If I lock myself in an airtight room, but plant a tree next to me, will I survive?
Solar levelized cost of electricity is 29% lower than any fossil fuel alternative
- Thread starter fromport
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Daddy Tanuki
Solar Wizard
CO2 is not dangerous per se, being in a locked up room with nothing but a tree might be. i guess you would die of dehydration first. ever think that the regulation and ownership of something we all need to survive like water might be a larger issue? guess not, you are not that bright.
CO2 is needed for plants to survive... they make O2 something we desperately need more than water.,.. you are obtuse and arguing simply for the sake of arguing... go off to the corner with your dunce cap and play hide and go fornicate with yourself.
Dude I wasn't being serious, I was just trying to add some funny to the thread. Maybe it was kinda stupid instead. I didn't have my coffee yet. Or maybe I should have put a stupid face in the post to make it clear I was joking ? I don't believe that CO2 is the big evil monster they've made it out to be, at all.
No need to go off the rails and throwing insults, but if you do, at least aim them the right direction ?
Daddy Tanuki
Solar Wizard
gotcha, seemed serious and its hard to tell on the internet what a persons thoughts are if not explicdity stated.
houseofancients
Solar Wizard
It doesn't.. can't be said for oil and gas though..
Huge subsidies
Evidence/data to back that up?
Hedges
I See Electromagnetic Fields!
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The Department of Defense Releases the President's Fiscal Year 2023 Defense Budget
Statement by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III on the President's Fiscal Year 2023 Budget
www.defense.gov
houseofancients
Solar Wizard
See post #5
svetz
Works in theory! Practice? That's something else
Yep... let's follow the unsubsidized money ... below in the graph are the unsubsidized LCOEs for energy.
How PV & Wind are the Cheapest
The 2023 low-end LCOEs for PV ($24) and Wind ($24) have been far cheaper than natural gas ($39) for over a decade now.
That's why you keep hearing renewables are the cheapest form of energy generation, and it is 100% true. Sort of.
If it's cheaper, why didn't we Capitalists switch?
To be viable, renewables also need energy storage which gives a combined cost of $46. That's more expensive than natural gas ($39) and that's why we haven't switched.
Nuclear
Nuclear power plants ($141) are incredibly expensive, so that's why you typically don't see a lot of new ones being built. Nuclear isn't a good option to replace fossil fuels just because we'd run out of fuel if the world were powered by it before the end of the century (we need breeder technology to be commercialized to make it work).
Currently, for FPL, nuclear fuel per MWH is ~5 times cheaper than natural gas, so it makes sense to keep those plants running.
So, nuclear is not dead. Plants like Miami's keep getting life extensions (not that expensive to keep it running, Miami's reactor was designed in the 50's and was originally built in 1972 to last 40 years, but has been granted operation to 2053*). The opposite end of the spectrum is places like California. But it's probably case by case as Miami doesn't get Earthquakes or tsunamis.
*Note that by 2053, the water rise from climate change is only expected to rise ~12 inches at current rates** (they'll be fine, the current elevation at the nuclear power plant is 6' and hurricane flooding reported for south Miami rarely exceeds 10'
). **Note: The rates have been increasing over the last decade, but 0.3 to 0.4" per year is the current measured rate (ref).
What else?
It also explains why utilities are buying batteries as fast they can, peaker plants are expensive at $115. Coal at $62 will probably never come back and coal plants everywhere will probably be decommissioned at end-of-life.
Falling Prices
Fossil fuel prices aren't expected to go down. Not until we switch away from it. Which given this we should.
But, with the new battery technology coming out, LCOS (levelized cost of Storage) is expected to come down.
But Solar and Wind aren't good everywhere, that's why there's a price range to the LCOE. Someplace that is $96 for PV+Storage is still going to be way more expensive than natural gas.
Cheap solar is where sun is plentiful and land is cheap, like the desert Will P. lives in. Not everyplace has an abundance of unused solar-ready land. Residential rooftops and road surfaces are an ideal use of space as utilities already run alongside them; but they're one-offs which drive the price way up. Unfortunately, unless you're a DIYer for your rooftop those LCOEs can be obscene. Installation is a business and they need to make money to pay employees, so for rooftops everywhere to work they need a new technology (e.g., multiple groups are looking at this from things like painting on solar panels to rolling it down and affixing them with hurricane tape) where you just plug it in with minimal fuss or professional help. While roads in the U.S. have 3x the surface area needed to power the U.S., AFAIK they take a lot of abuse and no one has figured out a durable economic alternative.
New nuclear technology with a small footprint would be ideal (lots of power from a small area), and there are a lot of exciting things happening around that too.
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fromport
Solar Addict
California energy officials vote to extend Diablo Canyon nuclear plant operations
The California Public Utilities Commission has voted to extend operation of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant for five more years.
www.latimes.com
California energy officials have voted to extend the operation of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant through 2030, extending the life span of the state’s last nuclear plant an additional five years.
The state utilities commission acknowledged that the costs associated with the plan were still unknown but were expected to exceed $6 billion.
A 46-page report by Digby Macdonald, a professor at UC Berkeley’s Department of Nuclear Engineering, suggested one of the plant’s nuclear reactors “poses an unreasonable risk to public health and safety due to serious indications of an unacceptable degree of embrittlement,” or deterioration due to prolonged exposure to radiation.
“Inside the aging Diablo Canyon reactors resides an astronomical quantity of radioactivity,” said Daniel Hirsch, a retired director of the Program on Environmental and Nuclear Policy at UC Santa Cruz. “It only stays inside if it’s constantly cooled. Any disruption in that, an earthquake or accident, can cause a meltdown releasing enough radioactivity to contaminate a substantial portion of California for generations.”
Yep. The actual cost of renewables isn't what is advertised. And doesn't include the land and lifetime recycling costs of the equipment in most estimates.
Nuclear
Nuclear power plants ($141) are incredibly expensive, so that's why you typically don't see a lot of new ones being built. Nuclear isn't a good option to replace fossil fuels just because we'd run out of fuel if the world were powered by it before the end of the century (we need breeder technology to be commercialized to make it work).
Currently, for FPL, nuclear fuel per MWH is ~5 times cheaper than natural gas, so it makes sense to keep those plants running.
View attachment 183391
So, nuclear is not dead. Plants like Miami's keep getting life extensions (not that expensive to keep it running, Miami's reactor was designed in the 50's and was originally built in 1972 to last 40 years, but has been granted operation to 2053*). The opposite end of the spectrum is places like California. But it's probably case by case as Miami doesn't get Earthquakes or tsunamis.
*Note that by 2053, the water rise from climate change is only expected to rise ~12 inches at current rates** (they'll be fine, the current elevation at the nuclear power plant is 6' and hurricane flooding reported for south Miami rarely exceeds 10'
**Note: The rates have been increasing over the last decade, but 0.3 to 0.4" per year is the current measured rate (ref).
Thorium will never run out and is a better (safer) fuel than uranium. Our Dept of Energy decided in the 50s to pursue/permit/encourage uranium reactors for power generation because they _wanted_ the plutonium and other byproducts of those reactions for nuclear weapons.
If you aren't aware of this, and of current generation (3+ and 4) reactor technologies, then you don't know anything about nuclear.
If batteries continue to come down, and the material supply chain can scale, and doesn't involve kids mining stuff in third world countries, and the used batteries can be recycled or trashed safely, excellent!
In some places solar is perfect - New Mexico where sun is reliable and coincides with air conditioning usage. No argument there. But you know, more people live in New England than New Mexico...
Nice chart. It might even be mostly accurate. I don't believe anyone's claims any more though. If I have learned anything in the last 10 years, it is that no data is trustworthy.
I do trust what I can see actually happening - which is that renewables have to be forced on the market with subsidies and regulation.
Because the us cost for gas is heavily subsidized.
Energy subsidies in the United States - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
Again don't be fooled by vested interest
And... don't be fooled by vested interests yourself.
A lot of the recent fossil fuel "subsidies" are... research on making them more efficient. Any arguments there? You think we shouldn't have been doing that for the last 50 years?
Then there's this...
"Oil, natural gas, and coal benefited most from percentage depletion allowances and other tax-based subsidies, but oil also benefited heavily from regulatory subsidies such as exemptions from price controls and higher-than-average rates of return allowed on oil pipelines."
In other words...
"depletion allowances" are basically just depreciation of capital assets. Just like a solar farm is depleted over the useful life of the equipment.
"exemption from price controls" - WTH? Exemptions from price controls? Seriously? Our entire system is supposed to be capitalist, which _means_ market pricing. Price controls? Really? (same for "higher-than-average rates of return allowed on oil pipelines").
Wikipedia is FAR from unbiased. If you beleive everything you read there without checking out other sources (or even just plain old _thinking_ about what it is saying as I did above) then you are "fooled by vested interests".
See prior post.
China cannot manufacture solar panels and deploy them fast enough to satisfy the electrical load.
I expect the FF plants to eventually be dismantled if for nothing else to reduce FF imports.
fromport
Solar Addict
I am missing the explanation of the subsidized fuel costs for the natural gas power plants.
Summary: The utility scale renewable energy industry was only ever viable because of near zero interest rates and massive government subsidies. Without both they would have been impossible.
And (not in the video) near zero (or even negative in Europe) _never_ made any economic sense (it was all politics).
So it took two enormous politically-motivated distortions of the markets to make it possible.
houseofancients
Solar Wizard
Really, just had 3 huge windparken at sea go live here, without subsidies, that deliver about 19% of countries usage .
Again you can stick your head in the sand all you want, doesn't change the facts.
Furthermore here oil/gas has been subsidized for the amount of 10 billion a year, in tax breaks or direct subsidies
And this is just a country of 17 million folks, you have any idea what that would be for the usa
