Comment by nicoffeine | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nicoffeine | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> In that time the energy mix feeding my house

That's a pretty small data point. Check out the worldwide trend.[1]

> No one AFAIK, has managed to get their "green" energy solutions down to the levels france was in the 1980's

The share of nuclear power generation in France peaked around 2005.[2] They had to temporarily shut down four plants in 2018 to avoid meltdowns[3] due to heatwaves which will become more frequent and they are cancelling nuclear projects in favor of renewable projects.

Renewable energy surpassed nuclear for the EU as a whole around 2014[4]. And the first half of this year, renewables provided more energy than fossil fuels:

"It’s official: in the first half of 2020, and for the first time, Europe generated more electricity from renewable sources than from fossil fuels. Not only that, but electricity is proving cheaper in countries that have more renewables.

From January to June, wind, solar, hydro and bioenergy generated 40% of the electricity across the EU’s 27 member states, while fossil fuels generated 34%. In the United States, by way of contrast, fossil fuels generated more than 62% of electricity last year, while renewables accounted for less than 18%."[5]

> The day its actually cheaper to put solar on your average house with a tesla power wall will be the day there is a shitton of home equity loans being taken out to do so.

"Per the US residential solar finance update: H2 2019, a bit over half of homeowners who upgrade their homes with solar panels get a loan, a sixth of the population pay cash, and the last third rent their roof out to a third party.

Within those numbers were $1.35 billion of residential solar loan ABS (asset backed security) 144A public issuances in 2019, doubling 2018’s $680 million."[6]

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/modern-renewable-energy-c...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_France

[3] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/france-nucle...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_the_Europe...

[5] https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidrvetter/2020/07/23/europea...

[6] https://commercialsolarguy.com/2020/07/01/residential-solar-...

You can lie with press releases all day long. The pacific NW had more "renewable" energy production than carbon sources for decades, its carbon footprint per MW is about 3x that of France.

Shifing to a pacific NW model is economically something that is happening on its own, and has been for the 30 years I linked above. But not because we are building "Green" because all those intermittent sources are 30%+ backed by NG generators which can be spun up/down on demand and over the past 15 are super cheap to install. And NG has been super cheap due to fracking and the fact that the US can't sell it internationally.

But its not about percentages, its about how much CO2 is being produced.

https://www.nwcouncil.org/news/northwest-carbon-footprint-lo...

Today I learned that Wikipedia and OurWorldInData are "press releases"...

Yes, we get it that you have a wholly irrational dislike of renewable energy and are willing to grasp at straws to argue against it.

> because all those intermittent sources are 30%+ backed by NG generators which can be spun up/down on demand and over the past 15 are super cheap to install

I'm trying to follow what you're arguing here and it makes no sense. You're arguing that the Northwest is simultaneously using almost all renewables and using tons of fossil fuels...? It can't be both.

We'll ignore the fact that according to your link, wind+solar is less than 10% of the electricity generation there, and there's no real evidence of a big investment in either, just the pre-existing hydro power.

No, I just don't like people who pretend that wind/solar are actually going to solve the CO2 problem by pointing at some future technology or pricing model that is going to save us while stubbornly refusing to accept a 70 year old technology that is actually carbon free.

That is what got us were we are today. Because back in the 1970/80's people argued the exact same thing (no nukes, solar will save us). And what happened? We got more coal plants because they were way cheaper except in the few places that actually built nukes. The same argument happened in the 1990s/2000s and what did we get? A few percent of wind/solar, and a shift to NG due to fracking.

_TODAY_ if you want a competitive solution you build somewhere in the ballpark of 20-70% wind/solar and back it with NG.

Where will that put us in over the next 40 years?

Its going to create even more C02 because power utilization is going up. All that is going to do is slow the rate of increase, which is exactly what the current charts are showing. The rate of wind/solar rollout is barely exceeding the demand curve and in a lot of places its regressing, particularly in places where ancient nuke plants are being replaced by "green" technologies.

Yes, sure wind+NG is better than NG or coal, but its a shit solution. If batteries actually get cheap then we can do 2x wind+battery, but that isn't here today. What we have today are nuke plants, just like we did 40 years ago. If back then instead of waiting for the future to save us we were more pragmatic the ice caps wouldn't be melting.

My personal opinion is that in 40 years what is going to solve this problem is a giant war, because wishing for the future to save us hasn't worked yet.

You're trying to argue that the solar market in 2020 looks the same as it did in the 1970s? Seriously? When the cost of solar PV has dropped 70% just in the last decade alone...?

https://www.lazard.com/media/451447/grphx_lcoe-09-09.jpg

I can't even find LCOE figures that far back, but the cost of solar modules in 1975 was just over $100 a watt. Today, a solar panel can cost as little as $0.50/W

Citation: https://news.energysage.com/the-history-and-invention-of-sol...

That's literally a TWO HUNDREDFOLD decrease in price, and modern panels last longer. This is like arguing that computers are useless in 2020 because in the 70s they were not very powerful.

> If batteries actually get cheap then we can do 2x wind+battery, but that isn't here today

Battery storage costs have already dropped 75% over the last 6 years, and we're pretty close to making that possible: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/report-levelize...

In the field, people bidding on energy projects are doing mixed solar+storage and wind+storage at prices comparable to nuclear or lower. Today. With 2020 tech and 2020 pricing, not 2025, not 2030. Granted, these aren't including a lot of storage right now (1-4 hours generally) but as battery prices continue to drop that will increase.

Given how costs are dropping as the technologies scale up, in 2025 people won't even think twice before choosing renewables+storage over nuclear, because it'll be a no-brainer.

> What we have today are nuke plants, just like we did 40 years ago.

Yes, that's the problem. Nuke plants plants have advanced technologically in the last 40 years, but in terms of cost they're actually more expensive because we found more failure modes (and need to prevent them).

And this is disappointing because I worked in nuclear physics for a few years and really wanted to believe that nuclear energy was going to save us... and it catastrophically failed to deliver.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com