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Comment by mytailorisrich | Hacker News Reader

>Wind - and other renewables - have done what nuclear couldn't. They have provided such an abundance of electricity that consumers are paid to use it.

That's actually a symptom of the current issues with renewables: production is highly variable and unpredictable (to an extent) and cannot be controlled, and electricity produced cannot be stored.

Interestingly, if electricity indeed becomes too cheap to meter then why bother with heat pumps, etc. at home? It is much easier and cheaper to just install an electric boiler and electric heaters.

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As renewables approach a cost of zero (major projects are already close to $0.01/kwh), the cost of power then becomes storage and distribution. As the cost of storage declines (battery manufacturing capacity ramp), the cost of power continues to decline. Put another way, the cost of power is a function of renewables and battery storage ramp rate.

Regarding your last point, we should not sacrifice efficiency when we still need incredible amounts of power to sequester excessive atmospheric CO2 with carbon capture (paying back the energy debt), and HVAC system lives are measured in decades. As the post mentions, a component of the story is energy efficiency, and we shouldn’t throw that away going forward.

Sure. The thing is that in the real world if people get essentially free electricity they are not going to invest in energy efficiency because there is no benefit in doing so.

I don't think this will happen anytime soon, though. Renewables are still expensive and in many cases rely on price guarantees by the government, and we're still in a phase when production has to increase significantly to keep up with demand. So overall the market reality and incentive is to push for efficiency while prices remain relatively high (at least in the UK)

Purely a data point, and not meant to be persuasive, but I bought a heat pump dryer this year, largely because of the ventless operation. Dryer lint fires are frightening.

Heat pumps could save money in new construction by reducing the amount of copper, too. Builders will be all over that if it becomes acceptable.

I think we’ll find that there are other benefits that come with new technology beyond the direct electricity consumption.

Worst cases, though, if all the electricity is produced in clean methods, how much does it matter that we’re not using it as efficiently as we could be?

If you mean copper pipes, I don't think that heat pumps save anything. In addition nowadays there are plastic pipes that may actually be superior to copper (no corrosion and they are cheaper).

My point is that if electricity is effectively free then there is no incentive to invest in energy saving. The same goes for any resources. In any case, I don't think it is a realistic prospect to expect electricity to become effectively free at least in the medium term.

I get your point, but nobody apart from the state is going to build enough nuclear power to make electricity worthless.

> why bother with heat pumps

Unless you say "install a heat pump" then heatpumps are reasonably cheap. If you want non super thin radiators, then some domestic aircon is not actually that much more expensive than electric.

It can be stored, it's just that it's currently cheaper to curtail or pay people to use it and to fill in the gaps with cheap gas.

Despite intense lobbying against them pumped storage plants like coire glas and snowy 2 are under construction.

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