not going to be that bad because
| the pollution from fossil fuel electricity generation is also
| causing a lot of disease and killing a lot of people.
| tjbiddle wrote:
| > Yes if you are a river fisherman you do not live in the
| right century. Nor do people living in mountain villages.
|
| Tell me you're in a privileged western country without
| telling me.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Human activities harm people.
|
| That doesn't imply we can't compare alternatives and say
| "This one will result in less harm than that one."
| yummypaint wrote:
| _There are those who will get cancer from working in a
| nuclear fuel reprocessing plant._
|
| It doesn't have to be this way, the engineering controls
| needed are well known. It requires the country in question to
| be financially committed to doing things right. For nuclear
| power this is already considered an essential prerequisite,
| yet coal power plants already release vastly more
| radioactivity and increase the cancer risk of everone around
| them. As far as reducing total cancer, nuclear is the way to
| go.
| snozolli wrote:
| _It 's the driest country I've been to in a while, many
| villages had their water access completely destroyed due to
| upstream dams._
|
| Completely destroyed, or just no longer enough to support
| wasteful methods of irrigation? It's been over a decade since I
| was in SE Asia, but my impression was that they relied heavily
| on flooding fields for irrigation.
| kmax12 wrote:
| Long-term trends clearly demonstrate the energy grid's transition
| to renewable energy sources.
|
| However, renewables like solar and wind come with unique
| challenges due to their intermittent nature. They are more
| variable, harder to forecast, have location constraints, and can
| benefit from battery storage. These factors lead to a more
| dynamic grid than before.
|
| For instance, several regions in the country provide five-minute
| updates on their energy generation mix, enabling near real-time
| observations of renewable energy effects throughout the day
|
| For example, numerous regions across the country provide updates
| on their energy generation mix at five-minute intervals, allowing
| for close to real time observations of these effect of renewables
| throughout the day.
|
| To help those involved in the energy transition, I created an
| open-source project called Grid Status
| (https://github.com/kmax12/gridstatus) that provides fuel mix,
| wholesale pricing, load, load forecasts, and more.
|
| Additionally, I've developed real-time visualizations to make
| this data more accessible and easier to comprehend:
| https://www.gridstatus.io
|
| I hope making this data more accessible and understandable will
| accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels.
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| It demonstrates, quite clearly, that energy cost is not a
| concern. We can just barrel through to the electric revolution
| without a single care to cost, availability, or reliability.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| Not a concern for whom? It's a market. If you can produce
| electricity cheaper, go ahead and make a fortune.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| This would be better news if coal wasn't also being replaced by
| new fossil gas plants like crazy. If you look at coal vs fossil
| gas in the US it's a lot more depressing.
|
| https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=48896
|
| The fraction of energy that comes from low carbon sources is what
| matters.
| kragen wrote:
| i have the impression that gas produces something like 40
| percent less co2 per joule than coal?
|
| in some sense that's 'low carbon'
| natmaka wrote:
| Indeed. Moreover some modern gas turbines can also 'burn'
| hydrogen, which will be 'green' (produced thanks to
| renewables' overproduction).
| pyrale wrote:
| > in some sense that's 'low carbon'
|
| It doesn't in a sense that meaningfully addresses the
| challenges we're facing, though.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| On paper that is sometimes true, and gas companies try to
| lean in hard on that. Gas can do 480 gCO2/kWh vs. coal's
| 800+. But when you include wellhead and pipeline losses of
| methane they end up looking almost exactly equal, according
| to many studies. So it's not really progress. Also, half the
| CO2 of coal is nowhere even close to acceptable. We need
| things that do about 1/20th the carbon of coal or less, so
| wind, solar, nuclear, hydro, geothermal, tidal only. Gas is
| out.
| kragen wrote:
| amusing units
|
| [?](kilowatt hour / 480 g) = 2700 m/s
|
| [?](kilowatt hour / 800 g) = 2100 m/s
|
| 480 g is 60% of 800 g so i guess my vaguely remembered
| percentage was about right
|
| wrt co2 reduction i think carbon capture is probably going
| to be necessary
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Grams CO2-equiv emitted per kWh of electricity generated
| are the units used by everyone, e.g. the IPCC to quantify
| the carbon intensity of energy sources. E.g. for a graph
| of data from IPCC, see [1].
|
| Again, 480 is not all-inclusive. If you look at the whole
| system, gas is no better than coal, due to wellhead and
| pipeline leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
|
| [1] https://whatisnuclear.com/img/lifecycle-carbon-
| emissions-nol...
| kragen wrote:
| i wish they'd use si units like kilograms per joule, or
| joules per kilogram, which works out to s2/m2 and permits
| direct comparison with the energy density of fuels
|
| a kilowatt hour per 800 g works out to 4.5 megajoules per
| kilogram, which makes it easy to see that we're in the
| right ballpark (the energy density of coal itself is less
| than an order of magnitude higher) and that we're talking
| about delivered work rather than just thermal power
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| I disagree. Sometimes when you're trying to quantify
| something specific, it's best to use units that are
| topical. If you want to talk about how much CO2 the
| production of a kWh of electricity (not heat) that
| different sources of electricity use, mass CO2 per kWh
| electric generated is the most useful and intuitive unit.
| Differences in thermal efficiency, etc. do not matter if
| you're focused on getting a kWh-electric for the smallest
| amount of lifecycle CO2. This is especially important
| when comparing non-thermal sources (hydro, wind, solar)
| alongside thermal sources.
| kragen wrote:
| the difference between kilowatt hours per gram and joules
| per kilogram also does not matter if you're focused on
| getting a kilowatt hour electric for the smallest amount
| of lifecycle carbon dioxide; a kilowatt hour per gram is
| precisely 3.6 gigajoules per kilogram, nothing more,
| nothing less. the only benefit of using the 'topical'
| units is an unnecessary risk of calculation errors and
| other kinds of confusion
|
| this nonsense about topical units is the reason that
| medieval merchants would measure certain kinds of cloth
| in flemish ells of 27 inches and other kinds of cloth in
| english ells of 45 inches; silver was weighed in troy
| ounces of 480 grains, drugs were weighed in apothecaries'
| drams of 60 grains (or apothecaries' ounces, which were
| the same as troy ounces), and foods were weighed in drams
| of about 27.3 drams, or avoirdupois ounces of 4371/2
| grains
|
| kilowatt hours and grams per kilowatt hour are the modern
| equivalent of apothecaries' drams
| legulere wrote:
| There's also some methane emissions from coal that you need
| to consider.
| gwright wrote:
| Yet another article and discussion that mostly ignores the fact
| that intermittent energy sources are not viable mechanisms for
| base-load generation. This is a basic physics problem that no
| amount of legislation or green-virtue signaling is going to make
| the problem go away.
|
| Until we find a reasonable way to store energy at grid scale, a
| continued shift to intermittent energy generation will result in
| dramatically higher prices and dramatically lower reliability.
| Proven wrote:
| [dead]
| starkd wrote:
| >> And even when projects are approved, developers often discover
| they need to pay for new transmission lines to deliver power to
| residents and businesses. Those transmission lines often face
| further permitting delays.
|
| Just discovering this? Yeah, this has not been well planned.
| adrianN wrote:
| Nice. The economics of renewables are really hard to beat. I hope
| we speed up the construction speed and at the same time electrify
| more sectors.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| One thing that's often overlooked in statistics like this is
| roof top solar because it's just not that easy to account for.
| In places like Australia, where double digit percentages of
| homes have solar and where building codes are actually being
| changed to require solar panels, this is a non trivial amount
| that is putting a lot of pressure on energy suppliers to adapt.
| Effectively whole states are running on solar when the sun
| comes out (which it does a lot over there). Whether they like
| it or not, demand for grid electricity drops a lot whenever
| these panels are producing. And of course a lot of people are
| installing batteries as well. That must be happening in the US
| as well and it must be having some impact.
|
| https://www.seia.org/solar-industry-research-data This article
| seems to suggest that the amount of installed solar has doubled
| in the last four years and that the pace is accelerating. Also
| it states that the solar market expanded by 40% last year.
| kragen wrote:
| rooftop solar has the advantage that it doesn't depend on
| installing new transmission lines to get a grid connection
|
| this is especially important in backwards countries like the
| usa with their so-called license raj preventing modernization
|
| since most household energy is used for low-grade heating and
| cooling (refrigerator, air conditioner, oven, clothes dryer)
| i think thermal energy storage is likely to be a crucial
| enabling factor; mit's solar house used phase-change
| materials, but i suspect thermochemical energy storage is a
| better option
|
| (why thermal energy storage instead of batteries? in the
| limit it's about three orders of magnitude higher capacity
| for a given price)
| roenxi wrote:
| > ...have solar and where building codes are actually being
| changed to require solar panels...
|
| Do you have a source for that? It sounds kinda silly. The
| maintenance + OH&S aspects of solar panels are nontrivial and
| it doesn't make sense to mandate them on residential homes.
|
| I've always assumed that once the economics make sense it'll
| be easier to build a massive solar farm and let people use
| the grid as usual. Much less risk of people falling off
| roofs,heavy objects falling off roofs, wiring being
| misconnected, weird maintenance problems, managing the ebb
| and flow of energy, etc. I don't want to have to look after
| my own panels.
| simplicio wrote:
| I don't really understand the advantage of rooftop solar over
| just putting the same number of solar panels in a field
| somewhere. Id think it would be a lot cheaper to install the
| panels in one-place then having to distribute them to a bunch
| of differently shaped and oriented roof tops, and cheaper to
| have a few large inverters instead of a bunch of small ones.
| rhplus wrote:
| Rooftop solar can help cool roofs/attics by a small amount.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| You don't have greedy third parties exploiting monopolies
| over the electricity you consume.
|
| By all means, it should be much cheaper to make large solar
| farm on some suitable place and buy the electricity from
| there. The fact that it isn't can't be explained by
| technical factors.
| epistasis wrote:
| Electrical transmission and distribution costs dwarf the
| cost of solar generation, 1x-5x the cost of solar
| generation, and you have to beef all that up for utility
| scale solar.
|
| Also, the interconnection queues for attaching your project
| to the grid are getting astronomically long now, and this
| is one of the biggest impediments to new renewable
| generation. One of the most valuable assets of a coal
| generation sites is its connection to the grid; all the
| rest of facility might have negative value, but the value
| of the connection can offset all that.
|
| Utility scale solar is great, until you consider how to
| connect it up to load.
| pyrale wrote:
| I'm honestly surprised about transmission and
| distribution costs dwarfing other costs. In my country,
| it's about 30% of power cost, and power generation costs
| here are pretty cheap, considering they've been amortized
| for a while now.
|
| Are you working in an area with a low consumer density?
|
| > Also, the interconnection queues for attaching your
| project to the grid are getting astronomically long now,
| and this is one of the biggest impediments to new
| renewable generation.
|
| Yeah, that's unsurprising. Power Grids are not something
| that adapts fast to topological change.
| simplicio wrote:
| Those costs are paid either way though, aren't they? At
| least, it seems that close to 100% of houses with roof-
| top solar are still grid connected, so I don't really see
| how they'd achieve any savings related to transmission
| and distribution.
| dpierce9 wrote:
| A decent reason to have rooftop solar is that it reduces
| daytime distribution node demand which reduces wholesale
| commodity prices and takes pressure of the electricity
| delivery infrastructure (wires, transformers, etc). These
| are real costs we all pay in terms of capacity and
| distribution.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| An interesting selection of replies you got. Here's one
| that I'm sure Americans can appreciate:
|
| If the panels are in a field somewhere, an energy company
| gets the money.
|
| If the panels are on my roof, I get the money.
| hamandcheese wrote:
| The American would of course insist that the energy
| company has a right to reach into their wallet.
| ben_w wrote:
| I suspect it's political.
|
| Technically, there's also distribution losses (just because
| we can do HVDC, 5% losses per 1000km, doesn't mean we want
| to spend the money for it); but I think it's mainly to
| avoid politicians decrying prime farmland being used for a
| thing they don't think looks as pretty as sheep grazing on
| grassy rolling hills.
| debesyla wrote:
| Depends on the country - some fields are better used for
| construction, farming or just being left as a natural
| habitat. And the roofs can't be used for any of those three
| things. So...
|
| But it depends on the country. Some countries have a whole
| lot of "low use" fields, like natural or industrial
| deserts. Others don't.
| looping__lui wrote:
| 1) you would use up less nature as no new land is
| repurposed 2) you produce it in close proximity to where
| its used
| Kon5ole wrote:
| >I don't really understand the advantage of rooftop solar
|
| I see many advantages, among them:
|
| - You don't have to find new land; roofs are ideal for
| solar.
|
| - No need for a huge project, financing, bureaucracy. Done
| in weeks.
|
| - Costs are low and spread over tons of landowners instead
| of requiring fundraising and negotiations
|
| - You can have literally thousands of workers busy creating
| solar power at the same time.
|
| - You get geographic spread and will be less affected by
| clouds over your central solar plant.
|
| - No single point of failure
|
| - Less need for large and expensive long-distance
| powerlines
|
| Rooftop solar puts the power to solve a problem in the
| hands of the people experiencing the problem and eliminates
| the need for a megaproject. This has turned out to be
| really powerful, rooftop solar has grown extremely quickly.
| digdugdirk wrote:
| Keep in mind that many US states are actively implementing
| legislation to disincentivize solar installation.
|
| Not disagreeing with your statement, just pointing out that
| there's many headwinds to a greener energy future.
| tmountain wrote:
| I have solar on my roof, but I had to negotiate a net
| metering agreement with my utility company. I have friends
| saying the same utility company is now pushing back on new
| agreements. It seems that stupid issues will need to be
| resolved before solar hits a critical mass.
|
| That said, batteries help.
| travisporter wrote:
| I live in the southeast and was quoted 35k for a 7kw
| Solar and 36k for two power walls. With tax credits,~50k
| [deleted]
| themitigating wrote:
| Have you calculated the savings each month in your
| electric bill and compared that to the cost of a loan for
| the solar? Maybe this is a bad time because of interest
| rates but my sister has a two story house in NY with
| solar and is saving between $100 and $150 a month.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Just as a comparison, I did my own 6.7kWh ground mount
| array, so I can tell you that the materials costs (to a
| homeowner) for that were about US$13k. That was in 2020 -
| not sure how those costs have moved since then, but a
| significant part of the cost you're being quoted is
| labor.
| kragen wrote:
| i'd be interested in a rough breakdown of the costs if
| you happen to remember
|
| solarserver's photovoltaik preisindex makes it seem like
| that's about 10 percent pv modules and the rest is either
| retail markup (or tariffs) or balance of system; is that
| true?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Alas, I only remember that I paid what was then wholesale
| solar (OR) almost exactly $10k for the panels, racking,
| inverter, and the little optimizers that sit under every
| panel, then about $1k for the iron tubing for the rack,
| about $600 in concrete, and another $1500 on sundry
| electrical supplies (conduit, wiring, junction boxes
| etc.)
| voisin wrote:
| I'm in BC, Canada and just pulled the trigger on 14.56 kw
| if ground mount for $42k CAD, tax included. Wondering why
| Solar is so much more expensive (ignoring the batteries)
| in your area? I'd think it would be a lot cheaper with
| more competition.
|
| Going with Longi bifacial panels - does the US restrict
| or add huge duties on Chinese panels?
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Tariffs are a big part, but labor is a significant factor
| as well.
| fbdab103 wrote:
| GP did not mention the mounting option, so I assume they
| were going for a roof installation. Which has to be a
| significant markup vs ground mount. I am only partially
| handy, but even I could throw some poles in the ground
| and a frame to hold solar panels. Doing the same for a
| roof would be significantly beyond my abilities.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Net metering is a bad deal for utilities, though. The
| "delivery" part of the cost of electricity is more than
| half; it accounts for the maintenance of the grid etc.
| People dumping energy into the grid doesn't lower that
| cost.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| The transmission corporation in the state where I live
| India has had net metering option for a while now. They
| recently introduced grid maintenance cost chargeable to
| those exporting solar power to the grid. Despite that
| it's no brainer for us here to install roof top solar
| with net metering.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Thank you for saying this out loud. Let me preface by
| saying that I am not a shill for big electricity
| companies. The cost of electricity, including green
| energy, and "net metering" needs to including the cost of
| transfer -- basically "big wires". Most people are
| delusional about the cost of transfer. One idea: Force
| generation and electricity transfer to be separate
| companies. Today, they are frequently a single company.
| This might help to create more realistic "net metering"
| pricing. Also, it _might_ help to have some gov 't rules
| for "net metering" pricing contracts.
|
| Edit
|
| So typical here: Your comment is being downvoted. It
| still stands an important point to consider.
| kragen wrote:
| by 'transfer' do you mean distribution, transmission, or
| the kind of grid operation carried out by isos and rtos
|
| with the right pricing incentives, rooftop solar ought to
| decrease the amount of transmission capacity required
| rather than increasing it, by generating the required
| power closer to the point of use
| landemva wrote:
| Who transmits electricity to the house at night? The
| lines will be sized for full loads.
| kragen wrote:
| transmission lines do not connect to houses, so it is not
| clear that you understand the distinction i am asking
| about
| pyrale wrote:
| Doesn't really change the point. Current infrastructures
| are rarely built to have distribution networks feed back
| into the HT grid. They are also not as monitored as the
| HT grid is.
|
| This may change in the future, but until some politician
| cares enough and passes the cost on to the taxpayer,
| there's going to be friction for these changes.
| landemva wrote:
| There are various lines at various voltages. Some are
| 18k+. In commercial manufacturing may be 13.8k, which is
| further stepped down to 480 and 220 and 110.
|
| The point is that unless a residence can independently
| provide for their own electricity every hour of the day,
| then the generation and distribution will be sized for
| full load.
| kragen wrote:
| it still seems that you are unaware of the distinction i
| was focusing on between transmission systems and
| distribution systems
|
| a residence that can provide _some_ of its own power
| _during peak hours_ does not need distribution,
| transmission, or (utility-scale) generation sized for
| full load; a neighborhood that can provide some of its
| own power during peak hours does not need transmission or
| (utility-scale) generation sized for full load, just
| distribution. this is a much less onerous requirement
| than the one you erroneously believe to be necessary
| landemva wrote:
| Who can generate at peak load, reliably, every hour of
| the day? Some areas have peak load in evening, when PV
| output is reduced.
| coryrc wrote:
| Most of the components don't have a meaningful "maximum
| load". There's a load with 40-year life, a load with
| 10-year life, and a load with 160-year life (and
| obviously this is a continuous curve). It's okay to spend
| some time at 10-year life load if you can spend more time
| at the 160-year load than the typical model expects.
| klyrs wrote:
| > The "delivery" part of the cost of electricity is more
| than half; it accounts for the maintenance of the grid
| etc. People dumping energy into the grid doesn't lower
| that cost.
|
| This sounds like a pretty good reason for utilities to be
| a public affair.
| epistasis wrote:
| This is an important point that applies more broadly:
| anything that lowers electricity costs for consumers is a
| "bad deal" for utilities.
|
| Since in most areas, utilities are monopolies that are
| not subject to competition, they should not be allowed to
| deny cost-saving tech advances just because it lowers
| overall system cost and their overall percentage of
| revenue and profit goes down.
| pyrale wrote:
| The thing is, there are issues with handling a grid that
| go beyond the money aspect.
|
| Balancing a grid that relies on a few production plants
| is already a non-trivial endeavour. Changing the network
| is usually a slow process. Adding a new power line to fix
| some topologic issues can take years to plan and millions
| to build. Having a robust grid means grid operators have
| to know details of the network, and be able to know how
| to reroute power when a line becomes too close to its
| limits or (worse) when a circuit-breaker opens. Studying
| the current network takes time.
|
| That's why adapting to frequent changes isn't realistic,
| purely from the carrier's perspective, without even
| looking into power production aspects.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Sure, but is that slowing down installations or just
| setting us up for a correction some time in the future when
| people install solar anyway? It seems to me that the market
| for rooftop solar is in any case supply constrained, not
| demand constrained.
|
| And I can't imagine this being very popular with homeowners
| or the politicians that represent them, regardless of their
| political color. So, there might be some backlash against
| this as well at some point.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Correct. Legislation to disincentive rooftop solar works
| until battery economics improve sufficiently, at which
| point the install velocity accelerates because you can
| sidestep unfavorable net metering or time of day pricing.
| You'll then consume your own solar during production,
| consume it from batteries when not producing, and relying
| on the grid for shortfall. The next fight will be the
| legal ability to disconnect from the grid and be self
| sufficient when they attempt to make connection charges
| onerous and mandatory.
|
| Tangentially, at scale, this is referred to as a utility
| death spiral.
|
| https://eepower.com/news/71-of-u-s-utilities-see-the-
| utility...
| kragen wrote:
| you could imagine governments charging a yearly tax for
| having solar panels installed, analogous to the property
| tax many charge on real estate
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Spain tried something similar and reversed course
| eventually.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-spain-politics-
| electricit...
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| The future of some electrity giants is "peaking" (cloudy
| / windless days and nights) and electricty transfer. They
| need to adjust for the future, instead of cry like big
| babies.
| simion314 wrote:
| I will install solar(not in US) but AFAIK batteries are not
| yet cost effective, Am I wrong and someone invented some
| cheap batteries? I expect that a company could be more
| efficient building giant batteries(chemical, gravity, etc)
| then a household buying something and maintaining it.
| [deleted]
| thomaslangston wrote:
| Batteries are not cheap, but they are cost effective based
| on local conditions.
|
| Time of use billing. The battery is generating ROI if it
| can arbitrage energy over the day.
|
| Net metering + solar. If net metering is not available, or
| sufficiently discounted, and your energy usage is not high
| enough during the day to use all your solar power, then
| batteries generate ROI.
|
| Grid stability. A battery effectively is insurance against
| outages of a few hours. With sufficient solar and
| rationing, that may extend to week long outages (think
| natural disasters).
| simion314 wrote:
| I think a solar system that also gives you independence
| from the grid is much more expensive, the program that we
| are using to get some subsidies do not include this extra
| features , so if power is out even if we have solar we
| still be out of power. Maybe in 10 years or realistically
| more a more advanced system would be worth it for my
| situation.
| seb1204 wrote:
| Yes indeed, even a small battery that allows you to shift
| the late afternoon usage of your house away from the grid
| will generate ROI by saving you electricity cost compared
| to a lower feed in tariff during the day.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| The economics of renewables are hard to beat until night falls
| and the wind stops blowing, at which point the cost jumps to
| $infinity/MWh
| adrianN wrote:
| The cost jumps at most to whatever it costs to make, store,
| and burn hydrogen.
| rstuart4133 wrote:
| > The economics of renewables are hard to beat until night
| falls and the wind stops blowing, at which point the cost
| jumps to $infinity/MWh
|
| I can understand why you might think that. But there is one
| place on the planet that's done the renewable transition now.
| And it proves you wrong.
|
| Let me introduce the state of South Australia. It's an
| advanced OECD economy, situated at the base end of Australia
| so far from anywhere it has only 1 transmission line
| connecting to a neighbouring state, and it's renowned for
| going down. Unusually for Australia, South Australia also has
| no coal or gas, and is famous for wild storms taking down
| kilometres of it's 100kv power lines.
|
| It's currently running at 80% renewables:
|
| https://reneweconomy.com.au/south-australia-hits-stunning-
| ne...
|
| No, the power does no go off at night.
|
| The transition was expensive. SA already had the most
| expensive electricity in Australia, and during the transition
| prices did go up for years. But at 80% the transition is
| almost over (although they need to build more storage), and
| the price of electricity in SA has been dropping. In fact
| it's dropped below the pre-transition price, so it's often
| below the rest of Australia's coal fired generation:
|
| https://www.aemc.gov.au/sites/default/files/2021-11/sa_fact_.
| ..
|
| With that example to follow, the rest of the Australian
| states are gritting their teeth and following South
| Australia's lead. Teeth gritting is required because we are
| predicting a 50% jump in electricity prices, during the
| transition. It's already starting to bite:
| https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/power-bills-to-rise-
| by-... . But that price hike only lasted 5 years in SA, and
| the light at the end of the tunnel is lower prices than we
| have now.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| If the wind stops blowing that means no new weather systems
| are being formed. In which case the sun must have stopped
| shining and the entire planet is doomed.
|
| Too late to worry about electricity in that case!
| megaman821 wrote:
| Another way to look at it, renewables are so cheap 100%
| renewable usage will be dominated by grid-scale battery cost.
| What is the magnitude of battery price drops that we will see
| over the next 10-15 years? The cheaper the batteries are the
| greater the incentive to build renewables.
| yen223 wrote:
| We are more likely to run out of fossil fuels before we run
| out of sunlight and wind
| yodsanklai wrote:
| And also wind/solar rely on cheap fossil energy for their
| construction.
| verisimi wrote:
| Really?
|
| Solar gives lots of electricity in the summer. But you have
| light and warmth then. In the winter when you need the
| electricity, you get maybe 1/10 of whatever the solar array is
| capable of.
|
| Wind is not generally viable, except in very windy locations.
|
| Biogas (eg anaerobic digestors) seems much more possible - but
| even these need warmth to run well - so aren't as good in the
| winter.
|
| And when you think that yes - you can pay several thousands for
| a battery to store your electricity (for a day or so), but that
| the battery will only last a few years - how people think the
| economics make sense is a mystery to me.
|
| I'm fast coming to the conclusion that all renewable tech is
| about allowing the government to have deep control over your
| energy, and to put you in a situation where you are forced to
| buy very expensive gear from mega-corps.
|
| PS - the battery thing also applies to cars. Old electric cars
| are basically not worth keeping after 10 years. Who would
| replace the old battery that costs as much as the car? Esp when
| the battery slots are incompatible with the latest advances -
| ie you can't upgrade to a better battery, but only install
| yesterday's tech.
| groestl wrote:
| > Solar gives lots of electricity in the summer. But you have
| light and warmth then. In the winter when you need the
| electricity, you get maybe 1/10 of whatever the solar array
| is capable of.
|
| The third phase of the energy transition will see massive
| overcapacity in the summer being turned into chemical energy,
| to be stored until winter. Hydrogen and synthetic methan will
| be burned, and the dissipating heat used for district
| heating. Efficiency is north of 70% for this. I don't see a
| fundamental problem.
| brutusborn wrote:
| Do you have a source for north of 70%? I'm not implying
| it's incorrect, but I haven't seen any papers with this
| level of efficiency for similar proposals.
| nasmorn wrote:
| The 70% is not for conversion into electricity but for
| total useable energy if the waste heat is used in
| district heating networks. It can reach up to 80% of the
| primary fuel used. While that seems worse then simply
| burning it at the end user you have to keep in mind that
| you also gain electricity which can be used to drive a
| heat pump. This is by far the best way to burn gas if
| heat is needed as a result.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogeneration
| groestl wrote:
| Yepp. The power plant in my area claims 83% efficiency
| for that pipeline already (natural gas to electricity &
| heat), using heat coupling (about 50% electricity). And
| they're working on powering that with hydrogen in the
| future.
| groestl wrote:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03
| 605...
|
| We're not there yet. Currently, this setup is non-
| sensical since a lot of other measures should be
| implemented first, but even currently existing tech is
| pretty efficient, all things considered. And it only gets
| better from here.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Really? What control does the government have over
| renewables? Fossil fuels bought the government and nuclear is
| entirely controlled by the government.
|
| Edit: Tesla cars at 200k miles typically retain 80% of their
| total capacity. The 10 years you quote is the full _warranty_
| period. Additionally it costs about $10k to replace the
| batteries. House hold battery's last about 20+ years, with
| 30+ possible without daily draw (quoted based on Tesla power
| wall specs).
|
| I don't know where you're getting your battery facts from,
| but they're essentially wrong. I suspect it's not renewables
| that's been captured but your biases.
| rapsey wrote:
| Lots of southern places where solar is great all year. For
| more northern locations, cutting down on coal/gas usage for
| half the year is much better than nothing.
| efitz wrote:
| It might be worse. You can't just dial up and dial down
| production and processing of fuels. And the regulatory
| climate is very hostile. So it's a reasonable business
| decision to shut down a capital intensive coal mine when
| demand drops, or to give up on natural gas pipelines
| (constant hostile regulators, activist lawfare and
| protests) when demand drops.
| seb1204 wrote:
| There is a lot of FUD raised in your high level comment. One
| technology alone will not get us far, together they can
| however.
|
| https://reneweconomy.com.au/a-near-100-per-cent-
| renewables-g...
|
| Sure 100% solar powered homes might be harder to do in the
| colder hemispheres but in many parts of the world it is
| already possible. During spring, summer and autumn you can
| cover most of your electricity with a 3kW solar panel set up.
| Shift your dishwasher, washing machine and dryer to mid day,
| charge devices when the sun shines etc. Families in poorer
| countries are likely on a much smaller carbon footprint and
| it is therefore easier to replace their energy needs with
| solar or solar thermal. Small, medium as well as large scale
| island grids are already possible and in operation.
| https://reneweconomy.com.au/wa-off-grid-school-
| runs-100-on-s...
|
| For colder climates the solar alone will not cut it,
| insulated homes, heat pumps and solar can however.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "But you have light and warmth then. "
|
| Yes, but often too much of it, so lots of people use AC,
| which uses a LOT of power. Electricity is needed all the
| year.
|
| "Wind is not generally viable, except in very windy
| locations."
|
| And there _is_ wind everywhere, but only if you build high
| enough. So yes, there are places where it makes no sense to
| build them, but there are a lot more other places, where it
| does.
|
| "I'm fast coming to the conclusion that all renewable tech is
| about allowing the government to have deep control over your
| energy"
|
| So a solar + battery powered off grid home is deep controlled
| by the government? May you explain how that works?
|
| "And when you think that yes - you can pay several thousands
| for a battery to store your electricity (for a day or so),"
|
| Have you looked up any actual numbers? Maybe do so. Also
| maybe that part, that tracks how the battery prices are
| changing. They are constantly getting cheaper.
|
| Also maybe you are aware, that the whole industry that was
| and is fossil based needs to change. Your criticism comes
| from an angle, that assumes that should be for free?
|
| Burning fossil fuels is cheap. But only if you ignore the
| external costs of climate change and air pollution.
| martyvis wrote:
| It seems you are basing your thoughts just anecdotally. For
| instance, I'm sure "winter" in USA doesn't mean 6 months of
| snow and cloud. I'm sure in some areas winter actually is
| probably better. And sure wind isn't good energy in all
| locations - but in areas where it is you can probably harness
| it at quite high density. I'm in Australia and was just
| looking at this research here looking at cost effectiveness.
| It seems to both look at the actual generation capability
| (that is amount of sun and wind) but also cost of
| distribution and whether it is going to impact wilderness or
| other uses. Have a look at the heat maps they have created.
| I'm sure there are similar studies in the USA.
| https://re100.eng.anu.edu.au/heatmaps/#map-links
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Ironic about winter, right? In some places in the world,
| there is more sunshine and less clouds during winter. Nice
| example: Tokyo (Japan) metropolis. It is typically cloudy
| and less sunny during summer months and far more sunny
| during winter months. That said, you will probably needs
| panels that can adjust tilt by season for maximum energy
| production.
| adrianN wrote:
| "I'm fast coming to the conclusion that all renewable tech is
| about allowing the government to have deep control over your
| energy, and to put you in a situation where you are forced to
| buy very expensive gear from mega-corps."
|
| That sounds like unfounded paranoia. It has literally never
| been easier to be an energy-independent anarchist living in a
| hut somewhere than today.
| agentgumshoe wrote:
| It was very easy actually before people decided electricity
| is nifty.
|
| It's quite expensive to do now if you don't want a
| reasonably large shift in lifestyle in doing so.
| toss1 wrote:
| Yup. Large shift in lifestyle to become an energy-
| independent anarchist living off of the grid without
| electricity. Not much shift if you want off-grid
| electricity, but expensive. Seems people deciding
| electricity is nifty are on to something.
|
| But with multi-kw solar+battery kits selling everywhere
| for just a few $k, and 1000-lumen LED lights pulling only
| single-digit watts, it's getting affordable to have both
| bee_rider wrote:
| I guess there is a continuum of "expense" and "lifestyle
| change," since you can pick solar installations of
| various sizes. Choose your own off grid anarchist
| experience!
| adrianN wrote:
| I'd argue that living without a fridge, a washing
| machine, a heat pump, smoke free light and a car is more
| difficult than having those things.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| Ironically most renewables are far more distributed and local
| than something like gas plants. Instead of maintaining
| continent-spanning supply chains you can just put your panels
| up and leave them for a decade or two.
| fbdab103 wrote:
| One thing I have idly considered - what to do with the excess
| daily solar energy? Presumably the problem is only going to
| magnify over the coming years. Net-metering agreements are
| continuing to get worse, so it seems that the surplus
| electricity will go to waste.
|
| Outside of bitcoin mining, is there any energy sink a
| residential user could engage to suck up the spare capacity? At
| the industrial scale - what processes can intermittently engage
| in production which is still cost effective if the equipment
| lays idle for a majority of the day?
|
| Fuel synthesis? Desalination? SETI-like computations?
| nforgerit wrote:
| Electrolyzing excess energy to produce hydrogen is a good
| option. Sure, it is not that efficient but you can store
| hydrogen and it's a useful base ingredient for many
| industrial processes. And if you need electrical energy you
| just burn it in a gas-fired power plant.
| danhor wrote:
| Unfortunately the equipment isn't cheap (though getting
| cheaper), so it only makes sense if it can run a
| significant portion (I've heard 25% in the coming decade
| for germany) of the time.
| melling wrote:
| Excellent. There are only a few thousand coal power plants
| globally
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/859266/number-of-coal-po...
|
| They generate something like 25% of greenhouse gases. When
| should be expect these to be replaced, and get the 25% drop in
| emissions?
|
| Replacing over a billion ICE cars seems with EV's is going to
| be so much more work, for example.
|
| An immediate 25% drop in emissions might even buy us a few more
| years before we need to get to net zero emissions.
| ericmay wrote:
| > Replacing over a billion ICE cars seems with EV's is going
| to be so much more work, for example.
|
| Instead we could replace ICE cars with no cars and get much
| more bang for our buck. A few changes to how we build so that
| you can walk/bike within 15 minutes for many daily needs
| would reduce energy consumption, save families money, still
| allow for a car, and everyone would be much happier and
| healthier.
|
| Cars for all transit is a bad solution regardless of ICE or
| EV.
| wolfendin wrote:
| A 'few' changes that include 'modifying or replacing a
| large amount of the constructed environment built in the US
| over the past 75 years'
|
| It's not a bad idea but let's be realistic about the amount
| of work it would take
| ericmay wrote:
| We can start with new developments, and we can just allow
| someone to sell their house in an existing neighborhood
| to someone who wants to make it a neighborhood grocery
| store. No deconstruction if "75 years of infrastructure"
| required.
| melling wrote:
| How about reporting back once you've convinced a billion
| people to change their habits?
|
| If we can't replace a few thousand coal plants, we are
| unlikely to...
|
| People wouldn't even notice the difference if we replaced
| coal power plants.
| ericmay wrote:
| > How about reporting back once you've convinced a
| billion people to change their habits?
|
| For better or worse they'll be forced out of their habits
| against their wishes because the economic physics just
| doesn't work. Unless of course they are ready and willing
| to go to war and to exterminate populations for
| resources.
|
| Ideally we avoid a lot of that by just building sidewalks
| and planning _now_ , but to your point - can't convince
| people. Who moved my cheese? Boomer central, etc.
| anovikov wrote:
| It's so funny to read discussions of "whether or not renewables
| are viable for replacement of all or most of electricity needs in
| the U.S.". Here in Europe, we have it figured many years ago and
| are replacing fossil-fueled generation at a crazy rate, will
| probably push it to a niche use (gas peakers to fill void when
| there's neither sun or wind and before enough electrolyzers are
| put online), in less than 10 years.
| lenkite wrote:
| It is not at all funny when apparently Germany had to reopen
| coal plants.
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-21/germany-b...
|
| "Utility Steag GmbH will add four hard-coal plants with a
| capacity of 2.5 gigawatts to the market within the next few
| weeks, while Uniper SE will prolong operations at its
| 345-megawatt Scholven-C hard-coal-fired power plant, the
| companies said on Friday. "
|
| https://www.npr.org/2022/09/27/1124448463/germany-coal-energ...
|
| https://www.ft.com/content/9d3c8af8-ae00-4dc5-9e85-579681450...
|
| "Germany turns to coal for a third of its electricity"
| dwan128 wrote:
| This seems really specific information that's not really
| relevant to that parent comment. How did you learn about this
| and why do you care?
| stainablesteel wrote:
| its 100% relevant, the belief in return from renewables
| (which they don't actually offer much) comes at the expense
| of making the rest of the world poorer, and making europe
| more vulnerable to energy shocks
|
| putin took advantage of this, europe put their neck in the
| guillotine for him
| lenkite wrote:
| "How did you learn about this and why do you care?"
|
| Because my german colleagues were ranting about this
| whenever there was a break/issue in "Teams meetings".
| (which happens often)
|
| Why do I care ? Because people are apparently not looking
| at reality when they make grandiose claims about renewables
| and electricity generation in Europe. Replace by renewables
| by all means - but at-least be _honest_ about the data.
| revertmean wrote:
| So Germany, a country that is well behind other European
| countries on renewables, had an over-dependence on
| Russian gas and was forced to reopen some coal plants
| when the price spiked. And you came to the conclusion
| that this was somehow a fault with renewables?
|
| How does that make sense to you?
| makomk wrote:
| Germany was at the forefront of the European push for
| renewables, though. Sure, they never produced as much
| electricity from renewable sources as countries with
| really great hydroelectric resources, but those
| countries' experience isn't that relevant to everyone
| else since the countries which could do that generally
| already did so before renewable energy even became
| fashionable in the first place. In terms of wind and
| solar they were way out in front of everyone else (they
| apparently had the highest installed capacity of solar in
| the world for a while, and they still have the third-
| highest wind turbine capacity behind only the much larger
| USA and China).
| looping__lui wrote:
| Because renewables (which I am personally fond of; PV on
| my roof) cannot cover Germany's electricity
| needs/baseload but only supplement it.
|
| Driven by an ideological agenda of Ms Merkel and the
| green party, they shut down nuclear power plants (needed
| to cover our base load in chemical/manufacturing/whatnot)
| and replaced it with gas from Russia (don't ask me why).
| Now that Russian gas isn't exactly on the table anymore
| and we not only depend on Russian gas for heating but
| also a great deal for electricity (nuclear was shut down,
| remember) we have no choice but ramp up to coal thanks to
| the Green party.
|
| The fact that Germany's "greenest" (carbon emissions-
| wise) day was still worst than France's most polluting
| day speaks volumes.
|
| Wind power and solar DO NOT suffice to cover Germany's
| electricity need unless you go full-scale
| deindustrialisation (which the Green party certainly
| would favor). I'm all in for PV on everyone's roofs, I
| have geothermal heating for my house, I built everything
| low energy - but please lets stop the ideological
| destruction of our economy and our environment by the
| Green party's "vision".
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| > Driven by an ideological agenda of Ms Merkel and the
| green party, they shut down nuclear power plants (needed
| to cover our base load in chemical/manufacturing/whatnot)
| and replaced it with gas from Russia (don't ask me why).
|
| You have been misinformed. They shut down nuclear to
| replace it with renewables. They already used Russian gas
| at the time.
| looping__lui wrote:
| You cannot replace nuclear with renewables in Germany.
| You cannot shut down production if the sun doesnt shine
| or there is no wind. There is a non-trivial amount of
| electricity that needs to be available 24/7 and there
| needs to be a source of electricity that can be ramped up
| quickly when demands spike or renewable isn't delivering.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| you actually can. it's expensive, but it's an option.
| what's the cost compared to nuclear? I'm not sure.
| looping__lui wrote:
| Enlighten me how. 1) What do you do at night? 2) What do
| you do if there isn't sufficient supply? 3) What if there
| is too much supply?
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| 1. night currently isn't a significant problem. there's
| usually lots of wind, businesses aren't open and people
| don't use a lot of electricity when they're asleep. this
| may become worse overtime with increasing numbers of EVs
| charging at night.
|
| 2. this is the hard part, but there is good news.
|
| solar and wind over large areas are fairly consistent and
| with HVDC you can transfer power 1-2 thousand miles with
| low losses. there's also a small but rapidly growing
| amount of storage on the grid. right now, we treat hydro
| as primarily generation with a side benefit of storage,
| but it's shifting to primary storage with a side benefit
| of generation. doing so gives most grids a decent ability
| to scale up and down renewable generation at will.
| lastly, you can use fossil fuels when everything else
| isn't giving you enough. a fossil fuel plant that runs a
| couple times a year for a few hours is a lot better than
| 40% of the grid being fossil fuel year round.
|
| there's also a decent amount you can do in terms of
| demand shaping as the grid gets smarter. electric hot
| water tanks can be used as batteries where you set them
| up to turn on when there's excess power. you can also do
| things like make agreements with energy hungry sectors
| (like ore refining) to throttle output when necessary
| (compensating them for the lost revenue).
|
| 3. this is easy. refill batteries, smelt aluminum, turn
| off generation.
| looping__lui wrote:
| Do you have any idea how enormous the electricity
| consumption of our industry is where 24/7 production just
| is going on and on? Take a look here:
| https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE
|
| If I eyeball the electricity consumption correctly, the
| lowest consumption was like 50 GW at 3 am in the morning
| and the highest was 60GW (+20%) at 1pm.
|
| Our freakin grid is NOT capable of managing an additional
| load for EVs as of today or any time soon. We cannot
| produce enough electricity to move gasoline driven cars
| to EV because we right now barely manage to keep or
| industry alive and geothermal heatpumps and whatnot will
| strain it further. So regarding 1) its BULLSH*T its a
| massive problem.
|
| 2) Where do you live that you believe Germany can store
| electricity in hydro? Why do you believe there is demand
| shaping when we literally need a constantly high load
| (see 1)???
|
| 3) Yes, I understand. Easy peasy. If i get a battery for
| my solar panels, the investment costs are effectively
| above 30cents/kWh which is bogus. Yes, you can just turn
| off that aluminium smelter or chemical plant running a
| continuous process.
|
| You clearly have never been close to an industry complex,
| worked in anything remotely related to "Germany's
| industrial backbone". It's ideological wishful thinking.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| I actually agree on this, but I was just replying to your
| statement that they decided to shut down nuclear to
| replace it with russian gas.
| looping__lui wrote:
| How would you technically replace nuclear with
| renewables? How do you manage excessive/insufficient
| supply?
| xorcist wrote:
| Germany already had Russian gas, by pipeline, the
| cheapest fossil gas with the cheapest delivery method.
| Plans were already in place for another pipeline with
| twice the capacity.
|
| If this choice was actually made to please the greens, as
| the theory goes, that would have been a first for
| Germany, a country built on its close ties between
| industry and government. Not to mention that the greens
| aren't usually fond of burning fossil fuel.
|
| Occam's razor should suffice to understand the political
| process that went down here.
| lenkite wrote:
| Why did you think its Germany alone ? It's Austria,
| France and the Netherlands as well. France and Austria
| both re-opened coal power plants. Even the Netherlands
| removed their cap on coal power.
|
| How does that make sense to you ?
| revertmean wrote:
| What, France? The poster child for the nuclear fans had
| to re-open coal plants?
|
| Well, I hadn't heard that. That's interesting.
|
| It makes sense to me because they were all clearly
| dependent on Russian gas, which is what caused the price
| spike in electricity across Europe. It still doesn't make
| sense to me that you think it's something to do with
| renewables.
| looping__lui wrote:
| ... they probably had to ramp up to help out their German
| neighbors when their electricity grid was close to
| collapose because of a non-sustainable idealogically
| driven strategy authored by the Green part being
| completely oblivious of today's reality.
| haizhung wrote:
| No, they had to reopen them because their nuclear plants
| stopped working. Too hot, not enough water in the rivers
| due to climate change to cool down the nuclear plants -
| so they shut them off, and France was buying renewable
| energy from Germany. So you got your facts exactly the
| wrong way.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/even-crisis-
| germany-...
|
| Turns out, nuclear is not the end all, be all solution.
| Who knew?
|
| I don't know why HN has such a rage boner for Germany's
| energy transition, it doesn't seem that triggered by any
| other country.
| looping__lui wrote:
| Maybe because it's not a transition but an ideology
| driven f** up? I live near the coal plants they are
| firing up again. I'm all pro PV (have one), I heat my
| house on geothermal, I spent a ton on energy efficiency
| for my house. But this entire "renewable transition",
| "getting out of nuclear" and coming up with other random
| ideas in a industry focused economy is just bogus in
| execution.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| Comparing France to Germany in this respect is totally
| misleading. France reignited some coal power plants but
| the impact of this is negligible compared to the
| consequences of Germany's atrocious anti-nuclear stance.
|
| France generated less than 1% of electricity with coal in
| 2022:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1263322/electrical-
| produ...
|
| While in Germany it was over 30%:
| https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-
| energy-c...
|
| There is a qualitative difference between an occassional
| need for some coal in particularly adverse situations,
| and relying on it for almost a third of your electricity
| needs.
| Hanschri wrote:
| You left out the specific reason as to why they re-opened
| coal plants at the end of 2022:
|
| "Germany is deploying about 3 gigawatts of coal-fired
| generation to ensure there are enough electricity supplies to
| make it through the winter amid curtailed natural gas
| supplies from Russia."
|
| This was done out of necessity to ensure Germany did not run
| out of natural gas during the winter months as the gas
| imports from Russia have more or less dried up. I am not
| German nor am I up to date on their measures to transitioning
| their grid to renewable energy, but if anything this war is
| accelerating the transition for many countries in Europe.
| Even if this means they have to temporarily re-open fossile
| fuel power plants.
|
| This could possibly have been avoided had the German
| government not shut its nuclear power plants down in the
| previous years, but that's another discussion.
| legulere wrote:
| Another reason is the maintenance issues in French nuclear
| reactors.
| lordofgibbons wrote:
| You left out the reason why Germany was so dependent on
| Russian gas for energy: their out of touch with reality,
| (the conspiratorial amongst us might say fossil fuel
| company funded) plans to completely rely on fossil fuels
| until a transition to renewables can be completed in
| multiple decades.
|
| All of this while they already have a viable green
| solution: Nuclear, which they planned on completely
| shutting down by 2022.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| Oh please. Cheap Energy is what made Germany the
| industrial powerhouse of Europe. Getting gas from Russia
| was one of the best things Merkel did for her country and
| its citizens.
| looping__lui wrote:
| What???? 1) It was Schroder (not Merkelh that started
| this entire gas thing with Russia (getting paid by
| Gazprom still) 2) Merkel decided in a completely
| irrational overnight move to just phase out nuclear.
| There was no strategy, just a personal preference by her
| ideological conviction Energy in Germany has been
| significantly more expensive than in the rest of Europe
| for probably a solid decade now... The big challenge from
| what I see is somehow managing to "balance the ingestion
| of renewable energy which is very unpredictable and
| random" and the "actual need" which is rather constantly
| high and predictable.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| > It was Schroder
|
| Northstream 2 was planned under Merkel.
|
| > Merkel decided in a completely irrational overnight
| move to just phase out nuclear.
|
| No, it was an almost unanimous vote where even the
| opposition agreed with the government[0]. Nothing
| irrational about it, they decided to go for renewable
| instead of nuclear.
|
| - 0:
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jun/30/germany-
| end-nu...
| looping__lui wrote:
| Oh, Merkel certainly made it worse, but Schroder had a
| leading role...
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/23/world/europe/schroder-
| ger...
|
| The opposition agreeing - you mean like the Green party
| who wanted to end nuclear like forever? Merkel had
| essentially absolute power in Germany and was leading
| some major changes that are hard to believe now... 1)
| shut down nuclear, 2) abolish compulsory military
| service, 3) open the borders for an uncontrolled influx
| of male refugees, 4) completely ignore Corona at first
| and then bulldoze over our Basic Law.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| > The opposition agreeing - you mean like the Green party
| who wanted to end nuclear like forever?
|
| No, I mean pretty much everyone: 513 yes to 79 no.
|
| > abolish compulsory military service
|
| hard to believe? I guess we agree to disagree.
| looping__lui wrote:
| You need a viable military in an advanced and wealthy
| society. If you disagree you are imho naive.
|
| A military coup is one of the largest risks to any
| society. The "best" people to serve the military are the
| young people that stand to lose their country and have a
| million things that they get excited about - except going
| to war and fighting.
|
| A society itself needs to protect itself.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| Coups always happen through a complicit or indifferent
| army. Having no army (except some small elite corps)
| seems the best way to prevent coups to me.
|
| Also you don't need weapons and war to resist. It's much
| more effective to perform civil disobedience on a mass
| scale. Paralize the country and refuse to obey. Gandhi
| docet.
|
| It's also what Ukraine should do instead of sacrificing
| entire generations of their men and women to protect some
| hundred square miles of land, destroying any value those
| lands might have in the process.
| htfu wrote:
| That'll work as long as the attackers are unwilling to
| simply murder civilians. Did you somehow miss Bucha?
|
| They're not protecting their land, they're protecting
| themselves. If a significant portion gets shot either way
| it's better to at least be able to shoot back, no?
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| > Did you somehow miss Bucha?
|
| Wars tend to allow for this kind of tragedy to happen.
| Much harder to slaughter people during a civilian
| disobedience act that is globally covered by media.
| Brutal repression of demonstrations also causes much more
| outrage, basically backfiring if your intent is to stop
| them. Any dictator worth a shot knows this very well.
|
| > If a significant portion gets shot either way it's
| better to at least be able to shoot back, no?
|
| False dychotomy. People who protest the war in Russia are
| being arrested, not shot in the streets. So why do you
| think that would happen in this case? Because "Russians
| are Orcs"?
| htfu wrote:
| Another recent example is Myanmar. Started off as civil
| disobedience and protests but the military shot them up
| and it's now a civil war. Certainly the population would
| be better off had it not initially been a one-sided
| fight?
|
| People who protest the war in Russia get arrested not
| shot because that's all it takes to suppress them. This
| is an argument against your point, not for it. Nor does
| it mean that Russia wouldn't apply harder measures
| elsewhere, if they thought it necessary.
|
| Russians aren't referred to as orcs, only their soldiers.
| landemva wrote:
| > to ensure Germany did not run out of natural gas
|
| Russian gas to Germany is being replaced by gas from USA.
| And liquefying gas for boat shipping is not a cheap/green
| process.
|
| https://apnews.com/article/germany-government-olaf-scholz-
| bu...
| lenkite wrote:
| Its already DST in Germany and these coal plants are still
| open. Let's actually wait and see if they are truly shut
| down this year. My guess is no - and my german colleagues
| believe they will still be open for the next several years
| - providing a third to half of Germany's electricity.
|
| (But keep it hush-hush and lets not talk about this dirty
| fact on HN - it looks bad you know ?)
| looping__lui wrote:
| They will be required to cover the additional load from
| the nuclear plants we will shut down this year. Germany
| will produce more carbon emissions than probably almost
| ever...
| soitgoes511 wrote:
| Is this why we were having energy shortages during the winter
| time and there was a rush to get the nuclear reactors back
| online in France ? I don't consider that having, "it figured
| out". If you want to discuss prices.. my place of employment is
| paying millions more euro this year than last. The increase in
| energy cost is also leading to increase in water costs.. I
| could go on, but you get the point.
| locallost wrote:
| That's some rewriting of history considering it's less than a
| year old. The scramble to get France's nuclear plants back
| online was because they completely failed in the first place,
| and at a critical time. Half of the fleet was offline most of
| the year, and half of those were completely unplanned and
| difficult to fix [1]. And it's still happening [2]. This
| failure was one of the biggest reasons for the electricity
| crunch and high prices - the expected output of France was
| missing and they themselves became net importers. [3]
|
| Thank God the reliable renewables delivered.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/business/nuclear-
| power-fr... [2]
| https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/frances-nuclear-
| watc... [3] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/sweden-
| tops-france-e...
| soitgoes511 wrote:
| I don't know how anything I said was re-writing history.
| The fact was over half the reactors were down due to
| corrosion and need of maintenance, yes. There was indeed a
| push to get them back online. I am happy the nytimes and
| reuters gave you such an informed perspective. The fact is
| we needed the nuclear reactors back online or we wouldn't
| have had power in sub-freezing tempetatures. So, sure..
| thank God for the renewables.
| locallost wrote:
| It's the framing that we were having energy shortages
| because of renewables and that renewables were somehow
| responsible for the high prices. That is clearly not the
| case.
|
| 1) the shortages stem from the failure of France's
| nuclear power to deliver
|
| 2) the high prices were partly because of shortages, and
| the wholesale prices were the highest in France all year
|
| I am too lazy to post prices for lst year, but they can
| be easily verified - besides you are not really
| interested in facts you don't like. Another thing that
| can be verified is that those coal plants that were put
| on emergency stand by had a very very low capacity factor
| and all the coal that was stockpiled early in the year
| was basically left unused. Because for all the talk of
| base load and reliability, when push came to shove,
| renewables kept the lights on.
|
| The high prices are not so bad overall, there is and was
| a big incentive to build more capacity fast. Next years
| will be transformative, and it will all be led by
| renewables.
| ericmay wrote:
| Wouldn't rushing to get nuclear reactors online just make the
| OPs point stronger? Geopolitics of oil showed the weakness of
| relying on fossil fuels.
| soitgoes511 wrote:
| The point is that Europe does not have energy in general
| figured out. If I am being told I can be fined for having
| my thermostat higher than 19C (true for children school
| also), than we are far from that statement.
| ericmay wrote:
| Or maybe Europe does have it figured out and an
| unforeseen shock to the system temporarily set back
| plans?
| soitgoes511 wrote:
| I love the idea of clean energy. But the energy
| "sobriety" we have been experiencing this year in France
| particularly has been painful. TF1 educated the
| population on the nightly news on how to block our door
| jams to not lose energy and warmth. Villages were
| creating centers for people to go and stay warm.
| Boulangeries have been shutting down because they cannot
| afford the still increasing cost of energy. Whatever the
| plan is, it currently isn't working.
| pyrale wrote:
| > Boulangeries have been shutting down because they
| cannot afford the still increasing cost of energy.
|
| I still shudder at the perspective of a looming croissant
| shortage.
| MrPatan wrote:
| Ukrainians think it's hilarious, yes.
| adrianN wrote:
| "A crazy rate" that is unfortunately still much too slow to
| limit warming to 2deg or below.
| anovikov wrote:
| Forget global warming. Of course it will not be stopped. All
| fossil fuels will be burnt till full exhaustion of reserves,
| until the remainder is completely uneconomical to extract.
| But then the nations that were the last to start switching
| will find their economies too inefficient and expensive to
| run with the fossil fuels while everyone else is using much
| cheaper renewables, and will probably no longer have money
| for the switch, ending up in a major predicament.
| maxerickson wrote:
| It's more or less a tautology that extraction will continue
| until it isn't worth doing.
|
| The thing is, abundant cheap energy will make it less and
| less worth doing.
| staunton wrote:
| > Of course it will not be stopped
|
| One way or another, it will definitely be stopped. At some
| point, civilization collapse would end the burning of
| fossil fuels at scale. The question is at what point it
| will stop and whether any tipping points are passed which
| accelerate the process out of control.
|
| It's far from obvious that all efforts to limit carbon
| emissions will fail and to say otherwise is deeply cynical.
| Measures are being taken already. They are not enough to
| reach the claimed goals and the claimed goals will probably
| not be reached, but that's very different from saying
| warming will not be stopped at all, let alone "of course".
| More measures will follow once the adverse effects get
| worse in industrialized countries (e.g. deaths and economic
| damage due to changing climate and weather events).
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Expanding renewable energy is exactly what will make the
| fossil fuels uneconomical to extract.
|
| I won't happen by magic. Even with their ever increasing
| scarcity, as long as no alternative exists, they will be
| economical.
| pyrale wrote:
| > But then the nations that were the last to start
| switching will find their economies too inefficient and
| expensive to run with the fossil fuels while everyone else
| is using much cheaper renewables, and will probably no
| longer have money for the switch, ending up in a major
| predicament.
|
| If all the fossil fuel is burned, we will probably never
| reach that point ; society breakdown will happen sooner.
| zeckalpha wrote:
| As climate risk increases demand for renewables, we may
| actually see a decline in price for fossil fuels, at least
| for a time, resulting in prolonged bimodal consumption.
|
| I think we've been in this artificially low fossil fuel
| price environment since the beginning though: the
| externalities aren't priced in.
| goatlover wrote:
| Was limiting warning below 2deg ever realistic? I can't
| understand why 1.5deg when it was clear to everyone that
| there was no way in hell that is happening. Why not set a
| realistic goal and try to figure out the best way to deal
| with the consequences?
| adrianN wrote:
| We've known about climate change for at least fifty years
| now. Every goal we set since then has been "realistic" with
| considerable effort. Unfortunately we never even attempted
| to reach them, so we raise the goal by a degree or two
| every decade or two.
| pyrale wrote:
| It depends on what you call realistic. If your objection to
| realism is that it's hard to convince politicians to act on
| this topic, then 2deg is still not very realistic, and the
| future is likely going to be very bleak.
|
| If it's about having the understanding and technical means
| to define new targets for our economy in order to reach
| that goal, even if it means reducing our consumption, then
| yes, it was a reasonable goal back when we started
| considering the issue seriously.
| stainablesteel wrote:
| the reason the article only focuses on the US is because this
| mindset caused europe to become a massive coal user again - its
| a distraction piece
|
| renewables do not have this kind of obvious benefit, fossil
| fuels and fission are the best options until we can get fusion
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| The EU relied on coal for 15.8% of its electricity generation
| in 2022 vs. 40% renewable
| (https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/how-is-eu-
| el....) while the US's coal share is 20% vs. 21% renewable
| (posted article).
| stainablesteel wrote:
| this conveniently leaves out how much renewables fluctuate,
| as well as how much more inefficient it is to transport
| energy coming from renewables if these fluctuations happen
| over large distances.
|
| either way it ends up getting offset by coal
| egberts1 wrote:
| Good for renewable energy.
|
| Now, make it a 24/7 steady supply of renewable energy.
|
| We'll wait.
| rstuart4133 wrote:
| > We'll wait.
|
| You can stop waiting now. https://reneweconomy.com.au/south-
| australia-hits-stunning-ne...
|
| OECD ecomony, averaging 80% renewables (wind, solar primarily).
| The other 20% is gas. They have enough generation now. To rid
| of that 20% (I'm not sure the economics makes sense) they need
| to build pumped storage.
|
| Oh, and now they've made the transition, electricity prices are
| cheaper than non-renewable generation of 5 years ago.
| [deleted]
| photochemsyn wrote:
| This would have happened a bit earlier if the most efficient and
| long-lasting solar panels, monocrystalline silicon, had been
| developed by US manufacturers instead of by Chinese ones. All the
| tariffs applied by state and federal regulators on the import of
| these panels have been about slowing the rate of solar PV
| production in the USA on behalf of the fossil fuel and investor-
| owned utility sectors.
|
| https://www.pv-magazine.com/2018/04/14/the-weekend-read-chin...
|
| Claims that these tariffs have some human rights motivations are
| nonsensical, would the US block imports of Saudi oil over human
| rights abuses there? Of course not - but silicon solar panels, oh
| my!
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/china/exclusive-us-blocks-more...
|
| It's no surprise that the pushback by politicians owned by
| investors in fossil fuels and utilities has been so intense -
| energy is one of the most lucrative investments, and it's rather
| difficult to control and meter the flow of sunlight to homes, in
| comparison to natural gas or crude oil.
|
| Notably, the USA has no R & D programs or subsidy programs like
| the CHIPS act (for semiconductors for computation, not for power
| production) aimed at rapidly expanding monocrystalline silicon
| production.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| You're forgetting labor costs in the US are much higher and
| environmental regulations are much more strict. So US made
| panels will unlikely to ever be price competitive with the
| Chinese made ones.
| Teever wrote:
| I was under the impression that most of the cost difference
| between Chinese and American panels was due to dumping
| efforts by the Chinese government.
| philipkglass wrote:
| Dumping is when a producer sells their product at a lower
| price abroad than they do domestically [1]. For example, if
| Chinese solar panels sell for the Renminbi equivalent of 35
| cents per watt domestically, but are sold for 30 cents per
| watt in the United States, that would be dumping.
|
| As far as I can tell, Chinese solar manufacturers do not
| engage in this sort of straightforward and easy to define
| dumping. They sell their products at comparable low prices
| both domestically and abroad. The United States claims that
| advantages given to Chinese solar manufacturers (like low
| cost land and industrial partnerships with local
| governments) are unfair and counters them with measures
| termed "anti dumping" tariffs. Given how many perks
| American states and municipalities roll out to attract
| manufacturing jobs, including solar jobs [2], I don't see
| how the Chinese incentives for solar manufacturing go too
| far. I rather think it's something like the situation with
| Canadian softwood exports to the US [3]: the US
| government's position is dubious, but it's too powerful in
| practice to be held to account.
|
| [1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dumping.asp
|
| [2] https://bgindependentmedia.org/first-solar-site-
| promising-50...
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93United_Sta
| tes_s...
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Come on, you can make silicon monocrystalline products
| without pollution with appropriate controls, it's no
| different from the computer chip production process. See
| CHIPS act?
|
| China doesn't have a big natural gas / crude oil sector
| trying to block development of alternatives to their
| products, that's the difference.
| [deleted]
| nroets wrote:
| Why should the US try to lead solar panel technology ? China
| has many talented engineers and plenty of venture capital. I'd
| prefer them to invest it in solar panel manufacturing and power
| electronics rather than social media, ai or Telco technology.
| rainsford wrote:
| Relying on a non-friendly country for something so crucial as
| energy is generally not a great position to be in,
| particularly if that country has rival world power ambitions.
| Europe and Russia have provided a great recent example of why
| you don't want to be reliant on potential enemies for your
| energy needs, and while the situation between the US and
| China is not the same and solar is different than fossil
| fuels, it's still a factor worth thinking about. The US would
| be a lot more secure being able to rely on a domestic solar
| industry as solar becomes more and more important.
| lube wrote:
| I think your vision is too US centric, US hegemony lead to
| disruptions to foreign nations like afghanistan, iraq,
| libya, etc. My pov from latinamerica is that my country
| could be next, and neither your culture nor your "business
| class" seems the future(we reflect your cultural hegemony
| with our version of shitty role models), si why not
| challenge US hegemony?
| goodluckchuck wrote:
| Hegemony is inevitable, prosperous, and peaceful. Anyone
| who would challenge US hegemony would either intend to
| establish themselves their own hegemony or would be
| patsies creating a situation where another force could do
| so. Do would we be better off under a global islamic
| caliphate deriving from afghanistan, iraq, libya, etc...
| or a Chinese hegemoney, or a German hegemony? I'd put
| American hegemony up against any civilization that the
| world has ever seen in terms of equity, prosperity, and
| peace.
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| For the Americans. In the meanwhile, the rest of the
| world is so sick of your hegemony, it would rather see
| anyone else, or better yet, state of a never ending
| direct fight between the contenders while the rest of the
| world is left alone.
|
| Something like Star Trek no involvement rule.
| iamerroragent wrote:
| I'm sorry you don't enjoy our Coca-Cola, McDonald's,
| Apple, and Hollywood.
|
| I'm really really sorry that our Navy is used to protect
| trade. Terrible of the U.S.
|
| I'm sorry that the U.S. likes to have allies with
| democracies and a thriving, consuming, middle-class.
| Teever wrote:
| I'm always baffled by this sort of defensive and childish
| response that happens whenever someone makes legitimate
| criticisms of American foreign policy and expresses a
| desire for a world where their needs are given a higher
| priority. It hints at a deep-rooted inferiority complex
| in the American identity.
|
| Are things better than they were under American hegemony?
| Sure. Could they be even better if we weren't stuck in
| this local maximum, Absolutely.
|
| Anxiously lashing out at people because they express a
| desire for improvements in their society, and
| improvements in American society isn't productive.
| snozolli wrote:
| _whenever someone makes legitimate criticisms of American
| foreign policy and expresses a desire for a world where
| their needs are given a higher priority._
|
| You think the grandparent comment is what you describe
| here?
|
| Ironically, GGP's comment was a well thought out comment
| supporting American 'hegemony'.
|
| I think you have your "lash out" backwards in this case.
| iamerroragent wrote:
| I'm surprised you think this is a lash out?
|
| "Are things better than they were under American
| hegemony? Sure. Could they be even better if we weren't
| stuck in this local maximum, Absolutely."
|
| Yeah! Criticize America so it can be better but taking a
| stance that world would magically be better off without
| America, or even that the world doesn't want America
| while obsessively consuming American products seems
| rather childish in my opinion.
| Teever wrote:
| You really think a three line "sorry, not sorry" reply
| isn't lashing out?
| iamerroragent wrote:
| No offense to you but I think you're really miss reading
| here and/or looking to interpret something that was meant
| to illustrate a point rather than be outright
| deliberately condescending which appears to be how you
| wish to interpret it.
| themitigating wrote:
| It's hilarious because you also probably constantly
| complain about Hollywood and how the middle class is
| dying.
| Paradigma11 wrote:
| Usually the contenders dont fight in their own countries
| but in the rest of the world using proxy wars.
| irrational wrote:
| I'd put American hegemony up against any civilization
| that the world has ever seen in terms of guns, mass
| shootings, and being okay with children being killed in
| their classrooms.
| Fatnino wrote:
| If you think your own country is in bad enough shape that
| it could be next on a list that includes Afghanistan,
| Iraq and Libya _as they were just prior to US
| involvement_ you need to have a good long think about
| fixing your own problems fast. Each of those countries
| might have been "stable" by some definition of the word,
| but they all had pretty crappy organizations monopolizing
| power. US interference certainly didn't fix their
| underlying problems but it did dislodge the badguys on
| top. (unfortunately, often just leaving the spot open for
| some other badguys because aforementioned underlying
| problems)
|
| Realistically, the next country on the US hitlist is
| probably Iran, not your latam home country. But first the
| American public needs to get back it's war appetite, and
| the shooting in Ukraine needs to simmer down (probably
| within a year, along new borders that are pretty close to
| what the current battle lines are), and China needs to
| not distract us by starting with Taiwan.
| kodah wrote:
| Latin American oil processing is at an all time high.
|
| Latin America:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/961585/latin-america-
| cru...
|
| US: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=
| PET&s=M...
|
| Every government has to think about energy independence,
| of which oil production is part of that story. Our oil
| economics are also intertwined with US policy, which
| renewables are helping undo in the US. That's to say, US
| society is trying to put a cap on how energy independence
| involves in conflict either directly or indirectly.
|
| Latin Americas story is different: https://www.sscnet.ucl
| a.edu/polisci/faculty/ross/papers/work...
|
| > Abstract: In Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, oil-
| producing countries have civil wars at a significantly
| higher rate than countries without oil. Is there also a
| link between oil and armed rebellion in Latin America?
|
| > I argue the answer is "yes," but with an important
| qualification. In the rest of the world, oil heightens
| the danger of both "governmental" conflicts (over control
| of the existing state) and secessionist conflicts (to
| form new states); but in Latin America, oil is only
| linked to governmental conflicts. This is not because
| Latin American petroleum has unusual properties, but
| because the region is uniquely "secession-proof": there
| have been no separatist conflicts in Latin America for
| over a century. I explore two possible explanations for
| this anomaly: the region's long history of sovereign
| statehood, which may have caused national borders to
| become more widely-accepted; and obstacles to the
| mobilization of indigenous groups along ethnic lines.
|
| Tldr; instead of getting involved in foreign wars to save
| your oil supply, it's cheaper to centralize the
| oppression back home.
| Armisael16 wrote:
| The tariffs and policy in questions are being set by the
| US - of course the discussion is US-centric, the question
| being discussed is 'how should the US be approaching
| this?'
| adventured wrote:
| Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya were all failed states when the
| US intervened / invaded (which is also not a good
| argument for invading those nations; the US betrayed its
| own self-interest in the second Iraq war).
|
| If your nation is run by a dictatorship, it's a failed
| state.
|
| If your nation is a theocracy, it's a failed state.
|
| You'll notice the distinct lack of the US invading well-
| functioning, democratic nations (we share a remarkably
| unguarded, massive border with Canada).
|
| You generally can't challenge US hegemony, it's far too
| large, and still expanding. China is the only entity
| since the 1950s Soviet Union that could even attempt it.
| For example while the EU's strongest economies have been
| largely going sideways for ~15 years economically (since
| the great recession), the US has added nearly $10
| trillion to its economy (a further ~65-70% expansion in
| 15 years). Who is going to keep up with that, at that
| size (other than China)?
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I think their main point was that it doesn't make sense
| for the US to challenge US hegemony.
| gibbonsrcool wrote:
| The second biggest geopolitical opponent to the US,
| Russia, is in major decline. Their primary opponent,
| China, is slowing down and has enormous domestic problems
| to deal with that are projected to worsen for a long
| period of time. The US was supposed to be behind in AI
| research, but technologically, they're ahead. I believe
| that once AI is used to exert geopolitical pressure,
| economically or through counter action, it will be a
| runaway advantage. If this were Star Wars I think we'd be
| at the point where we were only starting to see the rise
| of the Empire.
| somesortofsystm wrote:
| Just stop. China as a manufacturing solution for anyone but
| the people of the region must cease.
|
| It is utterly inefficient to produce stuff far, far from
| where it will be used.
|
| Spreading things out like this is balls.
|
| Lets start building again. If we're to get off this dust-
| ball, we have to learn to do things ourselves, again.
| themitigating wrote:
| Isn't it just economics? How can a US company compete with
| the cost of labor?
| nforgerit wrote:
| And how is the economics changing if you internalize
| social and environmental cost?
| themitigating wrote:
| Can you elaborate, I don't know what you mean
| nforgerit wrote:
| Well I'm calling bullshit on neoliberal free-trade
| ideology based on voodoo economics which just looks at
| simple measurable factors like "cost of labor" completely
| ignoring social cost (local unemployment, mass migration,
| social tensions, etc.) and ecological cost (pollution,
| climate crisis, etc.) which were commonly socialized (tax
| money) in case of a concrete crisis. Not a personal
| attack, sorry if it sounded like that.
| dgacmu wrote:
| That's not necessarily true. Shipping (via ocean) of
| finished expensive small products is cheap and quite low
| carbon on a per device basis as long as you don't mind the
| delay. One of the reasons china is the place to manufacture
| is that the electronics manufacturing _inputs_ are now
| concentrated there, as is the know-how.
| amelius wrote:
| Would you rather spread all the pollution sources over the
| world as opposed to keeping them in one place (wherever
| that may be)?
| newyankee wrote:
| It also depends on the weight, volume and nature of the
| product (whether perishable)
| rapsey wrote:
| Chinese panels are cheap because they use slave labor to
| produce them.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| Honest question: so why aren't iPhones cheap?
|
| EDIT: thanks for all the answers, IIUC it boils down to
| "nobody cares if a luxury item from a western company is
| built on slavery, the only thing that matters is that poor
| people who built it cannot afford it"
| lemoncookiechip wrote:
| Because they have a half-eaten apple as a logo.
| rcarr wrote:
| Because you're not just paying for a physical device.
| You're also paying for the software that runs on it which
| is best in class. And before people start saying it's
| not, how many people are running 7 year old androids
| compared to iPhones? In USD, A brand new iPhone, kept for
| 7 years works out at 32 cents a day - phenomenally cheap
| for something integral to modern day life. And that's not
| even taking into account you can most likely sell it for
| $50/$100 at the end of that seven years, making it even
| cheaper.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > how many people are running 7 year old androids
|
| Ironically, me.
|
| I changed the battery last year, it costed me 13$ (~12
| euros), it is as good as new.
|
| Now it might be that my Android phone is Chinese as well,
| so it actually costed me less than 10C/ a day. Even if I
| had to replace my Android smartphone, I could have
| changed it 3 times in the past 7 years and still spend
| less than buying an iPhone that lasted me 7 years.
|
| I could still easily sell it for 30-40 euros, making it
| even cheaper.
| passwordoops wrote:
| Because people are willing to pay the price point. In
| places I've been, rule of thumb for pricing is usually 3x
| BoM. I've heard (sorry no reference, just word of mouth)
| Apple targets at least 5x.
|
| Side-note: if anyone believes the idea that companies
| pass savings to the consumer... Well I have a nice bridge
| in Brooklyn they might be interested in
| nroets wrote:
| Because Apple sets the price according to what people are
| willing to pay. The price isn't directly related to the
| manufacturing cost or the development cost.
| themitigating wrote:
| Is that true? In India I thought I read how people have
| fake iPhones because of what a luxury symbol it is. That
| purchasing one for the vast majority of people is out of
| the question.
|
| There must be some limit to how low it can be sold for.
| bialpio wrote:
| I have experienced a culture shock after moving to the US
| and looking at prices for some items. The best summary I
| have is "in USA, the thing is worth as much as people are
| willing to pay for it", unlike the previous mindset I
| had, roughly "take the cost of producing something and
| add X% markup" where X is not too high.
| catiopatio wrote:
| Where did you come from?
|
| What you've described is specific to humanity, not the US
| -- "the thing is worth as much as people are willing to
| pay for it" is a near universal truth.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| Not fully true. There are incredibly competent
| manufacturing engineers living there. By a factor of at
| least 5 over the US
| sremani wrote:
| I am not contending Chinese are any shape or form
| incapable, given the factory floor of the world for a
| generation they do have best of the best.
|
| The issue is State subsidies and Environmental and Labor
| regulation that is flimsy. Any American company operating
| on US soil will be uncompetitive from Day 1 trying to
| follow, Federal, State and EPA regulation.
|
| As much as Solar Panels are touted in Environmental
| community, they are a product of intense chemical process
| that produces poisonous waste.
| splistud wrote:
| [dead]
| adrianN wrote:
| How many people actually work in a solar panel factory? I'd
| expect that to be almost completely automated.
| catiopatio wrote:
| Why would you expect that?
| adrianN wrote:
| Because solar panels are quite simple and robots are
| cheap?
| catiopatio wrote:
| Except that neither of those things are true.
| landemva wrote:
| And significantly less burdensome manufacturing pollution
| rules. The West exported manufacturing pollution to
| developing countries and named it 'free trade'.
| nforgerit wrote:
| German speaking here. This position brought a lot of harm and
| made the German economy very fragile. The German business
| model in the last decades was based on cheap security (NATO),
| cheap gas (Russia) and a huge market to sell cars (China).
| And here we are in 2023, paying 100s of billions of tax money
| for (maybe) having a working army in a couple of years, a
| near collapsing economy bc of zeroed gas imports and a
| tightening market in China.
|
| Still relying on boundless global trade in 2023 is just.. a
| funny position.
| themitigating wrote:
| Not to get off topic but that's why BMW has changed their
| grill and car design so much even though Western
| journalists hate it. They are targeting the Asian market.
| konschubert wrote:
| Your comment makes no sense.
|
| The tariffs boosted domestic production of solar panels.
|
| The tariffs also increased the cost of solar panels, so they
| slowed adoption of solar.
|
| You can have Made in America, or you can have cheap, but you
| cannot have both.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| You have knowledge of an American producer of monocrystalline
| silicon solar panels? Please provide more information, this
| is new to me.
| robomartin wrote:
| This article is a mess. Energy is NOT power. Reporting on energy
| (which is what the original publication does; and even they
| confuse it) is almost pointless.
|
| We need power. Not energy.
|
| Let me explain. There is no such thing as a useful measure of
| energy reliability. Energy is the accumulation of power over
| time. Here's a super simplistic example to illustrate the point:
|
| You spend all day walking through the desert. Your water bottle
| is empty. You drank it all. You really need water, yet there's
| none to be found. You nearly die a few times, yet manage to make
| it out to a settlement by nightfall.
|
| Someone there fills your bottle with water.
|
| A reporter says your bottle, over that 24 hour period, was full.
|
| That's the way you compute energy. You can have zero power for 12
| hours and then have some for another 12. Energy just adds-up all
| the bits of power you had over 24 hours and reports it as one
| number.
|
| Energy comparisons are useless.
|
| Here's reality:
|
| Solar is, nominally, about 50% reliable (if this term isn't
| comfortable, think "available").
|
| No?
|
| It turns off at night.
|
| Roughly 50% of the time...it does not work.
|
| Wind, on the other hand, does not suffer from this issue. It is
| much more reliable.
|
| With the addition of a nominal amount of storage wind can easily
| get up to 95% reliability. Solar, with the same amount of
| storage, runs about 70% reliability.
|
| This is about power delivery. Consistent. Water bottle in the
| desert, to use when you need water.
|
| Ignoring all other factors (environmental, wildlife, NIMBY,
| noise, etc.), wind is a far better technology than solar.
|
| Yet, again, to pull this back into the realm of what we should
| discussing: We need to talk about power, not energy. When you go
| to charge your electric car at the same time a million other
| people want to do the same thing, you need power.
| danhor wrote:
| Both are great, since while the daily cycle is a problem with
| solar, the seasonal variations are a far larger issue (since
| much mobe energy storage is needed). But both complement each
| other.
|
| Wind is stronger in the winter and solar is strong in the
| summer. The best consistency is achieved when both are used,
| not one or the other.
| robomartin wrote:
| No, not really. That's the impression most people have. For
| example, solar, in the northern hemisphere, is --to use your
| term-- stronger in March/April, not the summer. This is due
| to the panel negative temperature coefficient.
|
| > The best consistency is achieved when both are used, not
| one or the other.
|
| No. Wind with approximately three hours of storage is about
| 95% reliable.
|
| Once again, it's about power, not energy.
| gwright wrote:
| > No. Wind with approximately three hours of storage is
| about 95% reliable
|
| That isn't enough, unless you are happy with 18 days of no
| power per year. Of course you could maintain traditional
| power plans to provide power for those 18 days, but then
| you've doubled or tripled your power costs because you have
| purchased two systems for providing power. An intermittent
| system and a second system with the same capacity that is
| unused 95% of the time but must be available at a moments
| notice. And of course you have to maintain a viable supply
| chain for fuel, repairs, maintenance, labor, etc.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Very encouraging!
|
| Including hydro in the renewables column made the math work.
| Makes it seem like we've made more progress than perhaps we have.
| Hydro and wind are the biggest chunks in their pie chart. And
| much of hydro is decades, if not centuries old infrastructure.
|
| But still! Lots of progress.
| Forestessential wrote:
| but you got these not included:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_gas_power_stat...
|
| and for how it compares to coal,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coal-fired_power_stati...
|
| you have like 60-65% coal fired in the States.
|
| 40% of the corn produced in US is used for ethanol which is a
| energy intensive process which uses fossil fuels.
| jokoon wrote:
| It doesn't really matter if renewable generated more energy than
| coal for 1 day. What matters is annual generation.
|
| Renewables generates 5 times less than coal annually and still
| peak for a short period of time, so this is not a big progress.
| Wind turbines can have big energy peaks when it's very windy, but
| there is no cheap way to store that energy for a long period of
| time, WHICH IS WHY NUCLEAR IS THE GREENEST BASELOAD ELECTRICITY.
|
| And solar also requires a lot of copper and steel, which makes it
| carbon cycle much worse than nuclear.
| kuhewa wrote:
| Too bad the capital requirements upfront are so expensive for
| nuclear and literally no one wants to fund a project that will
| cost at least $8 billion, won't be online for a decade, and the
| power it be will produce is already more expensive than that of
| smaller renewable projects.
|
| Who knows maybe once renewable market penetration is nearly
| maxed out and if storage tech somehow hasn't caught up enough
| despite the great strides being made, the economics won't be so
| terrible for the GREENEST BASELOAD.
|
| Who
| Intox wrote:
| Nuclear is not offering the best price per Mwh now (https://e
| n.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source), but it
| will certainly in the next decades.
|
| Solar and wind power sources requires an absurd amount of
| metal (sometimes rare metals) to build the generators (solar
| panels, wind turbines, etc). This metal is extracted today
| with an enourmous consumption of fossil fuels, and it will be
| difficult to have a greener alternative for this extraction
| (anything running on batteries will require even MORE metal).
|
| The prices per Mwh of renewable energy sources are heavily
| linked to the prices of fossil fuels, which are quite "low"
| compared to what will probably happen in the next decades.
| Moreover, most metals are getting harder and harder to
| extract (it's likely that we met the peak of copper
| extraction already), which means that we'll have to dig
| deeper and deeper to get metal.
|
| I'm not saying we should not invest in renewables, but it
| will be probably be 10x to 50x more expensive to maintain a
| renewable parc of solar panels or wind turbines without
| relying on fossil fuels at all, which will cause the prices
| per mwh to explode.
|
| Countries that try to go 100% renewable without a healthy
| dose of nuclear energy will probably end up either burning
| fossil fuels or buying raw materials from countries that
| does, at a very heavy price.
| kragen wrote:
| basically you are working from wildly incorrect information
| and consequently coming to completely incorrect conclusions
|
| it's very difficult to predict future technological
| developments, especially as to pricing, but getting nuclear
| power down to the price of pv would require dramatic
| reductions in the cost of heat engines; the nuclear island
| is only a part of the cost of a nuclear power plant, and
| the rest of the plant is by itself enough to make the plant
| economically uncompetitive
|
| solar panels, as i understand it, contain minuscule
| quantities of metal; they're mostly silicon and glass, with
| much smaller amounts of boron, phosphorus, aluminum,
| copper, silver, and eva. but they are commonly mounted in
| aluminium frames, on the order of a gram of aluminum per
| peak watt or ten grams per average watt
|
| refining aluminum or iron from ore does cost a significant
| amount of energy, but there's no real obstacle to doing it
| with renewable energy and no fossil fuels; aluminum
| smelting pots won't even notice, and in the case of
| steelmaking, the technical problems of reduction with
| hydrogen are interesting but don't pose a risk to the
| success of the enterprise. the energy payback time on
| current solar panels is a few months, which is to say they
| generate all the energy needed to reproduce themselves
| (metals and all) in that time
|
| aluminum, silicon, and iron are among the most abundant
| elements in the earth's crust (#3, #2, and #4,
| respectively), so there's no real risk of having to dig for
| them. even copper averages 100 ppm. with silver there's a
| bit of a pinch, as about 10% of world silver production is
| going to solar panels; copper works as a substitute but
| significantly impairs efficiency
|
| windmills use the same kind of electrical generator you'd
| use in a coal or nuclear plant, just at a lower duty cycle,
| so at worst they have a small disadvantage relative to
| fossil fuels in terms of metal use. the counterbalancing
| advantage is that they don't need steam plumbing or a
| parsons turbine; windmill blades are fiberglass, not metal
|
| (sometimes generators do use rare elements, but that's just
| a matter of what's cheaper at the moment)
|
| that's why renewable energy from pv and wind is already
| much cheaper than fossil energy and continuing to get
| cheaper
|
| if your conclusion were correct, then despite your posited
| subsidy from cheap fossil fuels, pv and wind energy would
| already be more expensive than fossil-fuel energy, as it
| was until about 02014, because their energy payback time
| would have to be decades. you're two orders of magnitude
| outdated
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| you realize nuclear plants also require a lot of metal to
| produce?
| Georgelemental wrote:
| Nuclear is economically viable where and when regulations are
| sane. Nobody wants to fund a project that could get shut down
| on a whim by government after years of work and billions
| already invested.
| audunw wrote:
| > but there is no cheap way to store that energy for a long
| period of time
|
| It's getting close to the point that wind+storage can compete
| with nuclear, and even gas, on price. With the way cost has
| been developing on renewables and energy storage sulitons it's
| more or less inevitable. You're also starting to see off-shore
| wind, even floating off-shore, come rapidly down in cost, and
| those have more stable generation and require less energy
| storage.
|
| The problem of storage is also exaggerated by people who
| haven't looked at the big picture. We need to replace oil/gas
| in lots of areas where you need to store and transform energy
| anyway. Like cars. Think about it.. if you buy an EV you'll
| generally have enough storage there to power your house for 1-3
| days. In a world where all cars are BEVs we'll be well within
| an order of magnititude of having the manufacturing capacity to
| have energy storage for all homes. You can even feed
| electricity from BEVs back into the grid, and I already have my
| BEV set to only charge in the hours where electricity is
| cheapest right now. We're also starting to see people use smart
| controllers to exploit the storage capacity in hot water tanks.
|
| Green metal production will also be a huge source of flexible
| load. Somewhat related to that, there's even molten metal
| batteries that can provide extremely cheap grid storage.
|
| > WHICH IS WHY NUCLEAR IS THE GREENEST BASELOAD ELECTRICITY.
|
| If you need to shout I'm just led to expect you don't have much
| meat behind your opinion. Anyway, the problem is just this:
| what we really need isn't baseload.
|
| You can't solve the worlds energy crisis without lots and lots
| of renewables. Going all nuclear would be too expensive, too
| slow, and would probably generate enough heat to slow recovery
| after climate change. Thermal power plants in general have a
| whole range of issue that makes it a bad idea to go all-in on
| it.
|
| Nuclear can certainly supplement with a bit of baseload
| capacity. But what we need is load following and peaker plants.
| We need a replacement to gas power plants. Because those are
| what works well when combining with renewables. And without
| lots of renewables we have zero hope of combatting climate
| change.
|
| > And solar also requires a lot of copper and steel, which
| makes it carbon cycle much worse than nuclear.
|
| At least copper and steel is easily recycled, with low carbon
| impact. Nuclear power plants use a lot of concrete and the
| sustainability of that is far more uncertain.
| emj wrote:
| The extremist right wing parties in Sweden are dead set
| against wind power. For many reasons, mainly because it's
| politically good to differentiate yourself like that against
| the evil greens. Sweden produces a significant amount of
| steel and has green metal production up and running. I would
| say that there is a real risk this will not be expanded to
| commercial deliveries because of populism against wind power,
| but I am overly pessimistic whenever I see right wing
| populism.
|
| SSAB and LKAB has experimented with green steel since ~2017.
| [0]
|
| [0] https://www.ssab.com/sv-se/ssab-
| koncern/hallbarhet/fossilfri...
| martyvis wrote:
| Here is a pumped hydro project which will be able to store
| maybe 1/4 of Australia's electricity needed for a week.
| https://www.snowyhydro.com.au/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/09/SH1...
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The division of electricity production into baseload, load-
| following and peaker categories is just a historical
| anachronism.
|
| Coal and nuclear plants have poor abilities to ramp power
| production up and down in response to fluctuating demand, so
| they were called 'baseload'. Various versions of natural gas
| power plants could respond more rapidly, so they were typically
| placed in the other other two categories.
|
| This is all irrelevant if you have distributed wind/solar
| production coupled to efficient storage systems that manage the
| distribution using technology that doesn't have those
| limitations. Practically that means short term storage of power
| in batteries (daily), long-term storage in synthetic fuels
| (seasonal).
| pyrale wrote:
| > The division of electricity production into baseload, load-
| following and peaker categories is just a historical
| anachronism.
|
| Since you're obviously some time traveler, would you mind
| sharing winning lottery numbers with us?
| llukas wrote:
| Article is about annual production share.
| agentgumshoe wrote:
| And wind requires immense use of rare metals that are often
| acquired through slave labour and create massive radioactive
| pools of waste.
|
| It is interesting to see the responses to Nuclear of 'too much
| up front/takes too long' while simultaneously patiently waiting
| out solar/wind 'it's getting there.'
|
| Interesting they also included biomass here as it is certainly
| not a carbon friendly process nor renewable.
|
| Too much 'we've picked our winners and won't hear a negative
| word' in this space now, and it's getting worse.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Wind turbines are mostly aluminum, no? And the magnets in the
| turbines are not required to be rare earth.
| agentgumshoe wrote:
| They're not, with the trade-off of being expensive and
| requiring expensive ongoing maintenance instead (or even an
| external power source!)
|
| That's not including the ongoing gearbox maintenance
| requirements.
| colinsane wrote:
| > combined wind and solar generation increased from 12 percent
| of national power production in 2021 to 14 percent in 2022.
| Hydropower, biomass, and geothermal added another 7 percent --
| for a total share of 21 percent renewables last year. The
| figure narrowly exceeded coal's 20 percent share of electricity
| generation, which fell from 23 percent in 2021.
|
| the article is speaking about average power, not peak power.
| how do you and the article present such different figures?
| kuhewa wrote:
| > how do you and the article present such different figures?
|
| My friend, let me introduce you to the wonderful world of
| "not reading the article".
| Shaggy2000 wrote:
| [dead]
| tnel77 wrote:
| Nuclear is obviously an amazing source of energy, but the
| stigma is insane.
|
| In high school, my Chem II class had an assignment where pairs
| of kids had to present on why nuclear was good or bad. Of 16 or
| so kids, only my friend and I presented on why nuclear energy
| was good. Even the chemistry teacher was against nuclear
| energy.
|
| Edit: This was in rural USA.
| goatlover wrote:
| It's wild how bad the reputation of nuclear energy has been,
| when the alternative has largely been fossil fuels. It's
| really not that dangerous relative to source for 80% of
| energy production the world still relies on.
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