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Serious question, Britain's energy mix is ~80% Nuclear/Hydro and 20% Wind/Solar/Other ('other' must be either natural gas or bio fuels, garbage or wood) ... Why

Serious question, Britain's energy mix is ~80% Nuclear/Hydro and 20% Wind/Solar/Other ('other' must be either natural gas or bio fuels, garbage or wood) ... Why even bother with wind and solar? Why not just do nuclear and hydro and be done with it. I've noticed anytime there's an article that talks about some country reaching 100% renewable energy it is always due to Hydro (and maybe Nuclear). Wind and solar are never a significant contributor. If coal is replaced it is ONLY ever replaced with one or more of hydro, nuclear, natural gas. Are wind and solar just vanity projects?

jwilliamson 6y ago
A big driver is that wind and solar have only recently become economical. The price of solar power has fallen by 80% since 2010, so large scale plants are all very new. Capacity factors for wind are also improving rapidly, from 25% in 2000 to over 40% today. Basically we've had 150 years to build out hydro, 70 to build out nuclear, and only a few for wind and solar.
Brakenshire 6y ago
> Britain's energy mix is ~80% Nuclear/Hydro and 20% Wind/Solar/Other ('other' must be either natural gas or bio fuels, garbage or wood) That’s not even remotely true.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  You're correct. I misread the caption in the artcle. Those are world numbers. The overall point holds. Britain uses a tremendous amount of wind but it forces it to rely on natural gas for base-load... why not just build out hydro and nuclear? These are live numbers for my province: http://live.gridwatch.ca/home-page.html http://live.gridwatch.ca/home-page.html At the time of the posting, hydro and nuclear account for 75% (though I've seen it at levels of 90%+). And of course wind/natural gas are 9% and 13% respectively .. because they go hand in hand. Ontario could just buy hydro from Quebec and not even bother with solar and wind (and natural gas) and we could hit 100% renewable by this year instead of 2060 like Germany is planning. We're only building windmills because the population feels that they will a difference when we don't need them at all. What are we doing here? It's all insanity.
patall 6y ago
Because its cheaper? Britain is building one new nuclear power plant (Hinkley Point C) which is delayed by many years but has guranteed energy prices of 10 ct per kWh. That's about double what energy costs are usually in europe at this point.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  Yes. We know coal and natural gas are cheap energy sources, but we don't want them because they emit CO2. Biomass is a disaster for land-use (so is solar for that matter). It's almost like the process of elimination takes us to hydro and nuclear as the only viable power sources (that are proven to work) that don't actually need some other base load provider. I guess we'll have to waste a few more decades before we realize that solar and wind are a dead-end as replacements for fossil fuels.
  - pfdietz 6y ago
    Nope, we'll have to wait a while for people like you to clue in how an optimized renewable-only grid is cheaper than one including nuclear (with everyone being charged for their capital cost.)
    - macspoofing 6y ago
      Nuclear is expensive - but it's cheap compared to the costs of climate change and environmental destruction. The minuscule amount of waste it generates and the tiny land-use requirements per kWh - it's almost magical. >we'll have to wait a while for people like you to clue in how an optimized renewable-only grid I'm willing to be clued-in. This isn't an ideological fight for me. I have nothing against solar and wind. I want what you want. Ideally, if you could point me to an example of 100% or near 100% renewable smart grid that is running primarily on wind and solar - the discussion would be over. Problem is, there isn't one. For all the billions that have been poured into solar and for all the talk about smart-grids, battery and kinetic storage, and molten salt batteries and all kinds of exotic things - you cannot point out ONE example. And it isn't like we aren't trying. Poor Germany is desperately throwing out their billions of surplus hoping it would happen, but the best they could do is 2060!! WTF. ITER, the cold fusion reactor, is supposed to be trialled by 2035[1]!!!. Is that not insanity? And they are signing multi-billion/multi-decade deals with authoritarian Russia to build pipelines for their natural gas at the same time they are decommissioning their nuclear plants!!! What is going on here?!?!?! What am I missing!?! Please tell me, because I honestly feel I am being gaslighted. Here an up-to-date energy mix of my home province of Ontario: http://live.gridwatch.ca/home-page.html http://live.gridwatch.ca/home-page.html Hydro and Nuclear make my province carbon-free today.. not 2050. Today. But we're building windmills (and consequently natural gas plants to provide base-load) because people have been told we need wind to fight climate change. I don't understand what's happening. It feels like religion. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER#Timeline_and_status https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER#Timeline_and_status
nsl73 6y ago
> Are wind and solar just vanity projects? Solar is great for lots of non-grid applications, such as places without a grid connection or satellites. The entire technology isn’t vanity.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  Sure. Vanity as grid-scale power source. If you want to charge your phone battery while camping, solar is great.
  - Brakenshire 6y ago
    Solar is currently close to being the cheapest way of generating a unit of electricity that has ever been existed. Very strange definition of vanity. Anywhere near the equator the technology is going to totally replace all other generation within 20-30 years.
    - macspoofing 6y ago
      It could be free and still would be vanity because you still need that base-load, for evenings, night, and cloudy days. But solar isn't free. Panels are high-tech devices that require destructive mining for exotic minerals, in addition to massive land-use. Climate change isn't the only problem we have. There's also environmental collapse. >Anywhere near the equator the technology is going to totally replace all other generation within 20-30 years 20 years away in perpetuity..just like cold fusion.
      - pfdietz 6y ago
        > because you still need that base-load, for evenings, night, and cloudy days. If you are claiming that one needs base load power plants, ones that operate at very high capacity factor, that's wrong. A combination of intermittent power plants, and dispatchable power plants (including possibly storage) to fill in the gaps, would work just fine. There is no need for a steady demand to be supplied by power plants individually producing steady output. Base load supply can be synthesized from non-base load components. > 20 years away in perpetuity..just like cold fusion. Solar is already being installed at the many GW scale. Equating that to cold fusion is the height of dishonesty.
bgorman 6y ago
Solar panel manufacturers and wind turbine manufacturers lobby governments to exist. It is a combination of a jobs program and virtue signaling for politicians.
- jwilliamson 6y ago
  So do coal, nuclear and gas. What forms of power generation don't lobby governments?
therealdrag0 6y ago
Upfront cost of hydro is pretty environmentally controversial. It takes transforming a landscape/ecosystem. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity#Disadvantages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity#Disadvantages) Nuclear is also controversial, as is well known.
cardinalfang 6y ago
Britain's energy mix for 2019 had more wind than nuclear+hydro 56 TWh nuclear, 6 hydro, 132 gas, 64 wind, 12 solar, 36 bio https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/877047/Press_Notice_March_2020.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
- macspoofing 6y ago
  Is that good? Why so much natural gas usage, pray tell?
  - mantap 6y ago
    You need something to provide the peak load when the wind isn't blowing.
JoeAltmaier 6y ago
In the US, some states are almost entirely wind-powered now. It can work with the right geography. I'm in Iowa, and some days our entire demand is met by this. But it costs - about $1B per Gigawatt. Estimates are an average of about 1/3 total potential (windy days per year). Still, nuclear is the clear winner in the long run. You can make as much as you want, and put it where its needed. Wind is entirely opportunistic. And I'm not sure wind total-cost-of-ownership is even positive. Those towers cost money, and they require maintenance and have a life span.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >almost entirely wind-powered now. It Wind provides base-load? Since when? Behind every big wind deployment is a natural-gas company awash with profits. Seriously, natural gas companies are probably the biggest lobby groups for, and proponents of, wind and solar these days. Just look a little deeper into any major wind deployment and you'll see a natural gas company staring back at you. Why?
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    Last year, wind in Iowa surpassed coal. And yes gas is the big supplier here, because of all the grain drying mostly.
    - macspoofing 6y ago
      Yep. I know nothing about Iowa, but I can bet Iowan wind farms were constructed by a natural gas company (or at least natural gas company was a big investor). Natural gas companies LOVE wind power because it means more demand and more customers for natural gas.
csours 6y ago
There's a hard cap on hydro. You can't make it rain more. Wind and solar are SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper and quicker than nuclear for initial installation. Additionally, you can run energy islands from solar and wind.

jwilliamson 6y ago

A big driver is that wind and solar have only recently become economical. The price of solar power has fallen by 80% since 2010, so large scale plants are all very new. Capacity factors for wind are also improving rapidly, from 25% in 2000 to over 40% today. Basically we've had 150 years to build out hydro, 70 to build out nuclear, and only a few for wind and solar.

Brakenshire 6y ago

> Britain's energy mix is ~80% Nuclear/Hydro and 20% Wind/Solar/Other ('other' must be either natural gas or bio fuels, garbage or wood) That’s not even remotely true.

macspoofing 6y ago
You're correct. I misread the caption in the artcle. Those are world numbers. The overall point holds. Britain uses a tremendous amount of wind but it forces it to rely on natural gas for base-load... why not just build out hydro and nuclear? These are live numbers for my province: http://live.gridwatch.ca/home-page.html http://live.gridwatch.ca/home-page.html At the time of the posting, hydro and nuclear account for 75% (though I've seen it at levels of 90%+). And of course wind/natural gas are 9% and 13% respectively .. because they go hand in hand. Ontario could just buy hydro from Quebec and not even bother with solar and wind (and natural gas) and we could hit 100% renewable by this year instead of 2060 like Germany is planning. We're only building windmills because the population feels that they will a difference when we don't need them at all. What are we doing here? It's all insanity.

patall 6y ago

Because its cheaper? Britain is building one new nuclear power plant (Hinkley Point C) which is delayed by many years but has guranteed energy prices of 10 ct per kWh. That's about double what energy costs are usually in europe at this point.

macspoofing 6y ago
Yes. We know coal and natural gas are cheap energy sources, but we don't want them because they emit CO2. Biomass is a disaster for land-use (so is solar for that matter). It's almost like the process of elimination takes us to hydro and nuclear as the only viable power sources (that are proven to work) that don't actually need some other base load provider. I guess we'll have to waste a few more decades before we realize that solar and wind are a dead-end as replacements for fossil fuels.
- pfdietz 6y ago
  Nope, we'll have to wait a while for people like you to clue in how an optimized renewable-only grid is cheaper than one including nuclear (with everyone being charged for their capital cost.)
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    Nuclear is expensive - but it's cheap compared to the costs of climate change and environmental destruction. The minuscule amount of waste it generates and the tiny land-use requirements per kWh - it's almost magical. >we'll have to wait a while for people like you to clue in how an optimized renewable-only grid I'm willing to be clued-in. This isn't an ideological fight for me. I have nothing against solar and wind. I want what you want. Ideally, if you could point me to an example of 100% or near 100% renewable smart grid that is running primarily on wind and solar - the discussion would be over. Problem is, there isn't one. For all the billions that have been poured into solar and for all the talk about smart-grids, battery and kinetic storage, and molten salt batteries and all kinds of exotic things - you cannot point out ONE example. And it isn't like we aren't trying. Poor Germany is desperately throwing out their billions of surplus hoping it would happen, but the best they could do is 2060!! WTF. ITER, the cold fusion reactor, is supposed to be trialled by 2035[1]!!!. Is that not insanity? And they are signing multi-billion/multi-decade deals with authoritarian Russia to build pipelines for their natural gas at the same time they are decommissioning their nuclear plants!!! What is going on here?!?!?! What am I missing!?! Please tell me, because I honestly feel I am being gaslighted. Here an up-to-date energy mix of my home province of Ontario: http://live.gridwatch.ca/home-page.html http://live.gridwatch.ca/home-page.html Hydro and Nuclear make my province carbon-free today.. not 2050. Today. But we're building windmills (and consequently natural gas plants to provide base-load) because people have been told we need wind to fight climate change. I don't understand what's happening. It feels like religion. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER#Timeline_and_status https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER#Timeline_and_status

nsl73 6y ago

> Are wind and solar just vanity projects? Solar is great for lots of non-grid applications, such as places without a grid connection or satellites. The entire technology isn’t vanity.

macspoofing 6y ago
Sure. Vanity as grid-scale power source. If you want to charge your phone battery while camping, solar is great.
- Brakenshire 6y ago
  Solar is currently close to being the cheapest way of generating a unit of electricity that has ever been existed. Very strange definition of vanity. Anywhere near the equator the technology is going to totally replace all other generation within 20-30 years.
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    It could be free and still would be vanity because you still need that base-load, for evenings, night, and cloudy days. But solar isn't free. Panels are high-tech devices that require destructive mining for exotic minerals, in addition to massive land-use. Climate change isn't the only problem we have. There's also environmental collapse. >Anywhere near the equator the technology is going to totally replace all other generation within 20-30 years 20 years away in perpetuity..just like cold fusion.
    - pfdietz 6y ago
      > because you still need that base-load, for evenings, night, and cloudy days. If you are claiming that one needs base load power plants, ones that operate at very high capacity factor, that's wrong. A combination of intermittent power plants, and dispatchable power plants (including possibly storage) to fill in the gaps, would work just fine. There is no need for a steady demand to be supplied by power plants individually producing steady output. Base load supply can be synthesized from non-base load components. > 20 years away in perpetuity..just like cold fusion. Solar is already being installed at the many GW scale. Equating that to cold fusion is the height of dishonesty.

bgorman 6y ago

Solar panel manufacturers and wind turbine manufacturers lobby governments to exist. It is a combination of a jobs program and virtue signaling for politicians.

jwilliamson 6y ago
So do coal, nuclear and gas. What forms of power generation don't lobby governments?

therealdrag0 6y ago

Upfront cost of hydro is pretty environmentally controversial. It takes transforming a landscape/ecosystem. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity#Disadvantages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity#Disadvantages) Nuclear is also controversial, as is well known.

cardinalfang 6y ago

Britain's energy mix for 2019 had more wind than nuclear+hydro 56 TWh nuclear, 6 hydro, 132 gas, 64 wind, 12 solar, 36 bio https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/877047/Press_Notice_March_2020.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

macspoofing 6y ago
Is that good? Why so much natural gas usage, pray tell?
- mantap 6y ago
  You need something to provide the peak load when the wind isn't blowing.

JoeAltmaier 6y ago

In the US, some states are almost entirely wind-powered now. It can work with the right geography. I'm in Iowa, and some days our entire demand is met by this. But it costs - about $1B per Gigawatt. Estimates are an average of about 1/3 total potential (windy days per year). Still, nuclear is the clear winner in the long run. You can make as much as you want, and put it where its needed. Wind is entirely opportunistic. And I'm not sure wind total-cost-of-ownership is even positive. Those towers cost money, and they require maintenance and have a life span.

macspoofing 6y ago
>almost entirely wind-powered now. It Wind provides base-load? Since when? Behind every big wind deployment is a natural-gas company awash with profits. Seriously, natural gas companies are probably the biggest lobby groups for, and proponents of, wind and solar these days. Just look a little deeper into any major wind deployment and you'll see a natural gas company staring back at you. Why?
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  Last year, wind in Iowa surpassed coal. And yes gas is the big supplier here, because of all the grain drying mostly.
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    Yep. I know nothing about Iowa, but I can bet Iowan wind farms were constructed by a natural gas company (or at least natural gas company was a big investor). Natural gas companies LOVE wind power because it means more demand and more customers for natural gas.

csours 6y ago

There's a hard cap on hydro. You can't make it rain more. Wind and solar are SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper and quicker than nuclear for initial installation. Additionally, you can run energy islands from solar and wind.