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The other thing that would happen that no one talks about is that electricity rates would skyrocket because the power company wasn't making enough money. This i

The other thing that would happen that no one talks about is that electricity rates would skyrocket because the power company wasn't making enough money. This is exactly what happened in Ontario, Canada. People started conserving and it caused rates to go up. Same thing happened with water in California (at least the Bay Area). People started conserving better, so to reward us, they raised water rates.

gruez 7y ago
Sounds like the reasonable thing to do is to the electric bill into a fixed fee portion (infrastructure) and a variable fee portion (energy).
- icebraining 7y ago
  This is exactly what is done in some countries, like Portugal. The main difference is that a fully variable model subsidizes solar panel owners at the expense of the other clients, which makes solar panels a more attractive investment, whereas here the case for home solar is much weaker, particularly for low energy consumers.
  - kwhitefoot 7y ago
    In Norway we pay three different amounts, sometimes to two separate entities. I pay the company that supplies the electricity per kilowatt-hour for the energy and the company that owns the local distribution network for the rental of the cables and a per kilowatt-hour fee for transporting the energy. In my case it is just one company but the energy supplier could be separate from the infrastructure owner.
    - Scoundreller 7y ago
      Please tell me it’s at least coordinated enough that the two entities send it together on one bill.
      - unhammer 7y ago
        I just get one bill, even though in my case it's two companies (because I shopped around)
      - kwhitefoot 7y ago
        Usually it's one bill. But even if it weren't it's not a problem because the bill goes straight to my bank and I pay by direct debit. The bank notifies me in plenty of time by email. We don't use paper bills and invoices much in Norway any more. After the first one or two from a new supplier most people switch to email billing and direct debit (eFaktura and Avtalegiro).
    - mehhh 7y ago
      This kind of "free market" for electricity tends to drive up infrastructure costs needlessly (see Australia), while incentivizing bad behaviour by generation suppliers in the market (see Enron). Public utilities generally provide a higher caliber of service at a lower price, with less administrative bloat.
      - probablypower 7y ago
        The ownership of utilities and the cost of their infrastructure investments has nothing to do with the 'freeness' of electricity markets. The performance of utilities is more a function of regulatory power and willingness to regulate rather than utility ownership.
      - angry_octet 7y ago
        Depends on the state, but in Vic the 'poles and wires' component, both in distribution (suburb) and transmission (pylons) costs are built into the fee that is charged for electricity supply (cost of connectivity) in a positive feedback loop: the more the companies invested, the more they could charge. This was designed to avoid the 'run it into the ground's privatisation mentality, but it went the other way. Sadly, there was no price component for improving the network with new ideas, so it is still the same design as 100 years ago. A system designed by accountants has done things accountants love, and nothing for electrical engineering or the citizens. Surprise. The old SEC wasn't innovative or cheap, and neither is the privatised system. For incentives to be effective they have to be broken down to be smaller components rewarding specific conduct, and tweaked in response to system performance.
  - scythe 7y ago
    It’s more important to subsidize new technologies. Now that solar panels have a foothold, the economic case has gotten dramatically stronger because they’re cheaper. Even if electric bills change, I thinks uptake would continue.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  A lot of the infrastructure is a variable cost. The system is built/upgraded to support a peak demand, and your contribution toward that peak is variable. And when things fail, demand can often be blamed. And if you lump everything into the variable fee, at least you have more incentive to conserve.
  - gruez 7y ago
    > A lot of the infrastructure is a variable cost. The system is built/upgraded to support a peak demand, and your contribution toward that peak is variable. That can be solved by implementing time-of-use pricing and incorporating the "peak demand" infrastructure cost into the price. You would calculate how much infrastructure is needed to provide a "baseline" load (the trough on a demand graph), and divide that among the "fixed" portion. Perhaps you also add some sort of locality adjustment so rural/urban areas pay their "fair share". The rest of the infrastructure cost would be added the variable electricity price. >And if you lump everything into the variable fee, at least you have more incentive to conserve. That in itself isn't a bad thing. The problem is that with solar panels/wind power, you're also shifting the cost from people who can afford to install renewables (usually richer people with money to invest) to people who can't (usually poorer).
    - angry_octet 7y ago
      The problem is that electricity costs would spike to insane levels (as seen on wholesale spot markets) and consumers should have price certainty and confidence in supply, otherwise you get lots of costs in other parts of the economy. See e.g. California, where diesel gen sets are proliferating like crazy, or other markets where high CO2, high cost gas is the game theoretic optimum, eventually leading to an all-peak supply side.
  - Mvandenbergh 7y ago
    In the UK a lot of the cost of distribution and transmission infrastructure is charged based on your consumption during the three highest demand half hour periods in the year (triad charge). This only applies to large users on half hourly billing, standard domestic consumers just get a distribution fee included in their bill.
- earthboundkid 7y ago
  I live in Baltimore and have solar panels. I get a bill for around $15 IIRC even in months when I make more electricity than I use. I assume that’s an infrastructure fee.
- JOnAgain 7y ago
  NYC has this. It’s a lot.
- config_yml 7y ago
  This is already the case in Switzerland
- s1artibartfast 7y ago
  It already is in California as well
thrower123 7y ago
They also usually try to find a way to weasel out of the payments that were promised to be paid for the excess electricity generated by residential solar, so that the return on investment is much worse than projected when they are installed.
gliese1337 7y ago
Which then makes it more economical to produce your own electricity so more systems get installed, until the power grid just shuts down entirely and everyone is self sufficient....
- kelnos 7y ago
  If we're talking solely about solar, it's not that simple, since on-the-grid residential solar systems only generate power during the day (and not even always the entire day), and then pull power from the grid at night. For full self-sufficiency, you'd need to install battery systems in every house, and ensure that you have enough panels to pull in enough power during daylight hours to charge the batteries enough to cover all the no-sun hours.
  - xyzzyz 7y ago
    And for non-Californians, you also need to do something about the problem of not having enough sun power at all during winter, while having greatly increased power needs. Right now, you can work around this problem relatively easily by installing a propane or fuel oil tank, and making up winter shortage of sun with fossils, but as I understand it, the long term plan for society is to get off the fossils altogether.
    - Retric 7y ago
      Solar hot water heaters are currently the solution to that problem. They end up reducing a homes winter energy needs dramatically without the need for fossil fuels at very low costs. Longer term I’d panels keep getting cheaper and more efficient having a significant excess for most of the year is just going to become the norm.
    - greglindahl 7y ago
      California is a big state with a lot of different terrain, including parts at high altitude that get cold in the winter.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
jariel 7y ago
This is not a function of regular market economics, but rather the extremely monopolizing regulatory capture that Hydro One has in Ontario where they charge huge $$$ for distribution. Hydro One has a zillion regular folks earning >$100K (see the Sunshine list), working-class retirees earning huge incomes for life after retirement. A regular line manager in rural Ontario without a college degree and not a huge amount of responsibility can earn $80-100K, which is 3x the national average, in an area where cost of goods and housing is very cheap. Hydro One exists to support the historical cabal of line managers and pensioners and to maximize their income. They will charge whatever they can force you to pay - since they are a monopoly, that will be a lot. Electricity will never be cheap because those that have the power to control distribution will 'set prices' and take massive surpluses. Government/Quasi-Government workers (natural gas distribution is similar to Hydro) have a privilege that few in the private sector have, which is job security, which is an extremely valuable benefit never really put into the calculation. The average person has to change careers or is put out every few years, not only is this structurally costly, but it means from age 45-65 it often means massive pay cuts or worse - no income. Energy transmission is a big roadblock to the entire energy equation, it'd be amazing if somehow we could get around this. Imagine if we had high-efficiency hydrogen generators, and homes (or neighbourhoods) simply had to maintain them, abnegating the need for complex transmission. It would change market dynamics quite radically.
- jariel 7y ago
  FYI is the HydroOne 'Sunshine List' of those earning > $100K [1] at HydroOne (Ontario) Here is 2018 different format for all Ontario [2] Hey, how would you like to be a 'lineman' earning $120K in rural Ontario? Or a 'line maintainer' for $150K? Their salaries are massively inflated, and this doesn't include benefits. There were 4,279 people earning >$100K (of which only 664 are managers) - according to Wikipedia, they have 5500 full time, about 2500 part-time - and 7500 pensioners. This means that the majority of the staff, who are doing mostly work that doesn't require a college education, are earning >$100K. People with technical training and those who work in more difficult conditions should be compensated, but this is ridiculous. Consider that there are 120% more pensioners than there are actual employees, many receiving gracious, lifetime benefits, and you have your answer to why the 'transmission fee' is considerably greater than the actual cost of the electricity. If you create a startup, and can just magically allocate everyone a +$100K salary, even if market rates would be less than half that, and can magically force everyone in the country to pay through the teeth no matter what, then you have a good business. Now imagine if there was efficiency in this system, and considerable numbers of those workers could be out installing windmills ... Any contemplation of renewable energy that doesn't' factor in the political and operational realities of these systems is almost pointless. These systems are where probably most of the hurdles are. [1] https://www.sunshineliststats.com/Employer/9/2015/?n=hydroone https://www.sunshineliststats.com/Employer/9/2015/?n=hydroon... [2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-sunshine-list-searchable-1.5073361 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-sunshine-list...
dhdjsbsb 7y ago
Californians were conserving because the state government told them to everywhere, higher rates were their reward for listening. All so the state could have an easier time dealing out water to big business. The state is basically a bunch of rich interests surfing on a wave of gullibility.
grecy 7y ago
> electricity rates would skyrocket Which is perfectly fine, because you're using less. It's a fantastic feedback loop until you're not using any at all!
- Mirioron 7y ago
  That's great until there's cloudy weather (and/or a snowstorm) for an extended period of time. Suddenly, everyone has a much larger bill for that month. Also, what about all the people living in apartments?
  - acidburnNSA 7y ago
    You're getting downvoted but you're right. Getting cheap energy when the sun is shining or wind is blowing is great, but we can't ignore the value of reliability, which skyrockets when it's in short supply. This is why all NREL and OECD studies into deep decarbonization with intermittent resources show grid integration costs skyrocketing above 50-80% variable penetration in electricity markets. E.g.: https://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/pubs/2019/7299-system-costs.pdf https://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/pubs/2019/7299-system-costs.pdf
    - philipkglass 7y ago
      Whole-system costs should be modeled. Better modelers than these should do the job. Look at their Table 2 of cost assumptions. They show overnight costs for onshore wind farms at $2000/kW, 30% capacity factor and nuclear at $4700/kW overnight, 100% capacity factor. If those numbers were valid for the US, we'd already have a nuclear renaissance here and wind would have remained a small niche source. Texas and Oklahoma didn't build all those wind farms because of pressure from Greenpeace. New wind gets a Federal production tax credit, of course. Nuclear also qualifies for a smaller production tax credit. I think that the nuclear PTC and wind PTC should have been equal all along, but I don't actually think that would have changed much about the growth curves in the US. The main problem with new nuclear projects is that they are badly estimated and take a very long time to build, so they don't even reach the part where they can collect those tax credits. Nuclear needs more frequent builds if it's ever going to get costs and project estimation uncertainty back down to reasonable levels. The US doesn't have a political system that can really commit to a plan longer than 8 years. We couldn't commit to an American Messmer Plan even if a really pro-nuclear President and Congress were in office this year. It looks to me like small modular reactors, executed well, are the last good path forward for nuclear reactors. I'd like to see some built soon. I've been reading proposals for them my whole adult life.
jillesvangurp 7y ago
Grid prices going up leads to more clean energy solutions being installed, not less. It's not a problem for consumers but for monopolistic grid providers relying on obsolete and hopelessly noncompetitive means of generating energy. I.e. Nuclear, coal, and gas (in order of $/kwh). California has no excuse for power outages or water shortages as it plenty of untapped clean energy (sun, wind) to power the state and desalinate all the water it could ever need. All that takes is investing a few percent of the revenue of any their resident trillion $ mega corporations. Grid and water prices are high only because the local government there is a mess. It's the same reason it has a homeless problem & widespread poverty, the roads are bad, etc. These are governance issues, not technical problems. The grid needs to be able to adapt to being needed much more sporadically. The only places where this is a problem is where the grid is a for profit monopoly relying on the ability to dictate prices. Most of the US used to be like that which is why they are running so many costly and out of date coal and nuclear plants. Lots of these are going bankrupt lately because of decades of just sitting on their hands while increasing prices and lobbying to prevent people from even being allowed to install solar on their roofs (e.g. Arizona until not so long ago) or refusing to buy excess capacity has failed to prevent the inevitable. Operating a coal plant in Arizona is like selling ice cream on the North Pole. I.e. not a great business plan. 2 out of the 5 remaining ones have scheduled closing dates in the very near future. I doubt the remaining 3 will survive the decade and it's in any case only a few percent of the total grid capacity. Now that the proverbial shit has hit the fan in terms of people figuring out they can spend 5-10K dollars on upgrading their house and still get a return on investment in grid savings, grid providers are getting a reality check. All this means is that they are forced to adapt and compete on price. In most places that means investing in wind and other clean solutions with a very low variable cost. Anything that requires you to spend money on tons of fuel even when there is no demand just because spinning up and down capacity takes time is a problem because it means you are burning money for energy that you can't sell. The key technical challenge here is to find a way to monetize the vast overcapacity we will inevitably end up with. If the grid is the only place you can sell excess energy and demand for grid is going down and you are investing in solutions that generate more energy than you need most/all of the time, finding a way to soak up that energy in a way that can generate revenue is the key thing to do. Here's some cool stuff you can do guilt free with cheap clean energy: - desalinate water (again, California: the pacific has plenty of H2O) or condense it from air (by chilling it) - generate hydrogen or other fuels from air, water, etc. - turn biomass into coal (yep, that's a thing). - charge batteries, pump up water, power industry, transport, etc. Whatever amount of twh. capacity we need. - exporting it to places that still have a shortage. - run the AC 24x7 at ridiculously low temperatures or heat your place at a ridiculously high temperature. We are about to enter an era of vast of excess energy production capacity. That's not a problem but an opportunity. People are talking about covering 100% of our current needs when they need to be thinking in terms of 1000% our current needs. The market for clean energy is magnitudes our current consumption. There is no upper limit.

gruez 7y ago

Sounds like the reasonable thing to do is to the electric bill into a fixed fee portion (infrastructure) and a variable fee portion (energy).

icebraining 7y ago
This is exactly what is done in some countries, like Portugal. The main difference is that a fully variable model subsidizes solar panel owners at the expense of the other clients, which makes solar panels a more attractive investment, whereas here the case for home solar is much weaker, particularly for low energy consumers.
- kwhitefoot 7y ago
  In Norway we pay three different amounts, sometimes to two separate entities. I pay the company that supplies the electricity per kilowatt-hour for the energy and the company that owns the local distribution network for the rental of the cables and a per kilowatt-hour fee for transporting the energy. In my case it is just one company but the energy supplier could be separate from the infrastructure owner.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    Please tell me it’s at least coordinated enough that the two entities send it together on one bill.
    - unhammer 7y ago
      I just get one bill, even though in my case it's two companies (because I shopped around)
    - kwhitefoot 7y ago
      Usually it's one bill. But even if it weren't it's not a problem because the bill goes straight to my bank and I pay by direct debit. The bank notifies me in plenty of time by email. We don't use paper bills and invoices much in Norway any more. After the first one or two from a new supplier most people switch to email billing and direct debit (eFaktura and Avtalegiro).
  - mehhh 7y ago
    This kind of "free market" for electricity tends to drive up infrastructure costs needlessly (see Australia), while incentivizing bad behaviour by generation suppliers in the market (see Enron). Public utilities generally provide a higher caliber of service at a lower price, with less administrative bloat.
    - probablypower 7y ago
      The ownership of utilities and the cost of their infrastructure investments has nothing to do with the 'freeness' of electricity markets. The performance of utilities is more a function of regulatory power and willingness to regulate rather than utility ownership.
    - angry_octet 7y ago
      Depends on the state, but in Vic the 'poles and wires' component, both in distribution (suburb) and transmission (pylons) costs are built into the fee that is charged for electricity supply (cost of connectivity) in a positive feedback loop: the more the companies invested, the more they could charge. This was designed to avoid the 'run it into the ground's privatisation mentality, but it went the other way. Sadly, there was no price component for improving the network with new ideas, so it is still the same design as 100 years ago. A system designed by accountants has done things accountants love, and nothing for electrical engineering or the citizens. Surprise. The old SEC wasn't innovative or cheap, and neither is the privatised system. For incentives to be effective they have to be broken down to be smaller components rewarding specific conduct, and tweaked in response to system performance.
- scythe 7y ago
  It’s more important to subsidize new technologies. Now that solar panels have a foothold, the economic case has gotten dramatically stronger because they’re cheaper. Even if electric bills change, I thinks uptake would continue.
Scoundreller 7y ago
A lot of the infrastructure is a variable cost. The system is built/upgraded to support a peak demand, and your contribution toward that peak is variable. And when things fail, demand can often be blamed. And if you lump everything into the variable fee, at least you have more incentive to conserve.
- gruez 7y ago
  > A lot of the infrastructure is a variable cost. The system is built/upgraded to support a peak demand, and your contribution toward that peak is variable. That can be solved by implementing time-of-use pricing and incorporating the "peak demand" infrastructure cost into the price. You would calculate how much infrastructure is needed to provide a "baseline" load (the trough on a demand graph), and divide that among the "fixed" portion. Perhaps you also add some sort of locality adjustment so rural/urban areas pay their "fair share". The rest of the infrastructure cost would be added the variable electricity price. >And if you lump everything into the variable fee, at least you have more incentive to conserve. That in itself isn't a bad thing. The problem is that with solar panels/wind power, you're also shifting the cost from people who can afford to install renewables (usually richer people with money to invest) to people who can't (usually poorer).
  - angry_octet 7y ago
    The problem is that electricity costs would spike to insane levels (as seen on wholesale spot markets) and consumers should have price certainty and confidence in supply, otherwise you get lots of costs in other parts of the economy. See e.g. California, where diesel gen sets are proliferating like crazy, or other markets where high CO2, high cost gas is the game theoretic optimum, eventually leading to an all-peak supply side.
- Mvandenbergh 7y ago
  In the UK a lot of the cost of distribution and transmission infrastructure is charged based on your consumption during the three highest demand half hour periods in the year (triad charge). This only applies to large users on half hourly billing, standard domestic consumers just get a distribution fee included in their bill.
earthboundkid 7y ago
I live in Baltimore and have solar panels. I get a bill for around $15 IIRC even in months when I make more electricity than I use. I assume that’s an infrastructure fee.
JOnAgain 7y ago
NYC has this. It’s a lot.
config_yml 7y ago
This is already the case in Switzerland
s1artibartfast 7y ago
It already is in California as well

thrower123 7y ago

They also usually try to find a way to weasel out of the payments that were promised to be paid for the excess electricity generated by residential solar, so that the return on investment is much worse than projected when they are installed.

gliese1337 7y ago

Which then makes it more economical to produce your own electricity so more systems get installed, until the power grid just shuts down entirely and everyone is self sufficient....

kelnos 7y ago
If we're talking solely about solar, it's not that simple, since on-the-grid residential solar systems only generate power during the day (and not even always the entire day), and then pull power from the grid at night. For full self-sufficiency, you'd need to install battery systems in every house, and ensure that you have enough panels to pull in enough power during daylight hours to charge the batteries enough to cover all the no-sun hours.
- xyzzyz 7y ago
  And for non-Californians, you also need to do something about the problem of not having enough sun power at all during winter, while having greatly increased power needs. Right now, you can work around this problem relatively easily by installing a propane or fuel oil tank, and making up winter shortage of sun with fossils, but as I understand it, the long term plan for society is to get off the fossils altogether.
  - Retric 7y ago
    Solar hot water heaters are currently the solution to that problem. They end up reducing a homes winter energy needs dramatically without the need for fossil fuels at very low costs. Longer term I’d panels keep getting cheaper and more efficient having a significant excess for most of the year is just going to become the norm.
  - greglindahl 7y ago
    California is a big state with a lot of different terrain, including parts at high altitude that get cold in the winter.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

jariel 7y ago

This is not a function of regular market economics, but rather the extremely monopolizing regulatory capture that Hydro One has in Ontario where they charge huge $$$ for distribution. Hydro One has a zillion regular folks earning >$100K (see the Sunshine list), working-class retirees earning huge incomes for life after retirement. A regular line manager in rural Ontario without a college degree and not a huge amount of responsibility can earn $80-100K, which is 3x the national average, in an area where cost of goods and housing is very cheap. Hydro One exists to support the historical cabal of line managers and pensioners and to maximize their income. They will charge whatever they can force you to pay - since they are a monopoly, that will be a lot. Electricity will never be cheap because those that have the power to control distribution will 'set prices' and take massive surpluses. Government/Quasi-Government workers (natural gas distribution is similar to Hydro) have a privilege that few in the private sector have, which is job security, which is an extremely valuable benefit never really put into the calculation. The average person has to change careers or is put out every few years, not only is this structurally costly, but it means from age 45-65 it often means massive pay cuts or worse - no income. Energy transmission is a big roadblock to the entire energy equation, it'd be amazing if somehow we could get around this. Imagine if we had high-efficiency hydrogen generators, and homes (or neighbourhoods) simply had to maintain them, abnegating the need for complex transmission. It would change market dynamics quite radically.

jariel 7y ago
FYI is the HydroOne 'Sunshine List' of those earning > $100K [1] at HydroOne (Ontario) Here is 2018 different format for all Ontario [2] Hey, how would you like to be a 'lineman' earning $120K in rural Ontario? Or a 'line maintainer' for $150K? Their salaries are massively inflated, and this doesn't include benefits. There were 4,279 people earning >$100K (of which only 664 are managers) - according to Wikipedia, they have 5500 full time, about 2500 part-time - and 7500 pensioners. This means that the majority of the staff, who are doing mostly work that doesn't require a college education, are earning >$100K. People with technical training and those who work in more difficult conditions should be compensated, but this is ridiculous. Consider that there are 120% more pensioners than there are actual employees, many receiving gracious, lifetime benefits, and you have your answer to why the 'transmission fee' is considerably greater than the actual cost of the electricity. If you create a startup, and can just magically allocate everyone a +$100K salary, even if market rates would be less than half that, and can magically force everyone in the country to pay through the teeth no matter what, then you have a good business. Now imagine if there was efficiency in this system, and considerable numbers of those workers could be out installing windmills ... Any contemplation of renewable energy that doesn't' factor in the political and operational realities of these systems is almost pointless. These systems are where probably most of the hurdles are. [1] https://www.sunshineliststats.com/Employer/9/2015/?n=hydroone https://www.sunshineliststats.com/Employer/9/2015/?n=hydroon... [2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-sunshine-list-searchable-1.5073361 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-sunshine-list...

dhdjsbsb 7y ago

Californians were conserving because the state government told them to everywhere, higher rates were their reward for listening. All so the state could have an easier time dealing out water to big business. The state is basically a bunch of rich interests surfing on a wave of gullibility.

grecy 7y ago

> electricity rates would skyrocket Which is perfectly fine, because you're using less. It's a fantastic feedback loop until you're not using any at all!

Mirioron 7y ago
That's great until there's cloudy weather (and/or a snowstorm) for an extended period of time. Suddenly, everyone has a much larger bill for that month. Also, what about all the people living in apartments?
- acidburnNSA 7y ago
  You're getting downvoted but you're right. Getting cheap energy when the sun is shining or wind is blowing is great, but we can't ignore the value of reliability, which skyrockets when it's in short supply. This is why all NREL and OECD studies into deep decarbonization with intermittent resources show grid integration costs skyrocketing above 50-80% variable penetration in electricity markets. E.g.: https://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/pubs/2019/7299-system-costs.pdf https://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/pubs/2019/7299-system-costs.pdf
  - philipkglass 7y ago
    Whole-system costs should be modeled. Better modelers than these should do the job. Look at their Table 2 of cost assumptions. They show overnight costs for onshore wind farms at $2000/kW, 30% capacity factor and nuclear at $4700/kW overnight, 100% capacity factor. If those numbers were valid for the US, we'd already have a nuclear renaissance here and wind would have remained a small niche source. Texas and Oklahoma didn't build all those wind farms because of pressure from Greenpeace. New wind gets a Federal production tax credit, of course. Nuclear also qualifies for a smaller production tax credit. I think that the nuclear PTC and wind PTC should have been equal all along, but I don't actually think that would have changed much about the growth curves in the US. The main problem with new nuclear projects is that they are badly estimated and take a very long time to build, so they don't even reach the part where they can collect those tax credits. Nuclear needs more frequent builds if it's ever going to get costs and project estimation uncertainty back down to reasonable levels. The US doesn't have a political system that can really commit to a plan longer than 8 years. We couldn't commit to an American Messmer Plan even if a really pro-nuclear President and Congress were in office this year. It looks to me like small modular reactors, executed well, are the last good path forward for nuclear reactors. I'd like to see some built soon. I've been reading proposals for them my whole adult life.

jillesvangurp 7y ago

Grid prices going up leads to more clean energy solutions being installed, not less. It's not a problem for consumers but for monopolistic grid providers relying on obsolete and hopelessly noncompetitive means of generating energy. I.e. Nuclear, coal, and gas (in order of $/kwh). California has no excuse for power outages or water shortages as it plenty of untapped clean energy (sun, wind) to power the state and desalinate all the water it could ever need. All that takes is investing a few percent of the revenue of any their resident trillion $ mega corporations. Grid and water prices are high only because the local government there is a mess. It's the same reason it has a homeless problem & widespread poverty, the roads are bad, etc. These are governance issues, not technical problems. The grid needs to be able to adapt to being needed much more sporadically. The only places where this is a problem is where the grid is a for profit monopoly relying on the ability to dictate prices. Most of the US used to be like that which is why they are running so many costly and out of date coal and nuclear plants. Lots of these are going bankrupt lately because of decades of just sitting on their hands while increasing prices and lobbying to prevent people from even being allowed to install solar on their roofs (e.g. Arizona until not so long ago) or refusing to buy excess capacity has failed to prevent the inevitable. Operating a coal plant in Arizona is like selling ice cream on the North Pole. I.e. not a great business plan. 2 out of the 5 remaining ones have scheduled closing dates in the very near future. I doubt the remaining 3 will survive the decade and it's in any case only a few percent of the total grid capacity. Now that the proverbial shit has hit the fan in terms of people figuring out they can spend 5-10K dollars on upgrading their house and still get a return on investment in grid savings, grid providers are getting a reality check. All this means is that they are forced to adapt and compete on price. In most places that means investing in wind and other clean solutions with a very low variable cost. Anything that requires you to spend money on tons of fuel even when there is no demand just because spinning up and down capacity takes time is a problem because it means you are burning money for energy that you can't sell. The key technical challenge here is to find a way to monetize the vast overcapacity we will inevitably end up with. If the grid is the only place you can sell excess energy and demand for grid is going down and you are investing in solutions that generate more energy than you need most/all of the time, finding a way to soak up that energy in a way that can generate revenue is the key thing to do. Here's some cool stuff you can do guilt free with cheap clean energy: - desalinate water (again, California: the pacific has plenty of H2O) or condense it from air (by chilling it) - generate hydrogen or other fuels from air, water, etc. - turn biomass into coal (yep, that's a thing). - charge batteries, pump up water, power industry, transport, etc. Whatever amount of twh. capacity we need. - exporting it to places that still have a shortage. - run the AC 24x7 at ridiculously low temperatures or heat your place at a ridiculously high temperature. We are about to enter an era of vast of excess energy production capacity. That's not a problem but an opportunity. People are talking about covering 100% of our current needs when they need to be thinking in terms of 1000% our current needs. The market for clean energy is magnitudes our current consumption. There is no upper limit.