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Comment by anon291 | Hacker News Reader

Solar may be intermittent but tons of electrical usage can be made intermittent thus freeing capacity for non intermittent uses. I'm so tired of these arguments.

Trump claims to want to bring back manufacturing. Manufacturing is material inputs plus labor or automation. American labor is expensive. The only way to compete is automation.

Time and time again studies show that energy cost is the main determinant of factory output and manufacturing capacity. Cheap energy equals more stuff. That's basically it. Anyone who is canceling energy projects is not brining back manufacturing.

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Yeah. Less energy, less industry. Energy policy is industrial policy.

The US is losing thousands of manufacturing jobs under Trump. Major manufacturers are booking huge tariff-related losses. What is propping up the US economy right now is the AI infrastructure buildout, but the energy needs for this sector are huge. It’s complete insanity to try and kill solar, which is the cheapest and by far the fastest way to bring new capacity onto the grid. Regular Americans who aren’t part of the AI boom are facing manufacturing job losses, more expensive goods and skyrocketing electricity prices.

If we want to bring most types of manufacturing back then we need cheap, reliable base load power. It's often not economically feasible to shut a plant down and wait out a spike in electricity spot prices due to batch processing limits, thermal cycling, labor scheduling, and capital depreciation concerns. It's not a simple thing like turning off your home water heater for a few hours.

And your proposed solution for this is? Can’t be nuclear because that’s the most expensive mainstream energy we have.

Long term probably the only realistic solution will be changes in government policy to make fission power the least expensive energy we have. Grid scale battery storage can also help to an extent but it's unclear whether that will ever be cost effective or even possible given resource constraints.

So… we wait 30 years for this to happen while the planet cooks? Nah, I’d rather throw everything into renewables, batteries, and other innovations

Okay and what are we doing for that ? We are turning off dams in the PNW. China has successfully reduced energy costs, partially by using solar. I say just do what they're doing. We are at the point of playing catch up.

> Trump claims

It’s safe at this point to always assume the opposite of what he claims. Seems pretty clear he and his cohorts are going to cancel everything, funnel money into their pockets, then buy up everything for pennies on the dollar. Everyone in the US, and perhaps globally, will suffer while they create an ultra-corrupt New Gilded Age that makes the first one look like amateur hour.

> but tons of electrical usage can be made intermittent

I'm not familiar with large scale electrical. Do you have examples?

Aluminum refining from bauxite is a pretty classic example. It's very power intensive and will literally be done wherever and whenever they get the cheapest electricity.

Bitcoin mining is a more unfortunate one but also pretty typical.

The issue is capital expense.

Buying a bunch of expensive equipment and operating it 10 hours a day vs. 24 hours a day is usually not economical. The uses where this make sense are quite rare.

For example training AI models is often cited - but when you're buying $1B of GPUs to stuff in a datacenter that have a 3 year useful lifespan - you are effectively cutting your amortization schedule in half. It would require some really expensive energy to make that pencil out.

Energy storage of various types are probably the currently best bet, but those also have the same problem. Vehicle charging is a clear win, but also a low hanging fruit that is already well in play.

In such a case, isn't the "3 year useful lifespan" almost entirely related to energy cost?

Why not put machines on 24 hour schedules for their first couple years, then cheap intermittent power for the next five?

A good example: training AI models can be scheduled to occur when electricity is cheaper (aka solar power is active). That is just one example, but many things can happen throughout the day when power is cheaper.

Many large industrial sites will cut deals with power companies for very cheap rates in exchange for not running during peak hours. Classic example is aluminum refining, and, depending on process, steel refining.

If you can do demand based pricing, you could even end up with new time arbitrage business models. A battery farm or hydro facility stores energy when rates are cheap and discharges when rates go up.

Example: EV charging is largely schedule based (mine charges overnight only - because rate plan), and can be made demand based pretty easily.

> Trump claims to want to bring back manufacturing.

Trump claims a lot of stuff. It's all gaslighting*.

* Speaking of things Trump would claim to be for. Electric lighting is effete foolishness that makes your testicles shrivel!

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