Billions for wind and solar. Good luck plugging them in | Hacker News Reader

Billions for wind and solar. Good luck plugging them in

nytimes.com

25 points74028 comments

NIMBYism has ruined the spirit of this country. Fundamentally, we’re doers - and we don’t really “do” anymore. Where’s the enormous Austin subway system? The ”power too cheap to meter” from nuclear power plants??

We can afford all of this, easily, but let unrelated landowners stop us. It’s Kafkaesque.

Fundementally, we’re no longer doers in aggregate. We’re a theater act, pretending to be dynamic and capable, when in actually we’re two broad groups: people who want some form of change and a combination of the very wealthy, NIMBYs, and landowners, who skew older and are comfortable with the status quo, who you can only apply pressure through policy and action until they age out (California overriding local zoning and various counties ignoring nimbys wanting to ban solar and wind projects).

With my apologies to Max Planck, “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” Similar situation. Upzoning will happen, renewables will happen, overall change will happen, you’ll just have to deal with the wail of the opposition for the duration. 1.8 million citizens over the age of 55 die every year; progress is a function of the death rate. Onward!

The power grid situation is not much better here in The Netherlands.

https://nltimes.nl/2022/08/04/dutch-power-grid-overloaded-pl...

Lol, I really do wonder about 2035 ICE ban with grid already falling apart.

https://archive.ph/gTa95

"One planned wind farm in North Dakota, for example, was asked to pay for multimillion-dollar upgrades to transmission lines hundreds of miles away in Nebraska and Missouri."

"In 2018, EDP North America, a renewable energy developer, proposed a 100-megawatt wind farm in southwestern Minnesota, estimating it would have to spend $10 million connecting to the grid. But after the grid operator completed its analysis, EDP learned the upgrades would cost $80 million."

Makes me wonder what that Federal 'infrastructure bill' is paying for that is so much more important. The grid has long-needed to be a #1 national priority. And the high-roller electric companies can well afford to pay for a large share of a smarter grid.

As someone who wants solar the legal barriers are the main hang up. I can buy 8 KW of panels for around $2,500. Permitting and licensed install will cost a order in magnitude more than the panels themselves.

At this point I'm thinking of just doing a renegade install and taking my house off the power grid

Why do VCs get so excited about "disruption?"

Because it opens up lucrative new mass markets and forces consumers to participate.

Green energy technologies are good and worthwhile but there are real limits to what they can do right now.

What we are seeing is a policy driven forced disruption by entities who hope to profit from it .

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