5 ms·

I feel like the focus should be on cheaper energy (Is 10x cheaper possible?) than focus on green energy. Cheap energy would open a lot of opportunities (carbon

I feel like the focus should be on cheaper energy (Is 10x cheaper possible?) than focus on green energy. Cheap energy would open a lot of opportunities (carbon sequestration?) and solve a lot of economic tensions. But it looks like the energy markets are going towards bigger prices and probably more profit that way.

jhallenworld 4y ago
Solar and wind are the cheapest sources of energy, they just happen to also be green. But this is a recent development- fossil fuels were cheaper in the recent past. The transition to them would be a lot cheaper if the opposition from the incumbent energy suppliers was not so stiff. https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...
- eldaisfish 4y ago
  you quoted Lazard. I always warn anyone quoting that study to be careful with the prices claimed there. There are two major issues - one that the current prices of wind and solar are primarily driven by zero fuel cost. Meanwhile, the rest of the grid continues to exist. Second - because the grid exists, energy for when the wind isn't blowing at night can come from somewhere and your lights stay on. Wind and solar introduce volatility into the mix, volatility on the generation side. That has a cost that is not currently borne by them but by us - the consumers. Lazard and co conveniently ignore this aspect when claiming that wind and solar are as cheap as they make them out to be. To be clear, wind and solar are cheap but that may or may not hold true in the future. There is currently no gigawatt scale power grid anywhere that runs on renewable energy for more than minutes at a time. Renewables are very far from being able to provide energy 24/7 and cheaply.
  - Krasnol 4y ago
    I don't get your criticism. Why should there not be zero fuel cost? Your second argument is supposed to be a variable? Since with a wider grid, the volatility falls ("there is always wind somewhere"). I also don't think the size of the whole grid should be priced into a single power source. Why not price that into other non-green sources too if the local grid doesn't support the whole country?
    - nonethewiser 4y ago
      I think the point is that the cost of solar is actually the cost of solar + the cost of whatever other source required to supplement it.
      - Krasnol 4y ago
    - Manuel_D 4y ago
      The issue is that intermittent sources are really working to subtract the emissions of fossil fuel plants. Generating electricity completely, or even partially from intermittent sources is a totally different ball game. Put this in practice: Solar costs $5 per watt hour, and comprises 25% of the grid. Fossil fuels cost $10 per watt hour and comprise 100% of the grid. Solar is cheaper than fossil fuels in a zero fuel cost model. But you can't just change the remaining 75% of the grid to solar and save a bunch of money. Solar produces energy in a sine wave (in the short term, there's also weather fluctuations in the longer term). You'd end up with a huge energy surplus at noon, and energy shortages from dusk to dawn. In this sense the actual price of renewables is heavily dependent on the price of fossil fuels. Because wind and solar are really "gas supplemented by wind and solar". You can't have the latter without the former. Hence why Germany is in such a bind right now.
      - AstralStorm 4y ago
        Ultimately you would have "solar and wind supplemented by batteries/power to gas/hydrogen and fusion", but that's still years off, which we do not have. So the more workable idea would be to have a percentage of nuclear for the critical always on load, and to provide some industrial overcapacity at time.
        Manuel_D 4y ago
        Base load accounts for 70-80% of most grid demand. Plus, the demand peaks usually happen when renewables aren't producing electricity.
  - bjourne 4y ago
    That's like saying supermarkets "introduce volatility" because they aren't open 24/7 like some convenience stores. Of course prices will increase when the number of vendor decreases (e.g not sunny and not windy), like it always does in liquid markets. What you are saying is that electricity shouldn't be treated as a commodity sold on an open market and instead should be regulated and subsidized by states. But that's what got us into this mess. If things like CO2 pollution had been accurately factored into prices, more people would have biked to work, installed solar panels, and invested in better home insulation. I live in a small apartment with district heating and my electricity bill is consequently low. I don't want to subsidize nuclear power just so that those who live in large electricity-heated villas should get lower electricity bills.
    - nradov 4y ago
      Electricity can't be purely priced on a spot market. Any sort of large-scale industrial use requires reliable power at predictable prices. Solar and wind power is not reliable for base loads without huge amounts of storage, which exists basically nowhere today. Open your eyes and look outside your apartment. What you call a subsidy I call an investment in maintaining our industrial base. Or would you prefer to see the rest of our manufacturing industry move to China, where they can obtain cheap and reliable power from coal and nuclear plants?
  - jhallenworld 4y ago
    They have it right on the first page: look for the little diamond that represents the marginal cost to produce power at a fully depreciated gas plant, $24/MWh. [This price is certainly no longer true thanks to Russia]. But it's unfair: what is the marginal cost of solar or wind at a fully depreciated solar or wind plant? Also: they have the cost of PV+storage on the last page.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  How much money do I need to pay to make my house hot using solar panels? And natural gas? Perhaps you meant to contextualize your claim a bit.
  - jhallenworld 4y ago
    >How much money do I need to pay to make my house hot using solar panels? It might possible depending on how much land you have, but is certainly impractical. I mean you could theoretically do it with a large enough area and your own storage system, but it would sure cost a lot. >And natural gas? It's completely impossible without the natural gas grid (and electric grid). Unless.. do you have a natural gas well on your property?
- google234123 4y ago
  Solar and wind are very expensive when it's dark or not windy.
perlgeek 4y ago
If we made natural gas 10x cheaper, using it for carbon sequestration wouldn't work at all...
knodi123 4y ago
Cheap energy has been the focus- almost the sole focus, above everything else. That leads to eased tensions and tons of opportunities, and most importantly, absolute shitloads of carbon in the atmosphere. Are you under the impressions that we haven't been working towards cheaper energy over the last several decades?

jhallenworld 4y ago

Solar and wind are the cheapest sources of energy, they just happen to also be green. But this is a recent development- fossil fuels were cheaper in the recent past. The transition to them would be a lot cheaper if the opposition from the incumbent energy suppliers was not so stiff. https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...

eldaisfish 4y ago
you quoted Lazard. I always warn anyone quoting that study to be careful with the prices claimed there. There are two major issues - one that the current prices of wind and solar are primarily driven by zero fuel cost. Meanwhile, the rest of the grid continues to exist. Second - because the grid exists, energy for when the wind isn't blowing at night can come from somewhere and your lights stay on. Wind and solar introduce volatility into the mix, volatility on the generation side. That has a cost that is not currently borne by them but by us - the consumers. Lazard and co conveniently ignore this aspect when claiming that wind and solar are as cheap as they make them out to be. To be clear, wind and solar are cheap but that may or may not hold true in the future. There is currently no gigawatt scale power grid anywhere that runs on renewable energy for more than minutes at a time. Renewables are very far from being able to provide energy 24/7 and cheaply.
- Krasnol 4y ago
  I don't get your criticism. Why should there not be zero fuel cost? Your second argument is supposed to be a variable? Since with a wider grid, the volatility falls ("there is always wind somewhere"). I also don't think the size of the whole grid should be priced into a single power source. Why not price that into other non-green sources too if the local grid doesn't support the whole country?
  - nonethewiser 4y ago
    I think the point is that the cost of solar is actually the cost of solar + the cost of whatever other source required to supplement it.
    - Krasnol 4y ago
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    The issue is that intermittent sources are really working to subtract the emissions of fossil fuel plants. Generating electricity completely, or even partially from intermittent sources is a totally different ball game. Put this in practice: Solar costs $5 per watt hour, and comprises 25% of the grid. Fossil fuels cost $10 per watt hour and comprise 100% of the grid. Solar is cheaper than fossil fuels in a zero fuel cost model. But you can't just change the remaining 75% of the grid to solar and save a bunch of money. Solar produces energy in a sine wave (in the short term, there's also weather fluctuations in the longer term). You'd end up with a huge energy surplus at noon, and energy shortages from dusk to dawn. In this sense the actual price of renewables is heavily dependent on the price of fossil fuels. Because wind and solar are really "gas supplemented by wind and solar". You can't have the latter without the former. Hence why Germany is in such a bind right now.
    - AstralStorm 4y ago
      Ultimately you would have "solar and wind supplemented by batteries/power to gas/hydrogen and fusion", but that's still years off, which we do not have. So the more workable idea would be to have a percentage of nuclear for the critical always on load, and to provide some industrial overcapacity at time.
      - Manuel_D 4y ago
        Base load accounts for 70-80% of most grid demand. Plus, the demand peaks usually happen when renewables aren't producing electricity.
- bjourne 4y ago
  That's like saying supermarkets "introduce volatility" because they aren't open 24/7 like some convenience stores. Of course prices will increase when the number of vendor decreases (e.g not sunny and not windy), like it always does in liquid markets. What you are saying is that electricity shouldn't be treated as a commodity sold on an open market and instead should be regulated and subsidized by states. But that's what got us into this mess. If things like CO2 pollution had been accurately factored into prices, more people would have biked to work, installed solar panels, and invested in better home insulation. I live in a small apartment with district heating and my electricity bill is consequently low. I don't want to subsidize nuclear power just so that those who live in large electricity-heated villas should get lower electricity bills.
  - nradov 4y ago
    Electricity can't be purely priced on a spot market. Any sort of large-scale industrial use requires reliable power at predictable prices. Solar and wind power is not reliable for base loads without huge amounts of storage, which exists basically nowhere today. Open your eyes and look outside your apartment. What you call a subsidy I call an investment in maintaining our industrial base. Or would you prefer to see the rest of our manufacturing industry move to China, where they can obtain cheap and reliable power from coal and nuclear plants?
- jhallenworld 4y ago
  They have it right on the first page: look for the little diamond that represents the marginal cost to produce power at a fully depreciated gas plant, $24/MWh. [This price is certainly no longer true thanks to Russia]. But it's unfair: what is the marginal cost of solar or wind at a fully depreciated solar or wind plant? Also: they have the cost of PV+storage on the last page.
nonethewiser 4y ago
How much money do I need to pay to make my house hot using solar panels? And natural gas? Perhaps you meant to contextualize your claim a bit.
- jhallenworld 4y ago
  >How much money do I need to pay to make my house hot using solar panels? It might possible depending on how much land you have, but is certainly impractical. I mean you could theoretically do it with a large enough area and your own storage system, but it would sure cost a lot. >And natural gas? It's completely impossible without the natural gas grid (and electric grid). Unless.. do you have a natural gas well on your property?
google234123 4y ago
Solar and wind are very expensive when it's dark or not windy.

perlgeek 4y ago

If we made natural gas 10x cheaper, using it for carbon sequestration wouldn't work at all...

knodi123 4y ago

Cheap energy has been the focus- almost the sole focus, above everything else. That leads to eased tensions and tons of opportunities, and most importantly, absolute shitloads of carbon in the atmosphere. Are you under the impressions that we haven't been working towards cheaper energy over the last several decades?