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| ▲ | KaiserPro 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > Offshore wind isn't as cost effective as solar, it's the poster boy for high-cost, low-value renewable energy Its not clear cut. Part of the reason why electricity is so expensive in the UK is that its tied to natural gas prices. some of it is CFD, but most of it is because a lot of our power comes from natural gas. We pay for gas on the open market because we aren't self sufficient for gas any more. Yes solar is cheaper to deploy, but its not as useful on its own. Wind is far far better in the winter. What we should be doing is getting nuclear plants built. Small ones ideally, but a few bigguns will do. Then we won't be so reliant on natural gas. We also need to get those extra transmission cables built. (note we could have built 10 nuclear power plants, well EDF at 2002 power prices, but the present government balked because nuclear is bad yo.) | | |
| ▲ | janc_ 2 days ago | parent [-] | | There is also a significant cost to moving electricity production from a relatively small number of centralised plants to almost everywhere. Once the infrastructure is adapted to that, costs should normalise again. | | |
| ▲ | mullingitover a day ago | parent [-] | | > There is also a significant cost to moving electricity production from a relatively small number of centralised plants to almost everywhere. Correct, but that cost is a negative number. When the generation happens in the same location where the electricity is used, you don't get the significant transmission losses. You don't have to build and maintain big transformer substations. Obviously this doesn't count for big utility-scale solar arrays. However, every commercial warehouse, for example, could cover its roof and have near-zero transmission losses for most or all of its energy usage. |
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| ▲ | cjs_ac 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | UK energy prices are set by the most expensive energy source in the mix that contributes to the National Grid, which happens to be gas. | | |
| ▲ | Nextgrid 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Which also sets broken incentives where nobody (not even renewables) are actually incentivized to dethrone gas/etc as it would reduce their own profit margin. | | |
| ▲ | ViewTrick1002 2 days ago | parent [-] | | But everyone are incentivized to build another wind farm, solar plant, battery etc to make profit on the current fossil gas based margins. Pushing the price lower for more hours. Equilibrium is met when new production becomes too expensive vs. the existing profit potential. All resource markets globally run on marginal price. The other option for electricity would be that everyone instead does their own research and predicts the clearing price leading to even higher waste and more volatility. |
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| ▲ | youngtaff 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Uk energy costs are high because the highest cost marginal producer sets the rate i.e. gas powered stations Many of the new wind farms get a fixed price for energy and when the wholesale price is about that the excess gets channeled into a fund that is used to reduce consumer prices | |
| ▲ | doctorpangloss 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | energy development is complex, but it cannot be your idea, which boils down to, "whatever is cheapest," especially for government policy. it would be cheapest to not use energy at all, which is the exact opposite of the mercenary POV you are talking about, without having to use the word environment at all. | | |
| ▲ | monero-xmr 2 days ago | parent [-] | | It would be cheapest, and 100% in our control, to construct coal plants. Coal is abundant. China builds insane amounts of coal plants to this day. That would provide bountiful cheap energy. But we don't do this. So all else being equal, I would suggest we reorient towards other types of renewable energy, especially nuclear, if we are longer worried about price | | |
| ▲ | mullingitover 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > It would be cheapest, and 100% in our control, to construct coal plants. Close, but one minor correction. Multiple studies have found that it would be cheapest to DEstruct coal plants. Literally demolishing them and replacing them with battery + solar is more cost effective than continuing to operate them in 99% of cases. | | |
| ▲ | monero-xmr 2 days ago | parent [-] | | In New England, where the offshore wind is being shut down, there is very little sun right now. How will solar + battery help in New England? | | |
| ▲ | mullingitover 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Germany is mostly north of the 49th parallel and has deployed over 100GW of capacity. New England would do just fine. |
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| ▲ | dragonwriter 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > It would be cheapest, and 100% in our control, to construct coal plants. Coal is abundant. China builds insane amounts of coal plants to this day. That would provide bountiful cheap energy. “Cheap” only if you exclude indirect costs due to emissions (both localized effects and less-localized.) > we reorient towards other types of renewable energy, especially nuclear nuclear is not renewable (it is low carbon, a feature that is also true of renewables in general, but it is not, itself, a renewable.) | | |
| ▲ | mullingitover 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > nuclear is not renewable It can be effectively renewable for all practical purposes, but there's an aversion to breeder reactors. Over 95% of the existing 'waste' could also be consumed by breeders. | | |
| ▲ | dragonwriter 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > It can be effectively renewable for all practical purposes, but there's an aversion to breeder reactors. Breeder reactors reduce long-term waste issues, but they don't make nuclear renewable. | | |
| ▲ | mullingitover 2 days ago | parent [-] | | They push the timeline out so far that it's effectively renewable. The sun will burn out at some point, too, but we don't say solar is non-renewable. | | |
| ▲ | dragonwriter 2 days ago | parent [-] | | We don't say solar is non-renewable because using every single available bit of solar today has no impact on the solar energy available tomorrow. This is not true of nuclear, even if you increase the total quantity of available fission-derived energy by 50 or 100 or whatever the outer estimate is for breeder reactors compared to non-breeder fission. | | |
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| ▲ | doctorpangloss 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Why do you think your particular mercenary point of view does not prevail? Because people are stupid? I like nuclear. The funny thing about nuclear power and the mercenaries promoting their startups about it is, you will still have to convince democrats about it. Because occasionally they are in power, and nuclear, as is often criticized, takes a long time to build and a short time to turn off haha. | | |
| ▲ | monero-xmr 2 days ago | parent [-] | | The problem is you build all of these offshore wind turbines and none of them are lowering our bills. As a politician I would try and lower my constituents' bills |
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| ▲ | willis936 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Now imagine if you paid for a giant wind project that never produced a Joule. Great for energy prices. |
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