[HN Gopher] Electricity prices in France turn negative as renewa...
___________________________________________________________________
Electricity prices in France turn negative as renewable energy
floods the grid
Author : Capstanlqc
Score : 109 points
Date : 2024-06-18 17:31 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fortune.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (fortune.com)
| bell-cot wrote:
| > French day-ahead power fell to -EUR5.76 a megawatt-hour, the
| lowest in four years, in an auction on Epex Spot. Germany's
| equivalent contract dropped to EUR7.64.
|
| If true - how fast could a new transmission line from France to
| Germany pay for itself?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://montelnews.com/news/e15ef79e-2905-41ca-9124-165d7469...
|
| https://montelnews.com/news/1525872/france-to-miss-2030-inte...
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL5N0KW3WE/
| ganeshkrishnan wrote:
| Germany already buys electricity from France. The cost
| mentioned above are the subsidized charges by the EDF to the
| french government.
|
| Germans would get the full cost which is much higher than the
| quoted price here. Besides nuclear power is not flexible enough
| to amp it up and down according to demand (unlike coal or
| petrocarbon industries).
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| French reactors are built to load follow [1]. It is harder on
| the valves, but they do it ("maneuvering capabilities").
| Regardless, it would be better if they could run flat out to
| push out fossil generation in adjacent grids (Germany, the
| UK, and Northern Italy) with sufficient interconnector
| capacity. France also still has a bit of coal and fossil gas
| generation to retire [2] [3].
|
| TLDR More interconnector capacity, battery storage, and
| renewables needed (my analysis).
|
| [1] https://www.oecd-
| nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2021-12...
|
| [2] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FR?wind=false&solar=
| fal...
|
| [3] https://www.euractiv.com/section/coal/news/france-
| extends-li...
| pydry wrote:
| Which theyve actually used very very rarely.
|
| Nuclear reactors are already very cost ineffective when
| used as baseload. Theyre _ridiculously_ cost ineffective
| when used for load following since it 's basically
| curtailment.
|
| This is why most countries tend to use gas or hydro/pumped
| storage for load following (or, increasingly, batteries as
| theyve been plummeting in price).
| orwin wrote:
| It's untrue, it is used everyday on all our Gen3/Gen3+
| reactors (our Gen2 are able to do it too, but it does
| cost a lot as core monitoring is more costly for them)
|
| I've found this https://www.oecd-nea.org/nea-
| news/2011/29-2/aen-infos-suivi-... even if it isn't
| really clear, you have a graph that show you a typical
| year on a french reactor, and load followinf the german
| reactors used to do over a day.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _Nuclear reactors are already very cost ineffective
| when used as baseload._
|
| Ontario, Canada would disagree with you: nuclear is
| 10.1C//kWh, hydro is 6.2C/, (methane/natural) gas is
| 11.4C/; see Table 2:
|
| * https://www.oeb.ca/sites/default/files/rpp-price-
| report-2023...
|
| Of course hydro-electric dams typically flood many
| hectares of land for the reservoir. The current ones are
| getting refurbished:
|
| * https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/niagara-ontario-
| power...
|
| Ontario's nuclear fleet are also in the middle of a bunch
| of refurbs:
|
| * https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-nuclear-
| power...
|
| Some of which are finished:
|
| * https://www.opg.com/releases/opg-celebrates-the-early-
| comple...
|
| Live data on Ontario's grid:
|
| * https://ieso.ca/power-data SS "Supply" tab
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Ontario's ultra-low-overnight time of use rates are 2.8c
| / kWh. Keeping the nuclear plants running overnight means
| they're losing 7 cents/kWh overnight. Better to shut
| those plants down overnight, but of course approximately
| all the nuclear costs are incurred whether the plants are
| running overnight or not, so shutting down overnight
| would just double the daytime costs.
| stkdump wrote:
| It is likely that the times where French renewables flood
| the market roughly coincide with the times where German
| renewables flood the market, which where 60% of the supply
| even in the winter. The few remaining times where that
| isn't the case are probably not relevant. I mean every bit
| helps of equalizing over a larger area can help, but we
| likely need interconnects with places that are a bit
| farther away than France like Spain and Norway so the gaps
| are more likely to fall into different times. Besides, coal
| plants are almost as bad in spinning up and down quickly as
| nuclear plants. In both cases they can probably do somewhat
| it to escape the penalty of negative prices, but likely
| they don't safe much if anything in terms of operational
| costs and fuel.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Spain is awash in clean energy from renewables [1] and
| has large interconnect capabilities with Portugal (~5GW).
| Between both countries [2] [3], they operate very close
| to ~90% low carbon most of the time. Spain's last coal
| fired generator retires in August 2024 [4]. We must push
| east with low carbon power, as that is where the dirty
| grids are (see live ElectricityMaps app map scoped to
| Europe for context).
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czkkgnp1d2xo
|
| [2] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/ES?wind=false&so
| lar=fal...
|
| [3] https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/PT?wind=false&so
| lar=fal...
|
| [4] https://www.gem.wiki/As_Pontes_power_station
| toast0 wrote:
| Spain is adjacent to France, just like Germany; not sure
| it's farther away :P
|
| But the way these networks work, you can often build up
| the interconnects where there's a pricing/availability
| disparity, and pretty soon you have a vast interconnect.
| Because if Germany's grid pricing benefits from
| relatively unconstrained interconnection with France,
| there's going to be a pricing disparity at Germany's
| other borders. Of course, grid borders don't necessarily
| reflect national borders, and national interconnection
| projects have to happen too.
|
| That said, the top 5 countries by peak load in wikipedia
| are France, Germany, UK, Italy, and Spain, which are all
| either France or neighbors of France.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Con
| tinenta...
| dmurray wrote:
| Let's see:
|
| The line can't just go a few metres across the border. Let's
| say it connects Dortmund, in the German industrial heartland on
| the French side of the country, with Chooz, the site of a
| nuclear plant near the German border. French nuclear plants are
| evenly distributed around the country [0], so that should be a
| reasonable choice. That's 250 km.
|
| High voltage transmission costs around EUR2m/km to build [1]
| and carries around 2 GW of power [2].
|
| So your line costs EUR500m to build and makes EUR13 x 2000 =
| EUR26,000 an hour and pays for itself after 20,000 hours or
| three years.
|
| You might reasonably say you wouldn't expect to capture all of
| the EUR13 per MWh in arbitrage profits, and perhaps this
| disparity was a short-lived aberration. But actually it's not:
| electricity _futures_ in France are priced EUR25 cheaper than
| their equivalent contracts in Germany [3], so you could
| reasonably expect to capture a good portion of that - if you
| split the surplus between you, the consumer and the producer
| you can still get EUR9.
|
| Of course, one problem with this free money is that your
| competitors are already doing it. The gap is expected to narrow
| over time thanks to interconnectors like this, increased
| generation in Germany, and French nuclear plants going out of
| service [3]. Still, with increasing electrification of the
| energy market, this kind of power transmission seems like a
| good business to be in and a good investment for national
| governments and grid operators.
|
| [0] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-of-French-nuclear-
| po...
|
| [1]
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358793859_Cost_of_e...
|
| [2]
| https://web.ecs.baylor.edu/faculty/grady/_13_EE392J_2_Spring...
|
| [3]
| https://montelnews.com/news/e15ef79e-2905-41ca-9124-165d7469...
| jandrese wrote:
| In general if the incentives are already aligned to solve a
| problem I don't worry about the problem. It is likely to
| solve itself without any intervention.
| dmurray wrote:
| Yes, I don't worry about hundred-dollar bills on the
| sidewalk either.
| kseistrup wrote:
| They ought to flood something towards Denmark. Right now, in this
| moment, I pay roughly 0.49EUR (3.66 DKK) per kWh.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Depends on where you are! Jutland and Fyn can share via the
| Central European grid whereas Sjaelland is on the Nordic grid
| with Sweden.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continenta...
|
| (There are several HVDC links between those grids, but as I
| understand it that adds capacitance for the purpose of
| pricing.)
| leobg wrote:
| Let's run a crowdfunding campaign for the cable. I'm midway and
| will want a piece of that as well.
| ganeshkrishnan wrote:
| This was very surprising and positive. I had expected pain for
| the electricity market in France since EDF "lost" the uranium
| mines in Niger and replaced it by shipping uranium from
| canada/australia.
|
| So it looks like solar and wind have more than compensated for
| the nuclear power shortages.
|
| The olympic games will put this news to test and I guess we will
| find out soon if this news is indeed true.
| realusername wrote:
| There's two years of uranium ready to use in reserve plus five
| years more in reserve to enrich plus all the other producers.
| There's never been any issue with uranium, not even remotely.
| I'm not even sure the Niger coup will last that long.
| cyberax wrote:
| This is NOT positive. Not at all. This means that the grid is
| filled with useless generating capacity.
|
| As a result, nuclear power becomes less competitive. However,
| renewables work poorly during the winter time. In Europe, they
| can go down for multiple _weeks_ at a time, far beyond any
| storage capabilities. And the only power plants that can fill
| the gap are fossil fuels.
|
| End result: more fossil generation.
| yodelshady wrote:
| "..the grid operator to request that Electricite de France SA
| take several nuclear plants offline."
|
| Could you _read_ the article please?
|
| The lumbering beasts, which actually do hate changing output at
| all, turned off _before_ the renewables.
|
| Secondly, another below comment already explains that no,
| there's not a shortage.
|
| Thirdly, please for f*ks sake, engage your brain and think what
| the impact of 700 euros a month (high in 2022) to negative
| prices now has on industry. What the everloving ** do I _charge
| my customers_?
|
| Maybe this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40679507
| topper-123 wrote:
| Isolated this is a zero sum game in favor of buyers (someone has
| ti take the electricity), but longer term, this shows there needs
| to be better greater electricity storage solutions available, i.e
| batteries or similar.
| paulsutter wrote:
| Negative prices make storage very practical
| andrewxdiamond wrote:
| And de-incentivizes supply. A real solution need to be
| available to balance the supply and demand of power such that
| the rates on both ends are predictable.
|
| A market where a good fluctuates between profitable and not
| is not one very attractive to investment.
|
| Playing the video game Victoria 3 has taught me a lot about
| healthy markets. You have to play both sides of supply and
| demand to get to the prices you need
| topper-123 wrote:
| Negative prices do incentivize storage, because storage
| will alliw sellers to sell at a time with higher prices
| (i.e. when demand is greater relative to supply).
| thecosas wrote:
| I could see this then pushing more consumers to have
| their own batteries to store energy when it's
| inexpensive. Interesting market playing out with energy
| storage :-)
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Why? If you make a sufficient amount of money in the 5-8pm
| peak period it can make you strongly profitable despite
| losing money at noon.
| Gare wrote:
| And solar plants, unlike most other plants can be easily
| and quickly shut off so you don't even need to sell at
| negative prices.
| nawitus wrote:
| Empirically this doesn't seem to happen.
| bastawhiz wrote:
| > A market where a good fluctuates between profitable and
| not is not one very attractive to investment.
|
| This is the most wild thing I've ever read on this website.
| Pick just about any security and you'll see that buying and
| selling it over time fluctuates between profitable and not
| profitable. If something was always profitable everyone
| would do it and get infinitely rich. Arbitrage wouldn't
| exist. Economies would shut down.
| jerf wrote:
| Unfortunately you've got a massive term mismatch. You have
| negative prices today, but a lot of reason to believe that by
| the time you could bring your storage online the problem will
| already have resolved itself.
|
| Oil briefly went negative a few years ago. If you decided to
| build a storage business dependent on negative oil prices for
| profit, you might just be coming online around now, and very
| much poorer than you were before. (Of course you would in
| fact have stopped a long time ago.)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| OP is correct. Negative prices stokes battery storage
| deployment. See California and their ~52GW storage target
| (currently @ ~10GW), because of negative prices and the
| duck curve. California utility scale storage soaks up solar
| during the day (when spot prices approach zero or go
| negative), and discharges most profitably right after
| sunset for ~4 hr (but occasionally, right before sunrise
| when demand is ramping before the sun is up). If spot
| prices rise during daylight hours, you add more solar
| generation to push them back down.
|
| https://www.gov.ca.gov/2024/04/25/california-achieves-
| major-...
|
| https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-
| almanac/califo...
|
| https://cleantechnica.com/2024/06/02/solar-passes-100-of-
| pow...
|
| https://futurism.com/the-byte/california-solar-
| electricity-p...
|
| https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US-CAL-
| CISO?wind=false&...
| AaronFriel wrote:
| Oil prices went negative due to an exogenous, rare event
| shocking demand. No one expected that would recur. (And
| indeed, many people did try to figure out how to store oil
| in one-off vessels, short term leases for storage, etc.,
| though I don't know if anyone succeeded.)
|
| Solar panel production on the other hand is exponential and
| growing much faster than overall power consumption. It can
| be very, very favorable to build batteries and that's why
| grid scale battery production is taking off. There is in
| fact a storage business dependent on energy arbitrage over
| time, it's lucrative, and all indications suggest it will
| continue to be lucrative for many years to come.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| The oil situation is not analogous. It's not like solar
| prices going negative are something that is difficult to
| predict, or the result of things like "black swan"
| geopolitical events. Once we build out enough solar we
| should be having negative prices literally every sunny day
| - of course, the hope is that enough storage comes online
| then to mop up that excess generation so prices _don 't_ go
| negative.
| hamandcheese wrote:
| You don't need negative prices for storage to be
| profitable, you just need to be able to sell your stored
| electricity for more than you paid for it.
| jandrese wrote:
| The reason why the prices are negative is that renewables
| have become cheap to install, but don't come with an off
| switch.
|
| There is good news though. With electric car sales slowing
| down (at least in the west) there is a surplus of batteries
| on the market, which makes grid storage projects more
| affordable. The incentives are currently pushing us towards
| decarbonizing our electric infrastructure faster and that
| is wonderful. As long as the politicians don't do anything
| dumb like slap huge tariffs on solar cells or something we
| should be making some real progress towards a green future.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > but don't come with an off switch
|
| But they do. Often literally.
|
| Negative prices usually happen because of laws requiring
| minimum utilization, or subsides, or because they are so
| small and rare that it is not worth having someone on
| place to turn the switch.
| jandrese wrote:
| If you want to be pedantic yes. But its not like grid
| operators back in the control rooms are disconnecting
| solar farms because the grid is oversaturated. They
| instead tell the fossil fuel plants to reduce their burn
| rate. They have to work around the instability from the
| renewables. That's why grid scale storage is such a key
| component of the future energy economy.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > its not like grid operators back in the control rooms
| are disconnecting solar farms because the grid is
| oversaturated
|
| You are correct that they are not.
|
| But this is due to policy, not physics. It's obvious to
| shut-down the fossil fuel plants first, but after then,
| there's no physical reason why they can't keep shutting
| power plants down.
|
| Anyway, agreed, adding storage is a much better solution
| than focusing on the management of renewables.
| toast0 wrote:
| > But its not like grid operators back in the control
| rooms are disconnecting solar farms because the grid is
| oversaturated. They instead tell the fossil fuel plants
| to reduce their burn rate.
|
| Since we're being pedantic, as I understand it, the grid
| operators don't usually tell plants what to do (outside
| of system stress response, curtailment, etc), the grid
| operator shares the forecast, and when the price forecast
| is low, fossil fuel plants are likely tell the grid
| operator they'd rather shutdown than produce power at
| low/negative prices. For solar plants, there's no fuel
| cost, and there might be subsidies, so producing at a
| negative market price might still be positive for the
| generator and there's no reason to turn it off. For
| nuclear, fueling schedules don't really change based on
| use, so there's no reason to not provide optimum power
| outage other than for grid stability.
|
| Grid scale storage should reduce price swings, since
| storage plants will tend to show up on the demand side
| when prices are low and the supply side when prices are
| high; although perhaps price swings will become bigger
| when prediction fails --- if storage fills up by noon
| you'll have a lot of excess supply until sunset; if
| storage empties by midnight, you may have a lot of excess
| demand until sunrise.
| jonatron wrote:
| In the UK there are grid operators in the control rooms
| disconnecting wind farms. It's called curtailment and
| it's expensive:
| https://www.energylivenews.com/2024/04/08/grid-
| constraints-l...
| bastawhiz wrote:
| The prices being negative is literally the incentive to build
| storage.
| netrus wrote:
| Just to add to that: Any fluctuation in prices works to
| incentivise storage, negative prices are not so special in
| that regard.
|
| Negative prices allow for some weird actions to become
| profitable - like starting an empty washing machine, turning
| in the light in an empty room or needlessly heating some
| water tank. Basically everything we are used to think of as
| waste. It sounds absurd, but it's not really a big deal.
| rurban wrote:
| And even better, the incentive to expand the grid. The market
| is easy to control, because the money flows via the internet.
| But how to transport the energy?
|
| Without a proper grid not possible. The various countries
| block the expansion for political reasons. They would loose
| their power.
| gpm wrote:
| Alternatively this is an economic opportunity for any industry
| that can usefully make use of intermittent free* energy.
|
| * Long term I have to imagine this is just "cheap" because
| there's got to be tons of industries that can use intermittent
| free energy.
| olejorgenb wrote:
| Such industries need to be have low enough capital cost as
| well
| stoperaticless wrote:
| I argue that the number of such industries is and will be
| low.
|
| Usually clients want consistency in the output. (they depend
| on the product/service)
|
| Business owner usually wants consistency in
| employee/machinery output. (They cost money)
|
| To me it seems that only low priority computation (incl. con-
| coins) is such industry. (Investment kind of reused, and
| relatively few employees)
|
| There will be some shift to adjust to intermitency (e.g.
| Worker hours might be shifted to the time when solar
| generates the most energy to take advantage of the price)
| hackerlight wrote:
| "French electricity prices turned negative as a drop in demand
| and surging renewables output prompted some nuclear reactors to
| power down."
|
| This is an issue with nuclear in a net zero scenario. Nuclear
| starts out at 90%+ capacity factor, like in California today. But
| as fossil fuels become a low percentage of the grid, you
| inevitably get a low capacity factor which increases LCOE. Even
| if you don't want any renewables and you only build nuclear, the
| problem is demand isn't static so you have to overbuild nuclear
| by a lot and run at a low capacity factor, or you build storage,
| either of these increases LCOE.
|
| The sensible thing will be to use renewables on top of nuclear
| rather than overbuild nuclear, like what France is doing. But
| that will also eat into capacity factor when it's more windy and
| sunny like what France experiences.
|
| Just something to keep in mind when you hear people talk about
| nuclear costs. Multiply it by at least 1/0.7 if they haven't
| taken this into account.
| mjevans wrote:
| High level planning is important for efficiency. It'd be great
| to have some resources which either store power in bulk cheaply
| (even if not efficiently) and/or inexpensive to idle operations
| that can achieve public benefit for spare power.
| cft wrote:
| In related news: Macron calls for new elections
| D-Coder wrote:
| New _electrons_? Oh wait.
| Aeolun wrote:
| If the price is -5$ in France, but still $7 in Germany, why not
| dump all that excess energy to Germany?
| jasoncartwright wrote:
| Not enough interconnect capacity
| https://montelnews.com/news/1525872/france-to-miss-2030-inte...
| philipkglass wrote:
| There isn't enough transmission line capacity to transfer all
| of it.
| 486sx33 wrote:
| Not enough interconnect High loses in transmission No one needs
| the energy in the times it goes negative, unless you're a 1/4
| planet away Unfortunately electric cars only make the peaks and
| valleys more pronounced. What we need is electric cars to be
| required to charge the grid during high demand and only charge
| during very low demand. The chargers need to be smart and
| integrated with the grid operator
| nawitus wrote:
| The explanation is lack of interconnect, not losses in
| transmission. If you have enough capacity to transfer
| electricity the prices will be equal in two neighboring
| electricity markets.
| EcommerceFlow wrote:
| What I never understood was how France gets 70-75% of their
| electricity from Nuclear, yet their energy prices aren't "too
| cheap to meter", and while cheaper than their neighbors, don't
| really raise any eyebrows. Wouldn't this be a major example of
| why Nuclear is NOT the future?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I'm confused. The way you've phrased this certainly doesn't
| sound like it couldn't be the future.
| EcommerceFlow wrote:
| I've heard for years that if we just had "tons" of Nuclear
| plants, our energy costs would essentially be too cheap to
| meter. Yet France is not experiencing this even at 75%
| Nuclear.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| Where did you hear that? I've only ever heard about how
| nuclear is both capital and opex intensive and very
| expensive.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It was a common BS claim in the Reagan years, as to why
| we didn't need to invest in renewables back then. "Why
| bother, soon all this nuclear energy will basically be
| free".
|
| This has nothing to do with what anyone actually said.
| Just ask any 60-something, mild conservative. The meme
| exists, even though the actual quote was slightly more
| mealy mouthed.
|
| It was always nonsense anyway. Electricity generation is
| mostly a deregulated market in most places, so nobody
| would spend billions on a Nuclear plant that wasn't
| guaranteed to make back it's money. It was always a
| thought terminating cliche.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| You're remembering a (mis-)quote of a speech given in
| 1954[0].
|
| And even if it weren't a misquote, "Living up to a quote
| from 1954" is not how we judge whether a power source is
| still worth investing in for the future.
|
| [0] https://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2015/09/too-cheap-to-
| meter-t...
| serial_dev wrote:
| As far as I know and even learned as a (since failed)
| physicist, a country needs a good mixture of energy
| sources. Mind you I went to a university that's nuclear
| energy focused and even they didn't advocate for full on
| only nuclear.
|
| In my opinion, if someone says we should just have all
| nuclear, it means they are dealing in absolutes, maybe God
| in politics and debate, but they ignore that reality is
| much more complicated, as technology meets economics and
| politics (and much more).
|
| (Again, AFAIK) nuclear energy is great when it comes to
| meeting the "baseline" requirements, roughly the level
| below which energy consumption of a region never drops. It
| is because nuclear energy cannot be scaled up and down
| quickly, so it's not adequate for peaks.
|
| To balance the peaks and keep the network stable, you need
| energy sources that can increase their output in seconds
| (or less?).
|
| That's also one of the issues with wind and solar, you
| can't choose when it is available and when it isn't, so
| coal etc is still needed to make sure that energy
| production and consumption is practically equal at all
| times.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Nuclear is very poor for baseline requirements. Baseline
| requirements should be met by the cheapest source and
| more expensive sources should only be added as required
| to follow demand.
| pfdietz wrote:
| If anyone told you that they were lying to you.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Presumably once it gets cheap enough it becomes profitable
| to sell it internationally which caps the price?
|
| Besides, you still have to pay back for the construction
| and the fuel, it's never gonna be free.
| Herz wrote:
| The words of a human shouldn't necessarily represent
| reality, especially when the human in question is a
| politician and not a scientist. Your argument doesn't make
| much sense.
|
| Furthermore, no one could have predicted the mass protests,
| scandals, and fears that nuclear energy has sparked over
| the decades. These factors have significantly reduced the
| hype and investment in the sector.
| henearkr wrote:
| The determinant factor in this article is the renewable
| electricity sudden flow.
|
| Nuclear fission reactors have problems in other domains like
| being a huge liability during a military conflict, and
| dependance on uranium supply from the Sahel.
| gumby wrote:
| Indeed. The op ex of nuclear is surprisingly high (esp when
| compared to wind solar), then on top of that is the cost of
| financing the very long build.
|
| Also, nuclear plants in France are starting to suffer from
| water shortages; since an overheating plant is a problem it
| means that they take water at the expense of other uses, which
| is an externality they currently don't pay for because the
| economics of these plants is so terrible already.
|
| I really want to like niclear but I have never been able to see
| the math work (and I've been paying intermittent attention for
| 40 years).
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| There's a cost associated with construction and maintenance -
| labor and materials aren't free.
|
| Then, there's everything else - you'd have to look at their
| budget to see if the proceeds from electricity are funding
| other programs.
| johnzim wrote:
| I mean.. They literally just became too cheap to meter by
| application of 33% more generation?
|
| Functionally they could get there by just building a few more
| reactors.
| more_corn wrote:
| The "just" word is doing a lot of work here and masking
| multiple billion euro investments, decades long planning and
| build projects, risk and opportunity cost. How about instead
| we "just" invest in grid scale and distributed battery
| storage and double down on wind and solar?
| digdugdirk wrote:
| Their grid was still constructed on a capitalistic model.
| Investment in electricity generation stations in return for
| payments from electricity consuming users over time. Build too
| much nuclear (or any other power generation) and you lower the
| returns of the previous investors.
|
| The easy answer is that financiers don't want it, so it won't
| happen.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > Wouldn't this be a major example of why Nuclear is NOT the
| future?
|
| Not at all. Nobody has really put forth "too cheap to meter" as
| a rationale for nuclear for 50 years or more.
|
| The issue is that nuclear is currently the only reliable base
| load generation technology that doesn't produce carbon (except
| perhaps hydro for reasonable definitions of "reliable"). The
| other top technologies either produce carbon (natural gas and
| coal) or are unreliable (solar and wind).
|
| I actually _don 't_ believe nuclear is "the future" because I
| think renewables + battery storage will be more economical
| going forward and less politically dicey. But France is
| currently the envy of the world for their energy generation
| save for some countries with unique environments that allow for
| a lot of carbon-free generation (e.g. Norway with hydro and
| Iceland with geothermal).
| briandear wrote:
| Why isn't wind and solar politically dicey? Nuclear is only
| politically dicey due to ignorance. I'd rather one nuclear
| plant than having the landscape covered with huge windmills
| -- windmills made out of materials that aren't recyclable.
| Solar is even worse. Nuclear doesn't affect wildlife like
| wind and solar.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Spending $20B for $1B worth of generating capacity is and
| always should be politically dicey.
| dmoo wrote:
| Until it does...
| pfdietz wrote:
| Nuclear elicits outrage from customers forced to pay for it
| because it's so expensive. How do you propose muting them
| politics?
| kelnos wrote:
| I agree that the safety fears and waste disposal issues
| around nuclear are overwrought, but still: I would much
| prefer solar and wind farms (even with the downsides you
| mention) over the possibility of a nuclear catastrophe.
| Even if the probability of something like that is
| 0.0000000001% or whatever, the consequences are so severe
| that it just doesn't seem worth it when there's a good-
| enough alternative. Also consider that nuclear is expensive
| (both in capex and opex)! The whole "too cheap to meter"
| nonsense from the 1950s never came to fruition.
|
| I get that opinions differ on this (clearly you have a
| different take), but that's fine; reasonable people can
| disagree.
|
| (To be clear, I don't believe solar/wind is the be-all,
| end-all. Base load generation is still a problem there, and
| neither source is reliable or consistent in the way that
| something like nuclear is.)
| Herz wrote:
| Isn't it a bit whishful thinking to think that storage will
| come down in price and nuclear won't?
|
| Beyond that, leaving out storage costs, what are the
| technologies that can cover the world's storage? And in what
| quantities?
|
| Because if I think of lithium, wouldn't it be an
| environmental disaster to extract and recycle all the
| materials involved?
|
| In general, I don't understand why basically nuclear is to be
| replaced.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > Isn't it a bit wishful thinking to think that storage
| will come down in price and nuclear won't?
|
| It's been true for 50 years, assuming it will be true for
| another decade or two is not wishful thinking.
|
| > Beyond that, leaving out storage costs, what are the
| technologies that can cover the world's storage? And in
| what quantities?
|
| Batteries for short term storage and pumped hydro for long
| term storage.
|
| > Because if I think of lithium, wouldn't it be an
| environmental disaster to extract and recycle all the
| materials involved?
|
| No.
|
| > In general, I don't understand why basically nuclear is
| to be replaced.
|
| It's inevitable that the cheapest solution will win. Not
| the best, but the cheapest.
| Herz wrote:
| > It's been true for 50 years, assuming it will be true
| for another decade or two is not wishful thinking.
|
| Well it's one thing though to use the storage for a cell
| phones and some cars, another to keep all the industries
| and homes going on.
|
| Do you have any data about what you claim?
|
| For example in italy of hydro, nothing has been built for
| decades, everything that could be used has been used. If
| we want to go further, it's necessary to destroy valleys.
|
| Your arguments do not go beyond whishful thinking... At
| least you need some data.
| Retric wrote:
| > Well it's one thing though to use the storage for a
| cell phones and some cars, another to keep all the
| industries and homes going on.
|
| Not really. If all vehicles on the road where 100% PEV's
| your looking at ~250 TWh in batteries. 1/5 of that would
| be ~50TWh.
|
| Global electricity demand is about 70 TWh per day. You
| don't need 70 TWh worth of storage if daily production is
| > daily demand. It all comes down to which is cheaper,
| extra storage or extra generating capacity. However ~25
| TWh of storage is likely sufficient for a grid equally
| stable as what we have today. (100% EV's would increase
| that 70TWh/day but that's offset by charging them when
| power is cheap.)
| Herz wrote:
| I quite believe in it with the fact that it is feasible
| in the coming decades a way to redistirbute peak energy
| through daily storage. The problems in my opinion is
| assuming too much that everything will go as planned
| according to current trends (cheaper renewable, cheaper
| battery, enough production, 100+% penetration, etc).
| Because we're talking about several independent
| variables, and there's a chance (in my opinion quite
| large) that not everything will go as predicted.
|
| If we find out in a few decades that the price of solar,
| batteries or renewables is no longer going down (and the
| reasons could be many, like a war, or a plateau in
| penetration), it could be enough to ruin those
| expectations. And discover that putting all our hopes in
| a single event could be our downfall.
|
| Besides, even if daily storage is feasible, with current
| trends, we're still a long way from seasonal storage...
|
| That's my opinion, which is why I think it's necessary to
| invest and believe in all technologies, without looking
| for the one we like the most or looks the most promising,
| since it leads to big bias and overestimation.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| There are enough innovations in the pipeline that it's
| very safe to predict continuing battery price drops for
| the next decade, another 80% reduction or so. It's
| possible it stops after a decade. At that point nuclear
| would need a 100x price reduction to compete.
| Herz wrote:
| https://assets.bbhub.io/professional/sites/24/fig1battery
| .pn...
|
| Sorry but where do you see this 80% drop? When the price
| of storage seems close to reaching a plateau (which by
| the way is also what I assumed in previous comments).
|
| I understand being optimistic, but you claim to know the
| future while also denying the present... It's ironic.
| jandrese wrote:
| Storage prices have been dropping precipitously for the
| past decade. Even more exciting is that the excitement over
| electric vehicles that has constrained battery supply for
| the past 2-3 years has started to slacken allowing battery
| prices to start falling again as EV manufacturers cut back
| on production. I'm excited to see what the next couple of
| years brings in the realm of grid and home storage.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| There are other storage technologies being fielded...they
| haven't been popular because their energy densities are
| low...but if you have a 2000 lb hunk of Iron Aire battery
| next to your house, who cares? (https://www.popularmechanic
| s.com/science/energy/a42532492/ir...)
| Herz wrote:
| Do you have any idea how long it takes for a technology
| at a research stage to enter scale production and be
| commercially viable?
| Damogran6 wrote:
| I don't have my eye on these technologies (there were at
| least two that I've run across that were REALLY HEAVY),
| so I can't tell you how close they are to production. But
| every bit helps and the amazing pouch batteries in your
| laptop weren't developed overnight... 18650 batteries are
| astounding compared to the Eveready Alkalines of my
| youth, and available for $3 a piece in quantity.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _Isn 't it a bit whishful thinking to think that storage
| will come down in price and nuclear won't?_
|
| My understanding is that the costs around nuclear aren't
| due to the technology being expensive (something that yes,
| we would expect to get cheaper over time), but because of
| the -- IMO necessary -- regulatory and safety regime
| surrounding nuclear power. Costs that I wouldn't expect to
| change all that much (and maybe even _increase_ with time).
|
| With storage, the cost is mainly the technology. As the
| tech improves, the cost decreases.
| Herz wrote:
| I believe you are mostly right.
|
| However, I don't think the decline in battery prices is
| primarily due to the technologies used. Instead, it's
| more about economies of scale and demand, which help
| optimize prices.
|
| From my perspective, nuclear energy is on a similar path
| but with significantly less investment. A major portion
| of nuclear costs stems from the lack of economies of
| scale.
|
| In my opinion, the arguments against nuclear energy
| contribute to the perception of its economic
| inefficiency. If people don't believe in it or don't want
| it, there will never be an opportunity to achieve
| economies of scale.
|
| Here its quite well documented: https://www.construction-
| physics.com/p/why-are-nuclear-power...
| guerby wrote:
| Note: nuclear near rivers is prone to the same "reliability"
| issues as hydro.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _Not at all. Nobody has really put forth "too cheap to
| meter" as a rationale for nuclear for 50 years or more._
|
| A history of the phrase, which was originally said in 1954
| (seventy years ago):
|
| > _Only a few days later, Strauss was a guest on Meet the
| Press. When the reporters asked him about the quotation and
| the viability of "commercial power from atomic piles,"
| Strauss replied that he expected his children and
| grandchildren would have power "too cheap to be metered, just
| as we have water today that's too cheap to be metered."[4]_
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_cheap_to_meter
|
| It was never meant to be taken as $0:
|
| For a long time water was paid for in a flat rate, and one
| could certainly envisage where electricity was the same: the
| power company would pick some kind of median/average to
| charge folks.. Of course most folks have metered water/sewage
| nowadays, and so metered electricity is less strange.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| > (except perhaps hydro for reasonable definitions of
| "reliable").
|
| And geothermal, as you mention below. But, like hydro, it
| only works in certain geographic areas
| yongjik wrote:
| The nice thing about nuclear is that you can plan how much
| electricity you're going to generate. (Well, not counting
| project delays and stuff...)
|
| Ergo, if you're using nuclear and energy became "too cheap to
| meter" then someone was not doing their job properly. If Tesla
| overestimated market demand and has to give away cars for free,
| would you say it means Tesla is the car of the future?
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| > yet their energy prices aren't "too cheap to meter"
|
| French nuclear power is run by EDF, which although 85% owned by
| the French government has "a mandate to make a profit for its
| shareholders"
| guerby wrote:
| EDF is 100% owned by the french government since 20230608:
|
| https://presse.economie.gouv.fr/08062023-letat-redevient-
| lac...
| Retric wrote:
| France is its own unique thing because of how the government
| paid for so many things out of pocket they ended up losing
| money selling at wholesale rates. Safe Nuclear ended up being a
| lot more expensive than earlier predictions.
|
| It's not some design issue that you can fix with small modular
| reactors or whatever. Every time anything significant goes
| wrong people kept adding systems to prevent it happening again.
| Sometimes that's something physical like a wall or redundant
| system, and other times it's longer procedures and more
| paperwork. This has been great for avoiding another SL-1, 3
| mile island etc, but mitigating every possible risks isn't
| cheap. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1
|
| For example there was once an expensive issue where foreign
| material fell into the spent fuel pool where fixing it
| significantly extended an outage at a single reactor so now
| everyone working on anything at any reactor takes significant
| steps to mitigate that risk. Great things working as intended
| except now something that might have cost 100k now costs
| significantly more because of that mitigation effort.
|
| Extend that to any significant issue across hundreds of
| reactors and 50+ years and suddenly triple checking to avoid
| every fuck up means doing anything is really expensive. Worse
| very little of it is wasted effort, there's just far more ways
| to fuck up in practice than in theory.
|
| PS: I do believe it's possible to have safe and cheap nuclear
| power, it's just going to look very different than what we're
| doing today.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Operating costs for a coal-fired power plant, a nuclear reactor
| power plant, and a solar-battery power plant (requirement:
| steady power output 24-7) are all pretty comparable these days.
| Upfront constuction costs on nuclear are higher than others, so
| nuclear comes out near the top of the cost envelope. A lot also
| depends on variable costs of uranium ore and the fuel rod
| production process.
|
| While a 1 GW coal plant might burn as much as 4 million tons of
| coal a year, a comparable nuclear power plant only consumes
| some 30 tons of fuels rods per year - but depending on ore
| quality and U-235 enrichment level, that might translate to
| 300,000 tons of uranium ore that needs to be mined and
| converted into fuel rods through an expensive multi-step
| process. Coal is much dirtier in terms of average daily
| emissions (though there's always the catastrophic failure risk
| with nuclear).
|
| Solar / wind / storage operating costs are limited to
| maintenance and battery replacement, which can still be
| considerable.
| gwervc wrote:
| Because the price of electricity is (unfairly) based on gas
| price by EU regulations, imposed by Germany. One of the
| propositions of one party running for the next election is to
| renegotiate this so we can use our cheap electricity as the
| competitive advantage it is.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| That's because it's a state run system and it really isn't that
| cheap. The nuclear operators are shielded from market rates by
| the government. The way that works is that they get a
| guaranteed price per kwh in long multi year deals, regardless
| of what the market does. That's actually true in most countries
| that operate nuclear plants. Without those guarantees, it's to
| risky of a thing to do financially for investors.
|
| What they charge customers in France is also controlled by the
| government (and not the same thing). The difference is simply
| made up by tax payer money. Of course being connected to the
| rest of the European market and also having a lot of their own
| renewables, this just means that bill is getting larger and
| larger for the French government whenever there is a surplus of
| wind and solar. Which is probably happening quite often now.
|
| Here are some details on a deal the French government struck
| with nuclear operator EDF recently:
| https://www.clearygottlieb.com/news-and-insights/publication...
|
| It's indeed a great example why commercial nuclear plants
| without extensive state support is not really a thing. Most
| places that have nuclear plants, also feature heavy government
| involvement and state funding. That plant that Bill Gates is
| involved with that recently started construction work, only
| still exists because of extensive state involvement.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Why would any commercial energy producer, of any variety
| (nuclear, coal, solar, wind, etc), put money into building
| excess capacity to the point that the marginal profit of extra
| production is zero?
| gwbas1c wrote:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20240617071413/https://fortune.co...
| jnsie wrote:
| Potentially ignorant question. How does this impact the consumer?
| Do they actually get paid/credited for electricity used?
| NullPrefix wrote:
| transmission charges still apply
| gruez wrote:
| Consumers don't pay the market rate, because that'd expose them
| to price shocks (see: the griddy fiasco in texas a few years
| ago). They get a fixed rate from their utility.
| guerby wrote:
| In France consumers with below 36kVA grid connection can
| choose to pay state fixed prices, or they can choose various
| market offers, here is the official list of electricity
| providers:
|
| https://www.enedis.fr/liste-des-fournisseurs-delectricite
| pyrale wrote:
| State-fixed prices are rarely interesting though, as the
| price is calculated to be above-market.
| nawitus wrote:
| That depends on the consumer (and market I guess). In many
| countries in Europe that is an option. (Although there should
| be some extra fees on top).
| Neil44 wrote:
| This happens frequently in the UK too, if you have a compatible
| supplier you can set it up to charge your EV or some batteries
| during negative spikes. Ultimately if enough people were set up
| that way then prices would not get negative I suppose.
|
| * https://octopus.energy/smart/agile/
| risyachka wrote:
| I wonder how many people need to do that in order for it to
| become not negative.
| Neil44 wrote:
| Interesting question! Maybe someone cleverer than me can work
| it out :)
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| That's pretty much the whole dilemma now with
| decarbonization. We know how to generate electricity very
| cheaply with solar and wind. We just don't know how to do it
| at the right time.
|
| It will take a lot of investment in storage tech (beyond lots
| of people using their EV car batteries as time-shifting
| storage, though that's certainly a good use!) in order to get
| prices smoothed out so that electricity generated at 1PM can
| be used at 11PM.
| jayflux wrote:
| > We know how to generate electricity very cheaply with
| solar and wind. We just don't know how to do it at the
| right time
|
| I'm not sure this needs to be a goal to be honest.
|
| It's more practical for us to become accustomed to agile
| tariffs and have our own batteries + charging the car when
| prices drop than to hope for large scale storage solutions.
| In the UK the average solar install now includes batteries
| as prices come down on them.
|
| We can already do this today fairly easily, and with open
| tariff APIs plus more integrated devices it will become
| easier.
| manquer wrote:
| It is complex, wholesale prices generally do not reflect in
| retail directly. even when suppliers have flexible pricing and
| support V2G /buying from users solar etc, there is only only
| some correlation not 100% pass through of rates.
|
| There are also technical and economic reasons this may not work
| beyond just inelastic vendor pricing, there is cost to
| transmission(loss) and all the step down that has to happen
| before electricity is at your door, that cost will be always
| positive so it may not actually be net positive.
|
| At steep enough negative pricing this could be profitable,
| however at that point power plants with the highest costs and
| easiest scale down/ shut down procedures will start acting.
|
| Projects like the one at Dinorwig (pumped hydro-storage) are
| more viable solution for excess capacity.
| remus wrote:
| > Projects like the one at Dinorwig (pumped hydro-storage)
| are more viable solution for excess capacity.
|
| I think this is a little simplistic. Pumped hydro is very
| reliant on finding suitable geography which ultimately limits
| the potential capacity. I think it's more likely that grids
| of the future will rely on a variety of storage solutions
| (pumped hydro, consumer EVs, grid scale batteries etc.) and
| smarter load-shedding rather than any single solution being
| dominant.
| pfdietz wrote:
| This is a bit misleading. Pumped hydro needs vertical
| relieve, but in places where vertical relief exists the
| potential is very large. It does _not_ need to be on or
| even near any existing watercourse (although it can be
| piggybacked onto a reservoir that is, by adding another
| reservoir at higher elevation.)
| pyrale wrote:
| Load scheduling driven by price incentives (namely hot
| water) is already the largest flexibility source in France
| iirc. I'm not sure that there is much difference between
| price-driven flexibility and smart grids though (in that
| most of the benefit is captured by communicating prices
| ahead of time rather than dynamic load modulation)
| manquer wrote:
| I meant to imply grid scale solutions not just pumped hydro
| only. The point was end customers based storage is not cost
| effective option for negative pricing, which will be be
| almost always marginally negative just shy of the cost of
| plants to scale down their generation.
|
| Pumped hydro has been the cheapest by far and proven at
| scale far beyond any other solution including grid scale
| batteries, but only works in specific geographies and up to
| a fixed scale.
|
| Grid scale batteries, pumped hydro, molten salts or other
| grid scale storage are all viable options provided TCO is
| cheaper than arbitrage that comes from price fluctuations.
|
| This is no different than arbitrage in say commodity
| markets by taking delivery of the goods like say how U.S.
| government is using its strategic oil reserves these days.
| kieranmaine wrote:
| Octopus and OVO also offer EV tariffs where you get a cheaper
| kWh price if you let them control when your EV is charged. You
| can always override the smart charging but you pay the standard
| rate.
|
| * https://octopus.energy/smart/intelligent-octopus-go/ - 7.5p
| per kWh
|
| * https://www.ovoenergy.com/electric-cars/charge-anytime - 7p
| per kWh
| guerby wrote:
| All the analysis I can find talk only about the spot price
| being negative.
|
| But what matters for economics is the volume exchanged at this
| negative price, that is if you are a buyer with infinite
| capacity to absorb kWh how much money you'll make yearly?
|
| Anyone with a good URL?
| ragebol wrote:
| No URL, but if demand were there to take all that in, the
| demand would obviously go up. But there is not enough demand,
| so the capacity is far from infinite. The best fix for
| negative prices is negative prices, the demand will come.
|
| I'm still curious about the actual MWh's traded for negative
| prices as well
| baq wrote:
| > the demand will come
|
| Or... the supply will go away _shudders_
| pyrale wrote:
| Demand is not that flexible, especially intraday. Negative
| prices tend to be served by production program adjustments.
| pyrale wrote:
| Afaik most of the energy is traded otc, spot markets are a
| tiny fraction of what gets delivered.
|
| But that fraction is still interesting: since p=c must be
| respected, and there is always some small delta that is hard
| to predict and has to be covered. The spot price is not
| relevant to consumer prices, but it is relevant to the cost
| for energy providers to fine-tune their supply.
| riffraff wrote:
| AFAIK this happens fairly regularly in some northern european
| countries (NL and DE come to mind) due to wind over-production.
| The sooner we get cheap grid storage, the better.
| ragebol wrote:
| Fairly regularly indeed. The bare EPEX spot price, before taxes
| etc, is on track to be at least 500 hours this year in NL.
| (About 300h in 2923 iirc)
|
| MartienVisser on twitter has some great graphs about the energy
| market, but I'm on my phone and banned twitter from that.
| jtwaleson wrote:
| I'm in NL and often use this website to check for day-ahead
| pricing: https://energie.anwb.nl/actuele-tarieven
|
| It's very frequent indeed. I noticed that it's mostly during
| sunny days in late spring / summer / early fall (solar). Much
| more rare is randomly at night (stormy days).
|
| Solar is still pretty small in national grid charts, but I
| suspect that residential solar just reduces demand from the
| grid and doesn't show up as production.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Econ 101: with a marginal cost equal to zero, a competitive
| electricity market (with a price driven to marginal cost because
| of competition) cannot be sustainable because electricity price
| it cannot pay for the fixed costs.
|
| Solution: we must stop electricity pricing based on _energy_
| produced (which made sense when using fossil fuel) and switch to
| a pricing mechanism where you pay for available _power_ because
| that 's where the marginal cost is increasing.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Many markets already do this: for example California pays
| generators a mixed rate per kWh and kW.
|
| But just pricing per kWh can work. If the limit is available
| capacity at 6PM, then those kWh are the most profitable and
| capacity will be built to meet demand at 6PM.
| digdugdirk wrote:
| I'm intrigued. But with an electrical grid that requires a
| constant match between electricity generation and consumption,
| how would you ensure the stability of a thing when its
| controlling mechanism (pricing) is its own derivative?
| pyrale wrote:
| That's the goal of the capacity market.
|
| https://energy.ec.europa.eu/topics/markets-and-consumers/cap...
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| It's only been negative for a few hours in the past year though.
|
| https://data.nordpoolgroup.com/auction/day-ahead/prices?deli...
| rig666 wrote:
| I had a friend recently tell me about how his excess power is put
| back into the grid and how he hopes our area sees negative rates
| eventually like this.
|
| My cynical side was quick to point out that I would fire up my
| crypto miners if electricity was free for a few hours a day.
| After talking to him more I realized we both had different take
| aways from the story of "the tragedy of the commons" I lightened
| the conversation up by informing him he could do folding from
| home for a few hours to make sure his excess power went to a
| noble cause & thwart my zero sum approach.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| My aging mind can't remember the actual facts but it was
| determined that when someone has significantly more power than
| they had a need for (say, full batteries and a whole lot of
| solar) that it opened up interesting behaviors. We try hard to
| be as efficient as possible, but when you don't have to, it
| leads to interesting stuff. (like leave the lights on, leave
| the windows open with a space heater next to you, etc.)
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yes, mine is when I'm at a hotel I set the AC much cooler
| than I would at home, and I take really long showers.
| stoperaticless wrote:
| Name for it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
| kypro wrote:
| I was told that in Russia nat gas is so cheap that they keep
| the heating on 24/7 and will often just open windows to
| regulate temperature. No idea how true this is and whether it
| just applies to offices / apartment complexes but this is
| what I was told.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| District heating maybe
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| My uncle in Moscow used to have his gas cooker on all the
| time in the kitchen.
| mopsi wrote:
| That's true. Proper ventilation with heat exchangers and
| all that is a very recent thing and not very widespread.
| Almost the entire housing stock, offices and other
| buildings were built without modern ventilation. Instead,
| buildings got windows with small separately openable
| sections (1/6 of the opening) known as _fortochkas_ [1] for
| ventilation. They were a standard element of mass-built
| commieblocks [2] and it was common to overheat buildings so
| much that ventilation windows were left open all the time
| even in the winter. In modern times, when energy has a
| cost, they are often replaced with the latest well-
| insulated windows and kept shut to save money, which leads
| to molding issues due to insufficient ventilation.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortochka
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khrushchevka
| cyberax wrote:
| It's true! Old apartment buildings and offices were
| designed with district heating in mind.
|
| The heating is provided via hot water radiators that are
| not at all adjustable, there are no thermostats in
| individual apartments! So if the weather is not very cold,
| your apartment can become too hot. While it's still sub-
| freezing outside.
|
| Newer apartment buildings have adjustable radiators with
| thermostatic valves, but it's far from common.
| djmips wrote:
| Is Folding a good use of computing resources and power? Do they
| have any wins?
| kelnos wrote:
| > _I would fire up my crypto miners if electricity was free for
| a few hours a day_
|
| I dunno, if electricity was free only for a few hours, I would
| use it to charge batteries, and then use that stored
| electricity later in the day when it's _not_ free.
|
| If electricity was free most or all of the time, and/or if I
| could store more than I could use, then sure, I'd probably use
| it for unnecessary things that some might consider wasteful
| (not crypto mining; I'm allergic).
| jimbobthrowawy wrote:
| If the price swings were frequent and steep enough, you could
| probably have your batteries send power back to the grid when
| the price gets high.
|
| I doubt the economics work, but I'd love to live in a world
| where a lot of the grid's battery storage is based on backup
| batteries people have at their houses with the added bonus of
| reducing their billing costs.
| countvonbalzac wrote:
| Is folding at home still relevant after alpha fold?
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