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Comment by DataDaoDe | Hacker News Reader

I can't remember his name but there was a researcher (I think he was German) back in the early 2010s who predicted that as renewables became cheaper and gained more market share the price of energy would go up. This is because renewables are intermittent i.e. unreliable energy sources which means you need to maintain multiple energy infrastructures, a fallback for whenever renewables can't meet demand i.e. its nighttime or the wind isn't blowing, in addition to the renewable energy grid and switching back and forth has inefficiences. This is all if I'm remembering the paper correctly - it has been years since reading it.

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This is a lot more complicated than renewables/unrenewables. For example, hydroelectric power is almost the exact opposite of this. Geothermal, on the other hand, gives you a stable energy source, until it doesn't.

Also, the grid doesn't use power evenly, but nuclear power (like geothermal) produces very even output so the US & Canada have agreements where Canada supplies excess hydro power during the day and then buys back cheap nuclear power at night.

Of course, wind & solar are very intermittent, an many places don't have easy access to hydroelectric power, so this is certainly true in some places.

>Geothermal, on the other hand, gives you a stable energy source, until it doesn't.

Can you point me toward any studies about geothermal 'running out'? Is that a thing?

Not studies, but the geothermal active areas I've been to have stories of geysers/springs either coming out of nowhere, or disappearing. It's very rare, and mostly happens during earthquakes. I would imagine the same would apply to power generation.

So it's completely made up by you, then. Fantastic.

The problem in Germany is that coal displaces renewables but since renewables have the EEG they get paid anyway. Coal doesn't play nice, so to speak. There is an excess of coal in the German grid.

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