9 ms·

Wind and solar are attracting the most funding

93 points by barney54 11y ago

terravion 11y ago
It seems like this observation of Wright's Law in action should lead to more politically palatable policy prescriptions. If cap and trade is out, just shifting some energy incentives to favor renewable or large orders to grow the market could push renewable to the place where it just straight out dominates energy.
- Retric 11y ago
  IMO, anything other than a strait carbon tax is a horrible idea. Cap and trade works out as billions in free money to existing company's and makes this a long term political football. Subsidies always have the same downsides as communist style planned economies. ex: Ridicules amounts of corn production because of politics not because that's a good use of resources.
  - melling 11y ago
    I was under the impression that a carbon tax hurts the poor. http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/february/kolstad-carbon-tax-022814.html http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/february/kolstad-carbon-t...
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      Not when you rebate it back to those under a certain income threshold.
      - melling 11y ago
        How do you know what to rebate people? The carbon tax will hit more than their electric bill. Also, some people have greener electricity than others. Here's how electricity is generated by state: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/power-plants/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/power-plant...
        epistasis 11y ago
        If it affects the poor, it would make the most sense to rebate purely on income level, equally based on income level. If the idea is to just give it back to the people that paid into it, that completelt defeats the entire purpose.
        melling 11y ago
        So, someone who lives in a state with green electricity, and buys products from "green companies", will get the same as someone from a coal state, like West Virginia? The question is why are you giving rebates to people who are mostly using green energy?
        epistasis 11y ago
        Because they aren't dumping as much carbon into the atmosphere. Thats the entire point of it all! Those who are dumping carbon into the atmosphere are free loading on the rest of society, expecting others to pay for their externalities. And it's not "giving rebate" it's returning tax revenues to those that can least afford them. But there are many other sources of carbon than poorly planned electrical systems. Driving, flying, and industry.
        melling 11y ago
        The poor person in West Virginia getting his electricity from dirty coal and driving a 10 year old F150 is getting the same rebate. He's buying stuff from Walmart that's shipped from China. Are you rewarding people for using less carbon or is the rebate to help offset the cost past through from companies passing on the extra tax onto consumers? Two different claims are being made.
        MaysonL 11y ago
        They may be getting the same rebate, but they aren't paying the same tax. If the rebate is the same for all, then those who use less will make a profit, considering the $rebate - $tax amounts, while those using more will pay more tax than they get in rebates. (This is assuming a revenue neutral arrangement).
      - SilasX 11y ago
        Better to just rebate a fixed amount to everyone so that you preserve the incentives for cutting back any marginal unit of fossil fuel consumption, while mitigating the overall income effect.
    - aoeusnth1 11y ago
      Just adjust income tax to compensate. Penalizing carbon production is a simple incentive-compatible way to have society receive compensation for the actual damage of people's actions.
    - greglindahl 11y ago
      You can find citations to discussions & proposals for how to mitigate that in many places, such as the Wikipedia Carbon Tax article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_tax#Distributional_impacts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_tax#Distributional_impa...
    - SilasX 11y ago
      In the sense that it's a kind of consumption tax, and consumption taxes are (considered[1]) regressive, then yes. So? Consumption (of fossil fuels) is the problem. Any policy measure that cuts fossil fuel consumption will thus necessarily be regressive to the extent that it precisely targets the problem. It's not like cap-and-trade or efficiency mandates somehow avoid that. But whatever anti-fossil-fuel measure you impose can be mitigated with orthogonal welfare policies. Also, it's not policy options can ever lack downsides. [1] I saw "considered" because the traditional result only gets that by a confused accounting basis. Yes, a consumption tax hits less of a rich person's income, but it hits the same amount of their later consumption. Don't compare income apples to consumption oranges.
    - Gibbon1 11y ago
      If a carbon tax will hurt the poor imagine what climate change is going to do to them. Personally I think poor people tend to be in this sort of budgetary Malthusian squeeze. If you raise the price of one thing then something else will have to give. Tax their gasoline more the end result is they'll buy 'less car' and have less money left over for rent. Since rents are likely the only other fungible cost that's where the money will ultimately come from.
      - fpoling 11y ago
        It reminds me of an old joke when Soviet Union tried to decrease alcohol consumption through rising alcohol prises: When father came home, his son announced that vodka would cost 50% more and said: - Father, does it mean that you are going to drink less? - No son, it means that you are going to eat less.
    - mikekchar 11y ago
      This is something you will have to deal with anyway. Let's take the the US for an example (although this will apply virtually anywhere in the world). I don't have time to gather excellent data, but wikipedia tells me that in 2010 28% of households made less than $25K, 51% made less than $50K, 69% made less than $75K. So in reality, about 30% are in a fairly serious pinch nearly all the time and 50% are probably doing OK, but still having to watch their budgets pretty closely. Only 30% of the population has the kind of earnings that people on HN generally consider acceptable. Let's say that energy which doesn't liberate much carbon is 20% more expensive than carbon intensive energy (who knows). Really, only 30% of the population can easily swallow that cost increase. And even then, if we are talking about replacing cars, etc, etc the capital costs are actually outside the reach of a large percentage of those people (imagine being told that you have to replace your car today... could you afford it?) In reality, if only the people who could afford it switched, it would not actually represent a large reduction in carbon usage. You have to disproportionately affect lower income brackets because that's were the vast majority of people live. So if you tax carbon to make it attractive to switch, it's really not any more expensive. The main issue is making sure that people are able to deal with the capital expenses. Otherwise they won't switch. So IMHO, you are correct that carbon tax alone won't be enough. But there isn't really a downside to such a tax as long as you find a way to deal with capital expenses. In order to be successful, the poor must switch to the more expensive option.
    - WalterBright 11y ago
      A carbon tax could be coupled with a reduction in, say, sales tax. The incentive to reduce carbon would still be there, but the regressive effect on the poor would be mitigated.
  - wonderlust 11y ago
    I changed my thinking on this after playing the game democracy 3. There are lots of ways to dramatically decrease co2 production, and a lot of ways to keep production minimal. My favorite strategy was changing spending to subsidize rail over roads, subsidize and market bicycles, and push for electric cars. Not directly applicable necessarily, but the number of things that have lower co2 production as a side effect is pretty large.
    - WalterBright 11y ago
      Be careful about drawing conclusions about economy games. The rules in them are often set up to validate the theories of the game designers.
      - awinter-py 11y ago
        Or as feeder policies for presidential nominees. People claim Cain's 9-9-9 plan from whenever he ran was based on simcity.
        WalterBright 11y ago
        Some people have told me that SimCity was based on Empire http://www.classicempire.com http://www.classicempire.com !
  - Houshalter 11y ago
    Carbon tax isn't sufficient either. It would lower the demand in one country, but the same fossil fuels could be shipped to another country and burned there. Until the demand for fossil fuels decreases below the cost it takes to extract them from the ground. That cost is low, and could get lower with improving technology. Instead there should be a tax on taking carbon out of the ground or importing it into the country. A tax so high that it becomes economically unviable to do it. Anything else is political games.
    - Brakenshire 11y ago
      > Instead there should be a tax on taking carbon out of the ground or importing it into the country. Doesn't that have the same problem? Anything energy intensive just shifts outside of the borders of that country where the tax is enforced. IMO, carbons taxes need to be built into the trade deals. You need to say "we're creating a level playing field between our countries, but we do that on the basis that we are both going to do our bit to solve common problems". The major reason tackling climate change is difficult is because it is a tragedy of the commons.
- douche 11y ago
  Except that unless batteries and storage solutions get orders of magnitude better, you have to back every megawatt of solar or wind with natural gas, oil, or coal for the calm, cloudy days.
  - Retric 11y ago
    Hydro is 6% of US electricity supply and is already used as built in storage. Pumped storage is vastly better than batteries. Also the variance between median days and calm days for wind is far less extreme than generally assumed. PV solar also provides power in cloudy weather. Anyway the US can get to ~99.99% from ~30% oversupply and ~6 hours of grid storage which is vastly less than many people assume. PS: Cloudy calm days over large areas are fairly rare. Heavy clouds are generally associated with weather and increased wind. EX: Hurricane incoming, solar down wind UP.
    - ptaipale 11y ago
      > Pumped storage is vastly better than batteries Yes, except for those who live next to the reservoir (or actually, in the would-be reservoir). That could be people, or nature.
      - Retric 11y ago
        Raising or lowering two existing lakes by a few feet can provide lot's of pumped storage with minimal issues. Or in the extreme case, consider Lake Erie is next to Lake Ontario. Pumping extra water back up for a few hours a day would have minimal issues as boat bilge water has already cross contaminated them.
        qbrass 11y ago
        Almost 700,000 gallons of water go untapped over Niagara Falls every second. There's no point in pumping water back up until you've harnessed that first.
        11y ago
Overtonwindow 11y ago
I feel like we've been down this road before. If some may recall, the federal government setup a giant loan program for alt energy companies. Many went bust taking a lot of money with them. I worry if the investment dollars are going to Just Another Solar Company, or is it demonstrated, proven technology that has potential?
- astrodust 11y ago
  You would've been a gem in the 1920s shaking an angry fist at how many oil companies were going bust and how fortunes were being squandered digging wells that produced nothing. That whole oil thing is just a fad! Why can't people be happy with coal?
  - Overtonwindow 11y ago
    I think you misread the comment. Oil was proven and investment was pushing it to new heights. Do we really want to spend a lot of money on the same technology, and a new company, or new technology and innovation? I for one don't want another Solyndra. I want a company that is pushing a demonstrated advancement in technology.
    - astrodust 11y ago
      Oh, come on. Open a history book. Oil was far from proven back when coal was king. Many, many companies ate up huge amounts of capital and had nothing to show for it. The process for finding, extracting, processing, transporting and consuming oil and its various byproducts was still in its infancy. There was a lot of mistakes to be made. You're losing your shit here because some companies didn't work out. And? The road to success is often paved with failure.
    - greglindahl 11y ago
      Solyndra pushed a demonstrated advance in technology. It just didn't end up being cheaper than the rapidly-falling price of silicon solar cells. Sure, you can play Monday-morning quarterback on that deal, but it was a reasonable bet and the investors (who lost a ton of money) were not fools.
Kenji 11y ago
"The best minds in energy keep underestimating what solar and wind can do." Of course wind and solar becomes "efficient" when the state arbitrarily funds and supports it. I am certain there is an entire mafia behind this, from the energy companies all the way to the politicians, ensuring that our public funds flow into their hands and that other forms of energy are properly discredited and taxed.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  This is exactly what is happening to discredit nuclear as a low-carbon wedge between fossil fuels and totally renewable energy, science and demographics be dammed.
- 7952 11y ago
  In terms of financial efficiency renewable and nuclear are completely different to fossil fuels. With a gas power station their is a point at which the fuel is too expensive to compete and the plant is turned off. With renewable energy the cost is in capital expenditure rather than fuel. It makes sense to run the generator as much as possible, regardless of how little money it makes. In a market dominated by fossil fuels the effective price is therefore always slightly less than the cheapest fossil fuel available. It becomes more valuable as oil or coal prices rise and less valuable as they drop. Of course that is a ridiculous situation to be in. The only real reason to ever promote renewable energy/ or nuclear is because it is a better product with less negative impact. It is perfectly reasonable that this would cost more than fossil fuel. The only way for a private company to pay off the debt is to charge more than market rates for the energy produced.
  - frgewut 11y ago
    And just to add - there are a lot of areas where renewables are already way cheaper or conventional generation just is not appropriate- like solar for replacing diesel generators, offshore wind near large coastal cities(try building a large nuclear plant near NY), there are also a lot of remote places where grid is expensive to maintain etc, etc Also PV is the simplest, least maintenance power generation source if you need <few KW.
khattam 11y ago
Sad! They are also the worst for the environment and most unreliable sources of energy.
lumberjack 11y ago
One nice advantage of wind and solar farms is that they can be added incrementally. Maybe you would need just as many millions of investment in infrustructure to get the same output capacity but you can start with 1/10 of the required capital, set it up and have it online and keep adding as you go.
- marcosdumay 11y ago
  Last time I looked, inverters were the elephant on the room. They are a big fraction of the costs, and the small end scales to power^(1/2) in price. Not to say that you are wrong, but you'll need at a minimum a several hundred thousand investment to stay competitive.
  - jerven 11y ago
    Yes, but at utility level the difference is invest in million increments to 100 million increments for solar(pv) and wind. While gas is in the same range, modern coal really starts at the top end of that range and nuclear is just an order of magnitude higher. Wind and solar projects often get cancelled and restarted, mostly because the risk profiles allow for that. Committing to gas is dependant on existing infra, if there is a good gas supply infra then unlikely to cancel if planning permission ok. Once committed to nuclear, you either finish it or go bankrupt... Coal is getting to be very risky from a regulatory perspective which is why power company execs don't like adding new capacity.
- rtuins 11y ago
  Not just the incremental additions, there basically are no other generation sources below few KWs. Gasoline or diesel generators can be used as a backup only requires a lot of maintenance.
exabrial 11y ago
Hey we got plenty of wind here in Kansas, how about investment in storage/transmission so we can get it somewhere useful?
- r00fus 11y ago
  Hey, remember Obama's campaign goal in 2008 to switch our power transmission to HVDC? What ever happened to that? [0] https://www.sindark.com/2008/01/07/hvdc-transmission-for-renewable-energy/ https://www.sindark.com/2008/01/07/hvdc-transmission-for-ren...
  - greeneggs 11y ago
    An update: http://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11322600/plains-eastern-transmission-line http://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11322600/plains-eastern-transmi...
viraptor 11y ago
OT: I hope that's not a new trend... "Renewables’ share of power generation. Scale is shown in doublings." It's a logarithmic scale, labeled as "doublings", with the background lines suggesting linear scale, and confusing rounding on the left (0.03% is "double" 0.01%). Also the left chart starts at 0%, where i think they wanted 0.00625% which got rounded.
okyup 11y ago
The obvious reason for this is government, not because they're great technologies.
- ZeroGravitas 11y ago
  This is true. They are great technologies, but since they address the market externalities around carbon and other air pollution, the non-free market created by this situation won't achieve the aims that a theoretical free market would. It's a bit embarrassing to free market boosters to see total global catastrophe be an unintended consequence of their policies, but they've often decided to dig in and deny obvious facts, which makes government intervention ever more necessary and welcomed by the population. Bit of an own goal really.

93 points by barney54 11y ago

It seems like this observation of Wright's Law in action should lead to more politically palatable policy prescriptions. If cap and trade is out, just shifting some energy incentives to favor renewable or large orders to grow the market could push renewable to the place where it just straight out dominates energy.

Retric 11y ago
IMO, anything other than a strait carbon tax is a horrible idea. Cap and trade works out as billions in free money to existing company's and makes this a long term political football. Subsidies always have the same downsides as communist style planned economies. ex: Ridicules amounts of corn production because of politics not because that's a good use of resources.
- melling 11y ago
  I was under the impression that a carbon tax hurts the poor. http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/february/kolstad-carbon-tax-022814.html http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/february/kolstad-carbon-t...
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Not when you rebate it back to those under a certain income threshold.
    - melling 11y ago
      How do you know what to rebate people? The carbon tax will hit more than their electric bill. Also, some people have greener electricity than others. Here's how electricity is generated by state: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/power-plants/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/power-plant...
      - epistasis 11y ago
        If it affects the poor, it would make the most sense to rebate purely on income level, equally based on income level. If the idea is to just give it back to the people that paid into it, that completelt defeats the entire purpose.
        melling 11y ago
        So, someone who lives in a state with green electricity, and buys products from "green companies", will get the same as someone from a coal state, like West Virginia? The question is why are you giving rebates to people who are mostly using green energy?
        epistasis 11y ago
        Because they aren't dumping as much carbon into the atmosphere. Thats the entire point of it all! Those who are dumping carbon into the atmosphere are free loading on the rest of society, expecting others to pay for their externalities. And it's not "giving rebate" it's returning tax revenues to those that can least afford them. But there are many other sources of carbon than poorly planned electrical systems. Driving, flying, and industry.
        melling 11y ago
        The poor person in West Virginia getting his electricity from dirty coal and driving a 10 year old F150 is getting the same rebate. He's buying stuff from Walmart that's shipped from China. Are you rewarding people for using less carbon or is the rebate to help offset the cost past through from companies passing on the extra tax onto consumers? Two different claims are being made.
        MaysonL 11y ago
        They may be getting the same rebate, but they aren't paying the same tax. If the rebate is the same for all, then those who use less will make a profit, considering the $rebate - $tax amounts, while those using more will pay more tax than they get in rebates. (This is assuming a revenue neutral arrangement).
    - SilasX 11y ago
      Better to just rebate a fixed amount to everyone so that you preserve the incentives for cutting back any marginal unit of fossil fuel consumption, while mitigating the overall income effect.
  - aoeusnth1 11y ago
    Just adjust income tax to compensate. Penalizing carbon production is a simple incentive-compatible way to have society receive compensation for the actual damage of people's actions.
  - greglindahl 11y ago
    You can find citations to discussions & proposals for how to mitigate that in many places, such as the Wikipedia Carbon Tax article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_tax#Distributional_impacts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_tax#Distributional_impa...
  - SilasX 11y ago
    In the sense that it's a kind of consumption tax, and consumption taxes are (considered[1]) regressive, then yes. So? Consumption (of fossil fuels) is the problem. Any policy measure that cuts fossil fuel consumption will thus necessarily be regressive to the extent that it precisely targets the problem. It's not like cap-and-trade or efficiency mandates somehow avoid that. But whatever anti-fossil-fuel measure you impose can be mitigated with orthogonal welfare policies. Also, it's not policy options can ever lack downsides. [1] I saw "considered" because the traditional result only gets that by a confused accounting basis. Yes, a consumption tax hits less of a rich person's income, but it hits the same amount of their later consumption. Don't compare income apples to consumption oranges.
  - Gibbon1 11y ago
    If a carbon tax will hurt the poor imagine what climate change is going to do to them. Personally I think poor people tend to be in this sort of budgetary Malthusian squeeze. If you raise the price of one thing then something else will have to give. Tax their gasoline more the end result is they'll buy 'less car' and have less money left over for rent. Since rents are likely the only other fungible cost that's where the money will ultimately come from.
    - fpoling 11y ago
      It reminds me of an old joke when Soviet Union tried to decrease alcohol consumption through rising alcohol prises: When father came home, his son announced that vodka would cost 50% more and said: - Father, does it mean that you are going to drink less? - No son, it means that you are going to eat less.
  - mikekchar 11y ago
    This is something you will have to deal with anyway. Let's take the the US for an example (although this will apply virtually anywhere in the world). I don't have time to gather excellent data, but wikipedia tells me that in 2010 28% of households made less than $25K, 51% made less than $50K, 69% made less than $75K. So in reality, about 30% are in a fairly serious pinch nearly all the time and 50% are probably doing OK, but still having to watch their budgets pretty closely. Only 30% of the population has the kind of earnings that people on HN generally consider acceptable. Let's say that energy which doesn't liberate much carbon is 20% more expensive than carbon intensive energy (who knows). Really, only 30% of the population can easily swallow that cost increase. And even then, if we are talking about replacing cars, etc, etc the capital costs are actually outside the reach of a large percentage of those people (imagine being told that you have to replace your car today... could you afford it?) In reality, if only the people who could afford it switched, it would not actually represent a large reduction in carbon usage. You have to disproportionately affect lower income brackets because that's were the vast majority of people live. So if you tax carbon to make it attractive to switch, it's really not any more expensive. The main issue is making sure that people are able to deal with the capital expenses. Otherwise they won't switch. So IMHO, you are correct that carbon tax alone won't be enough. But there isn't really a downside to such a tax as long as you find a way to deal with capital expenses. In order to be successful, the poor must switch to the more expensive option.
  - WalterBright 11y ago
    A carbon tax could be coupled with a reduction in, say, sales tax. The incentive to reduce carbon would still be there, but the regressive effect on the poor would be mitigated.
- wonderlust 11y ago
  I changed my thinking on this after playing the game democracy 3. There are lots of ways to dramatically decrease co2 production, and a lot of ways to keep production minimal. My favorite strategy was changing spending to subsidize rail over roads, subsidize and market bicycles, and push for electric cars. Not directly applicable necessarily, but the number of things that have lower co2 production as a side effect is pretty large.
  - WalterBright 11y ago
    Be careful about drawing conclusions about economy games. The rules in them are often set up to validate the theories of the game designers.
    - awinter-py 11y ago
      Or as feeder policies for presidential nominees. People claim Cain's 9-9-9 plan from whenever he ran was based on simcity.
      - WalterBright 11y ago
        Some people have told me that SimCity was based on Empire http://www.classicempire.com http://www.classicempire.com !
- Houshalter 11y ago
  Carbon tax isn't sufficient either. It would lower the demand in one country, but the same fossil fuels could be shipped to another country and burned there. Until the demand for fossil fuels decreases below the cost it takes to extract them from the ground. That cost is low, and could get lower with improving technology. Instead there should be a tax on taking carbon out of the ground or importing it into the country. A tax so high that it becomes economically unviable to do it. Anything else is political games.
  - Brakenshire 11y ago
    > Instead there should be a tax on taking carbon out of the ground or importing it into the country. Doesn't that have the same problem? Anything energy intensive just shifts outside of the borders of that country where the tax is enforced. IMO, carbons taxes need to be built into the trade deals. You need to say "we're creating a level playing field between our countries, but we do that on the basis that we are both going to do our bit to solve common problems". The major reason tackling climate change is difficult is because it is a tragedy of the commons.
douche 11y ago
Except that unless batteries and storage solutions get orders of magnitude better, you have to back every megawatt of solar or wind with natural gas, oil, or coal for the calm, cloudy days.
- Retric 11y ago
  Hydro is 6% of US electricity supply and is already used as built in storage. Pumped storage is vastly better than batteries. Also the variance between median days and calm days for wind is far less extreme than generally assumed. PV solar also provides power in cloudy weather. Anyway the US can get to ~99.99% from ~30% oversupply and ~6 hours of grid storage which is vastly less than many people assume. PS: Cloudy calm days over large areas are fairly rare. Heavy clouds are generally associated with weather and increased wind. EX: Hurricane incoming, solar down wind UP.
  - ptaipale 11y ago
    > Pumped storage is vastly better than batteries Yes, except for those who live next to the reservoir (or actually, in the would-be reservoir). That could be people, or nature.
    - Retric 11y ago
      Raising or lowering two existing lakes by a few feet can provide lot's of pumped storage with minimal issues. Or in the extreme case, consider Lake Erie is next to Lake Ontario. Pumping extra water back up for a few hours a day would have minimal issues as boat bilge water has already cross contaminated them.
      - qbrass 11y ago
        Almost 700,000 gallons of water go untapped over Niagara Falls every second. There's no point in pumping water back up until you've harnessed that first.
        11y ago

Overtonwindow 11y ago

I feel like we've been down this road before. If some may recall, the federal government setup a giant loan program for alt energy companies. Many went bust taking a lot of money with them. I worry if the investment dollars are going to Just Another Solar Company, or is it demonstrated, proven technology that has potential?

astrodust 11y ago
You would've been a gem in the 1920s shaking an angry fist at how many oil companies were going bust and how fortunes were being squandered digging wells that produced nothing. That whole oil thing is just a fad! Why can't people be happy with coal?
- Overtonwindow 11y ago
  I think you misread the comment. Oil was proven and investment was pushing it to new heights. Do we really want to spend a lot of money on the same technology, and a new company, or new technology and innovation? I for one don't want another Solyndra. I want a company that is pushing a demonstrated advancement in technology.
  - astrodust 11y ago
    Oh, come on. Open a history book. Oil was far from proven back when coal was king. Many, many companies ate up huge amounts of capital and had nothing to show for it. The process for finding, extracting, processing, transporting and consuming oil and its various byproducts was still in its infancy. There was a lot of mistakes to be made. You're losing your shit here because some companies didn't work out. And? The road to success is often paved with failure.
  - greglindahl 11y ago
    Solyndra pushed a demonstrated advance in technology. It just didn't end up being cheaper than the rapidly-falling price of silicon solar cells. Sure, you can play Monday-morning quarterback on that deal, but it was a reasonable bet and the investors (who lost a ton of money) were not fools.

Kenji 11y ago

"The best minds in energy keep underestimating what solar and wind can do." Of course wind and solar becomes "efficient" when the state arbitrarily funds and supports it. I am certain there is an entire mafia behind this, from the energy companies all the way to the politicians, ensuring that our public funds flow into their hands and that other forms of energy are properly discredited and taxed.

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
This is exactly what is happening to discredit nuclear as a low-carbon wedge between fossil fuels and totally renewable energy, science and demographics be dammed.
7952 11y ago
In terms of financial efficiency renewable and nuclear are completely different to fossil fuels. With a gas power station their is a point at which the fuel is too expensive to compete and the plant is turned off. With renewable energy the cost is in capital expenditure rather than fuel. It makes sense to run the generator as much as possible, regardless of how little money it makes. In a market dominated by fossil fuels the effective price is therefore always slightly less than the cheapest fossil fuel available. It becomes more valuable as oil or coal prices rise and less valuable as they drop. Of course that is a ridiculous situation to be in. The only real reason to ever promote renewable energy/ or nuclear is because it is a better product with less negative impact. It is perfectly reasonable that this would cost more than fossil fuel. The only way for a private company to pay off the debt is to charge more than market rates for the energy produced.
- frgewut 11y ago
  And just to add - there are a lot of areas where renewables are already way cheaper or conventional generation just is not appropriate- like solar for replacing diesel generators, offshore wind near large coastal cities(try building a large nuclear plant near NY), there are also a lot of remote places where grid is expensive to maintain etc, etc Also PV is the simplest, least maintenance power generation source if you need <few KW.

khattam 11y ago

Sad! They are also the worst for the environment and most unreliable sources of energy.

lumberjack 11y ago

One nice advantage of wind and solar farms is that they can be added incrementally. Maybe you would need just as many millions of investment in infrustructure to get the same output capacity but you can start with 1/10 of the required capital, set it up and have it online and keep adding as you go.

marcosdumay 11y ago
Last time I looked, inverters were the elephant on the room. They are a big fraction of the costs, and the small end scales to power^(1/2) in price. Not to say that you are wrong, but you'll need at a minimum a several hundred thousand investment to stay competitive.
- jerven 11y ago
  Yes, but at utility level the difference is invest in million increments to 100 million increments for solar(pv) and wind. While gas is in the same range, modern coal really starts at the top end of that range and nuclear is just an order of magnitude higher. Wind and solar projects often get cancelled and restarted, mostly because the risk profiles allow for that. Committing to gas is dependant on existing infra, if there is a good gas supply infra then unlikely to cancel if planning permission ok. Once committed to nuclear, you either finish it or go bankrupt... Coal is getting to be very risky from a regulatory perspective which is why power company execs don't like adding new capacity.
rtuins 11y ago
Not just the incremental additions, there basically are no other generation sources below few KWs. Gasoline or diesel generators can be used as a backup only requires a lot of maintenance.

exabrial 11y ago

Hey we got plenty of wind here in Kansas, how about investment in storage/transmission so we can get it somewhere useful?

r00fus 11y ago
Hey, remember Obama's campaign goal in 2008 to switch our power transmission to HVDC? What ever happened to that? [0] https://www.sindark.com/2008/01/07/hvdc-transmission-for-renewable-energy/ https://www.sindark.com/2008/01/07/hvdc-transmission-for-ren...
- greeneggs 11y ago
  An update: http://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11322600/plains-eastern-transmission-line http://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11322600/plains-eastern-transmi...

viraptor 11y ago

OT: I hope that's not a new trend... "Renewables’ share of power generation. Scale is shown in doublings." It's a logarithmic scale, labeled as "doublings", with the background lines suggesting linear scale, and confusing rounding on the left (0.03% is "double" 0.01%). Also the left chart starts at 0%, where i think they wanted 0.00625% which got rounded.

okyup 11y ago

The obvious reason for this is government, not because they're great technologies.

ZeroGravitas 11y ago
This is true. They are great technologies, but since they address the market externalities around carbon and other air pollution, the non-free market created by this situation won't achieve the aims that a theoretical free market would. It's a bit embarrassing to free market boosters to see total global catastrophe be an unintended consequence of their policies, but they've often decided to dig in and deny obvious facts, which makes government intervention ever more necessary and welcomed by the population. Bit of an own goal really.