7 ms·

People used to say that nuclear would lead to power to cheap to meter. That never happened. I’m not sure it’s going to happen with renewables because of the la

People used to say that nuclear would lead to power to cheap to meter. That never happened. I’m not sure it’s going to happen with renewables because of the large land use requirements. Also is there anywhere in the world where adding wind and solar has led to lower electricity rates for ratepayers? European electricity and nat gas prices should go up about 50% this year. Lastly, there was a story yesterday on HN about high fertilizer prices. The biggest reason for that is high natural gas prices, in part because of a lack of recent investment in new natural gas sources. There will be an energy transition, but so far the prices for energy and things derived from energy sources are really high.

_ph_ 5y ago
Providing a set amount of electricity 24/7 of course has a cost as well as setting up renewable sources. But especially solar cells have only fixed/maintenance costs, but no "fuel" cost per amount of electrictiy produced. This leads to a price for the electricity, which mostly has to be reconed up to the point where the grid demands are satisfied. Any excess electricity is literally free and can be repurposed, as long as that purpose can utilize intermittant supply. If you look at the German electricity prices at the power exchange, high renewable output correlates with very low prices. The amortized costs of renewables by now are distinctly lower than for fossil fuel and of course nuclear power. While large investments have to be taken, a further expansion of renewables should lower the electricity price in Germany (and the rest of Europe via trade) Current prices are very high, because of gas shortage. I don't have a clear idea how it all started, but it seems there was a too large dependency on the spot markets vs. long term contracts, and now the spot markets have skyrocketed. There are political aspecst too - Russia for sure could extend their deliveries, but barely deliver what was contractually agreed upon. It didn't help, that several French nuclear plants have been shut down without warning as safety problems were detected and have now to be fixed. Finally, the weather has been not so friendly for renewables in the last year, for the first time in many years, Germany had a small decrease in production year over year.
Retric 5y ago
Electrical grids change slowly, over half of all electrical equipment worldwide is 20+ years old and solar only very recently became cheap. Many places are seeing lower rates due to recent renewable energy investments, others are seeing higher costs due to heavily subsidized early adoption. Some like Germany have both effects at the same time. So remember, the economics going forward on a 20+ year time horizons look very different from existing infrastructure. We still have extremely overpriced concentrating solar installations that are not even vaguely competitive with sub 2c/kWh PV solar. However when you sign a 20 year contract for all power produced at price X you don’t get to drop it when something else becomes cheaper.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  There actually already instances of things being shut down early because the savings from new renewables are so great it is in everyone's interest to buy out the existing contract early. Obviously that applies more for things with high ongoing fuel costs but I wouldn't be at all surprised if this applied to some early concentrating solar plants, particularly if they can reuse the land and grid connection for new renewables.
  - barney54 5y ago
    But where has this led to actual savings for ratepayers?
    - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
      Everywhere? Even if you only look at energy prices it's probably fairly clear trend, once you start accounting for pollution, climate change, lower peak loads etc. The savings quickly run into Trillions.
      - xyzzyz 5y ago
        If it’s everywhere, can you name one country where retail electricity rates went down as share of renewable electricity in the grid went up?
joshvm 5y ago
Thinking that nuclear fission stations would lead to super cheap power is somewhat naive. Nuclear power stations are incredibly expensive to build. There is the cost of fuel, decomissioning and ongoing costs for waste disposal - note that most of this is not spent fuel rods, but things like PPE which can only be used for a certain amount of time. Wind and solar have at times pushed wholesale prices negative in Germany in the past - that doesn't necessarily translate to a cost for users (ie homeowners). I'm not super familiar withWe really need much better local storage so that people can soak up excess power, or fabled smart appliances that communicate properly to use electricty at an appropriate time. One issue is if you run a power plant which is difficult to shut off quickly, or the time to start up is also prohibitive. You might choose to take the hit and pay for the grid to take your power, rather than shutdown and lose out when demand increases in the future. If I understand correctly, this cost is sometimes passed to consumers (e.g. if your supplier owns the plant). So consumers actually lose when prices go negative - indeed if you have your own generators, in theory you should also be paying to supply the grid when demand is negative if you don't disconnect your feed. What should happen in an ideal world is you'd store/use it locally (say charge your car up). See https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/windy-february-drove-record-negative-power-prices-germany https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/windy-february-drove-re... https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/why-power-prices-turn-negative https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/why-power-prices-... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666792421000652 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266679242...
- coryrc 5y ago
  > Wind and solar have at times pushed wholesale prices negative in Germany in the past Germany has extremely high electricity prices for the consumer. It doesn't matter if it's occasionally negative if the average is extremely costly, because you need electricity all the time.
tialaramex 5y ago
> is there anywhere in the world where adding wind and solar has led to lower electricity rates for ratepayers? We do not have a spare universe without such additions to answer that question. Hornsea Project 1 (1.2GW nameplate electricity generation from wind turbines in the North Sea) is running right now and is paid £140 per MWh under CfD terms. So, on a nice fresh day that's £168 000 per hour. In 2019 you could say that's a ludicrous subsidy, the market price for electricity in the UK was about £50 per MWh so the government (and thus rate payers ultimately) are paying about 200% extra to subsidise this wind farm. On the other hand, today (in January 2022) the market price is fluctuating closer to £200 per MWh due to gas prices and so £140 per MWh looks like a bargain. [ The way Contracts for Difference works is you sell your electricity like everybody else, via some mix of long term and short term contracts, and the government tops up the difference between the market price and your "strike price" so that your income is always determined by your strike price not subject to changes in the market price. This also means if market prices are higher (as they often have been this past year) you pay the government back the difference so you still only get the income your strike price guaranteed. As a result the risk of not generating electricity stays with you, as does the risk of not selling your electricity for market prices but the government eats your risk that market prices are far lower than you expected while also gobbling up any windfall profits if market prices are far higher ] Now, if Hornsea and similar wind farms don't exist, does the UK magically pay the same price £140 per MWh for that electricity even though gas is expensive and it has no other source of electricity ? Or do the prices go up even further? Maybe with no other choice the UK buys electricity for £300 per MWh or even £500 per MWh. The lights must stay on after all. Also there are secondary effects. If you propose a new wind farm today, to start construction in 2024 and be online in 2030, you're not going to get a strike price of £140 per MWh because of course prices came down due to investment in the sector. But if there was no investment, why wouldn't you find wind farms in 2030 just as expensive as they were in 2015 ? And not only did prices come down, efficiency went up as suppliers gained experience and competed to offer better products, when Hornsea was proposed a 8MW turbine was best-in-class, Hornsea Project 2 intends up to 15MW turbines. The taller structure offers not only more peak power output, it also delivers higher capacity factor because high altitude winds are more constant.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
hutzlibu 5y ago
"I’m not sure it’s going to happen with renewables because of the large land use requirements" I am pretty sure, we would have some desert land to spare. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec#/media/File%3AFullneed.jpg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec#/media/File%3AFulln... Also most of roofs yet uncovered by panels. And you can do dual use: solarpanels that provide shade for agriculture use, etc. Land or technology is not the problem - competing with cheap fossil energy in the ground is, as well as the massive investment required to make the complete transition to renewables.
jollybean 5y ago
"because of the large land use requirements." It's also everything else, especially the monopoly on transmission. Energy is a supply and demand game like everything else. 'Hydro One' in Ontario has a CEO, workers, and a quasi monopoly. On what planet would they, in all self-interest ever decide to lower rates for something? If energy prices went down a little bit, they could actually increase their transmission prices, lower end prices to users by a tiny fraction, and that's that. That's how a value chain monopoly works. Getting rid of the transmission problem, at lest for 'last mile' would be a giant leap.
- bryanlarsen 5y ago
  > On what planet would they, in all self-interest ever decide to lower rates for something? In Ontario electricity rates are one of the biggest political footballs. Every election there's a stupid electricity rate promise from every party. That's how rates will go down in Ontario.
JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
I can’t speak for other countries but I don’t think you understand just how much land America has. Drive across it sometime. The wind farms are on land that goes on forever. > The global weighted-average cost of electricity of new onshore wind farms in 2019 was USD 0.053/kWh with country/region values of between USD 0.051 and USD 0.099/kWh depending on the region. Costs for the most competitive projects are now as low USD 0.030/kWh, without financial support.
- deepnotderp 5y ago
  So still more expensive than gas, with unreliability to boot?
  - bryanlarsen 5y ago
    Where do you get gas power for less than 3 cents per kilowatt, fully loaded?
marcosdumay 5y ago
> Lastly, there was a story yesterday on HN about high fertilizer prices. Keep in mind that you can't make urea without carbon dioxide. Currently, you just can not electrify its production. It would take many years of research before you can do it in any sizeable amount. This is different from ammonia, that is just an equipment renovation away (so, a few years of investiment), but ammonia isn't useful as fertilizer.
- DennisP 5y ago
  Ammonia is in fact used directly as fertilizer. > Ammonia (NH₃) is the foundation for the nitrogen (N) fertilizer industry. It can be directly applied to soil as a plant nutrient or converted into a variety of common N fertilizers > Ammonia has the highest N content of any commercial fertilizer, making it a popular source of N despite the potential hazard it poses and the safety practices required to use it. For example, when NH₃ fertilizer is applied directly to soil, it’s in a pressurized liquid that will immediately become vapor if exposed to air after leaving the tank. To prevent such releases into the atmosphere, growers use various tractor-drawn knives and shanks to place it at least 10 to 20 cm (4 to 8 inches) below the soil surface. Ammonia will then rapidly react with soil water to form ammonium (NH₄⁺), which is retained on the soil cation exchange sites. https://www.cropnutrition.com/resource-library/ammonia https://www.cropnutrition.com/resource-library/ammonia
  - marcosdumay 5y ago
    Yeah, ok, ammonia is not completely useless as a fertilizer. You can't do that process in any soil, and can't repeat it many times on the same place either. But it is used a few times in a few places. (Interestingly, I live in a place that would gain a lot from it, yet people overwhelmingly prefer to use magnesium and calcium during the PH correction of the soil. Now I'm curious about the reason.) There is also ammonium nitrate, that is a much safer and easier to handle carbon-free alternative to ammonium and much more widely applicable. It is still more dangerous and harder to handle than urea, and also requires equipment renovation (so, don't expect people to change any fast). But if the carbon becomes a hard constraint, people will very likely migrate to it or something similar. The problem we are seeing right now is that any migration takes time and money.
bryanlarsen 5y ago
> land use requirements Supplying the US with enough solar power for 100% of requirements would require 16,000 square miles, plus one more for batteries. That's a lot, but in a country with 3.6 million of them, not a big deal. That's about how much we use for cemetaries. We use a lot more for parking lots. Land use is a problem for some countries, Singapore can't go 100% solar. But most countries are fine.
- Retric 5y ago
  Singapore us extremely unusual at 51.7 TWh/year on 724 km2 of land. However, they are far from energy independent right now. They currently import the fuel to generate electricity, so they could also just import electricity directly. Presumably while keeping back up generators for strategic reasons.
- 41b696ef1113 5y ago
  Taking those numbers as writ, that works out to 0.4% of US landmass. Wow -effectively nothing.
ncphil 5y ago
"People" who were "Greatest generation" and "Silent generation" adults who lied to us, lied to my face, when they knew it wasn't the truth. Civilian nuclear power (at least terrestrial nuclear power) is, and always was a grift. Initially as a way to keep military nuclear programs going, but later as a grift unto itself by elements of the MIC like GE and Westinghouse who couldn't contain their greed any better than they could radioactive waste.
pfdietz 5y ago
> I’m not sure it’s going to happen with renewables because of the large land use requirements. I want you to compare the cost of PV equipment per acre of land vs. the cost of an acre of land. If PV is ever globally limited because of land cost, it will already have driven all other energy sources to extinction.

_ph_ 5y ago

Providing a set amount of electricity 24/7 of course has a cost as well as setting up renewable sources. But especially solar cells have only fixed/maintenance costs, but no "fuel" cost per amount of electrictiy produced. This leads to a price for the electricity, which mostly has to be reconed up to the point where the grid demands are satisfied. Any excess electricity is literally free and can be repurposed, as long as that purpose can utilize intermittant supply. If you look at the German electricity prices at the power exchange, high renewable output correlates with very low prices. The amortized costs of renewables by now are distinctly lower than for fossil fuel and of course nuclear power. While large investments have to be taken, a further expansion of renewables should lower the electricity price in Germany (and the rest of Europe via trade) Current prices are very high, because of gas shortage. I don't have a clear idea how it all started, but it seems there was a too large dependency on the spot markets vs. long term contracts, and now the spot markets have skyrocketed. There are political aspecst too - Russia for sure could extend their deliveries, but barely deliver what was contractually agreed upon. It didn't help, that several French nuclear plants have been shut down without warning as safety problems were detected and have now to be fixed. Finally, the weather has been not so friendly for renewables in the last year, for the first time in many years, Germany had a small decrease in production year over year.

Retric 5y ago

Electrical grids change slowly, over half of all electrical equipment worldwide is 20+ years old and solar only very recently became cheap. Many places are seeing lower rates due to recent renewable energy investments, others are seeing higher costs due to heavily subsidized early adoption. Some like Germany have both effects at the same time. So remember, the economics going forward on a 20+ year time horizons look very different from existing infrastructure. We still have extremely overpriced concentrating solar installations that are not even vaguely competitive with sub 2c/kWh PV solar. However when you sign a 20 year contract for all power produced at price X you don’t get to drop it when something else becomes cheaper.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago
There actually already instances of things being shut down early because the savings from new renewables are so great it is in everyone's interest to buy out the existing contract early. Obviously that applies more for things with high ongoing fuel costs but I wouldn't be at all surprised if this applied to some early concentrating solar plants, particularly if they can reuse the land and grid connection for new renewables.
- barney54 5y ago
  But where has this led to actual savings for ratepayers?
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    Everywhere? Even if you only look at energy prices it's probably fairly clear trend, once you start accounting for pollution, climate change, lower peak loads etc. The savings quickly run into Trillions.
    - xyzzyz 5y ago
      If it’s everywhere, can you name one country where retail electricity rates went down as share of renewable electricity in the grid went up?

joshvm 5y ago

Thinking that nuclear fission stations would lead to super cheap power is somewhat naive. Nuclear power stations are incredibly expensive to build. There is the cost of fuel, decomissioning and ongoing costs for waste disposal - note that most of this is not spent fuel rods, but things like PPE which can only be used for a certain amount of time. Wind and solar have at times pushed wholesale prices negative in Germany in the past - that doesn't necessarily translate to a cost for users (ie homeowners). I'm not super familiar withWe really need much better local storage so that people can soak up excess power, or fabled smart appliances that communicate properly to use electricty at an appropriate time. One issue is if you run a power plant which is difficult to shut off quickly, or the time to start up is also prohibitive. You might choose to take the hit and pay for the grid to take your power, rather than shutdown and lose out when demand increases in the future. If I understand correctly, this cost is sometimes passed to consumers (e.g. if your supplier owns the plant). So consumers actually lose when prices go negative - indeed if you have your own generators, in theory you should also be paying to supply the grid when demand is negative if you don't disconnect your feed. What should happen in an ideal world is you'd store/use it locally (say charge your car up). See https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/windy-february-drove-record-negative-power-prices-germany https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/windy-february-drove-re... https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/why-power-prices-turn-negative https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/why-power-prices-... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666792421000652 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266679242...

coryrc 5y ago
> Wind and solar have at times pushed wholesale prices negative in Germany in the past Germany has extremely high electricity prices for the consumer. It doesn't matter if it's occasionally negative if the average is extremely costly, because you need electricity all the time.

tialaramex 5y ago

> is there anywhere in the world where adding wind and solar has led to lower electricity rates for ratepayers? We do not have a spare universe without such additions to answer that question. Hornsea Project 1 (1.2GW nameplate electricity generation from wind turbines in the North Sea) is running right now and is paid £140 per MWh under CfD terms. So, on a nice fresh day that's £168 000 per hour. In 2019 you could say that's a ludicrous subsidy, the market price for electricity in the UK was about £50 per MWh so the government (and thus rate payers ultimately) are paying about 200% extra to subsidise this wind farm. On the other hand, today (in January 2022) the market price is fluctuating closer to £200 per MWh due to gas prices and so £140 per MWh looks like a bargain. [ The way Contracts for Difference works is you sell your electricity like everybody else, via some mix of long term and short term contracts, and the government tops up the difference between the market price and your "strike price" so that your income is always determined by your strike price not subject to changes in the market price. This also means if market prices are higher (as they often have been this past year) you pay the government back the difference so you still only get the income your strike price guaranteed. As a result the risk of not generating electricity stays with you, as does the risk of not selling your electricity for market prices but the government eats your risk that market prices are far lower than you expected while also gobbling up any windfall profits if market prices are far higher ] Now, if Hornsea and similar wind farms don't exist, does the UK magically pay the same price £140 per MWh for that electricity even though gas is expensive and it has no other source of electricity ? Or do the prices go up even further? Maybe with no other choice the UK buys electricity for £300 per MWh or even £500 per MWh. The lights must stay on after all. Also there are secondary effects. If you propose a new wind farm today, to start construction in 2024 and be online in 2030, you're not going to get a strike price of £140 per MWh because of course prices came down due to investment in the sector. But if there was no investment, why wouldn't you find wind farms in 2030 just as expensive as they were in 2015 ? And not only did prices come down, efficiency went up as suppliers gained experience and competed to offer better products, when Hornsea was proposed a 8MW turbine was best-in-class, Hornsea Project 2 intends up to 15MW turbines. The taller structure offers not only more peak power output, it also delivers higher capacity factor because high altitude winds are more constant.

rsj_hn 5y ago

hutzlibu 5y ago

"I’m not sure it’s going to happen with renewables because of the large land use requirements" I am pretty sure, we would have some desert land to spare. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec#/media/File%3AFullneed.jpg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec#/media/File%3AFulln... Also most of roofs yet uncovered by panels. And you can do dual use: solarpanels that provide shade for agriculture use, etc. Land or technology is not the problem - competing with cheap fossil energy in the ground is, as well as the massive investment required to make the complete transition to renewables.

jollybean 5y ago

"because of the large land use requirements." It's also everything else, especially the monopoly on transmission. Energy is a supply and demand game like everything else. 'Hydro One' in Ontario has a CEO, workers, and a quasi monopoly. On what planet would they, in all self-interest ever decide to lower rates for something? If energy prices went down a little bit, they could actually increase their transmission prices, lower end prices to users by a tiny fraction, and that's that. That's how a value chain monopoly works. Getting rid of the transmission problem, at lest for 'last mile' would be a giant leap.

bryanlarsen 5y ago
> On what planet would they, in all self-interest ever decide to lower rates for something? In Ontario electricity rates are one of the biggest political footballs. Every election there's a stupid electricity rate promise from every party. That's how rates will go down in Ontario.

JohnJamesRambo 5y ago

I can’t speak for other countries but I don’t think you understand just how much land America has. Drive across it sometime. The wind farms are on land that goes on forever. > The global weighted-average cost of electricity of new onshore wind farms in 2019 was USD 0.053/kWh with country/region values of between USD 0.051 and USD 0.099/kWh depending on the region. Costs for the most competitive projects are now as low USD 0.030/kWh, without financial support.

deepnotderp 5y ago
So still more expensive than gas, with unreliability to boot?
- bryanlarsen 5y ago
  Where do you get gas power for less than 3 cents per kilowatt, fully loaded?

marcosdumay 5y ago

> Lastly, there was a story yesterday on HN about high fertilizer prices. Keep in mind that you can't make urea without carbon dioxide. Currently, you just can not electrify its production. It would take many years of research before you can do it in any sizeable amount. This is different from ammonia, that is just an equipment renovation away (so, a few years of investiment), but ammonia isn't useful as fertilizer.

DennisP 5y ago
Ammonia is in fact used directly as fertilizer. > Ammonia (NH₃) is the foundation for the nitrogen (N) fertilizer industry. It can be directly applied to soil as a plant nutrient or converted into a variety of common N fertilizers > Ammonia has the highest N content of any commercial fertilizer, making it a popular source of N despite the potential hazard it poses and the safety practices required to use it. For example, when NH₃ fertilizer is applied directly to soil, it’s in a pressurized liquid that will immediately become vapor if exposed to air after leaving the tank. To prevent such releases into the atmosphere, growers use various tractor-drawn knives and shanks to place it at least 10 to 20 cm (4 to 8 inches) below the soil surface. Ammonia will then rapidly react with soil water to form ammonium (NH₄⁺), which is retained on the soil cation exchange sites. https://www.cropnutrition.com/resource-library/ammonia https://www.cropnutrition.com/resource-library/ammonia
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  Yeah, ok, ammonia is not completely useless as a fertilizer. You can't do that process in any soil, and can't repeat it many times on the same place either. But it is used a few times in a few places. (Interestingly, I live in a place that would gain a lot from it, yet people overwhelmingly prefer to use magnesium and calcium during the PH correction of the soil. Now I'm curious about the reason.) There is also ammonium nitrate, that is a much safer and easier to handle carbon-free alternative to ammonium and much more widely applicable. It is still more dangerous and harder to handle than urea, and also requires equipment renovation (so, don't expect people to change any fast). But if the carbon becomes a hard constraint, people will very likely migrate to it or something similar. The problem we are seeing right now is that any migration takes time and money.

bryanlarsen 5y ago

> land use requirements Supplying the US with enough solar power for 100% of requirements would require 16,000 square miles, plus one more for batteries. That's a lot, but in a country with 3.6 million of them, not a big deal. That's about how much we use for cemetaries. We use a lot more for parking lots. Land use is a problem for some countries, Singapore can't go 100% solar. But most countries are fine.

Retric 5y ago
Singapore us extremely unusual at 51.7 TWh/year on 724 km2 of land. However, they are far from energy independent right now. They currently import the fuel to generate electricity, so they could also just import electricity directly. Presumably while keeping back up generators for strategic reasons.
41b696ef1113 5y ago
Taking those numbers as writ, that works out to 0.4% of US landmass. Wow -effectively nothing.

ncphil 5y ago

"People" who were "Greatest generation" and "Silent generation" adults who lied to us, lied to my face, when they knew it wasn't the truth. Civilian nuclear power (at least terrestrial nuclear power) is, and always was a grift. Initially as a way to keep military nuclear programs going, but later as a grift unto itself by elements of the MIC like GE and Westinghouse who couldn't contain their greed any better than they could radioactive waste.

pfdietz 5y ago

> I’m not sure it’s going to happen with renewables because of the large land use requirements. I want you to compare the cost of PV equipment per acre of land vs. the cost of an acre of land. If PV is ever globally limited because of land cost, it will already have driven all other energy sources to extinction.