6 ms·

Markets in Power

iambateman 4y ago
This article was fascinating - At least in large part due to patio11’s entertaining style. I have always wondered how it’s possible to have such regular power, when it seems like such a challenging problem to solve. Lastly…if you ever get a chance to support nuclear power in your community, please do. it’s safe.
- megaman821 4y ago
  I don't think nuclear's problem is safety. If it was cheap it would be built anyway. Do you think most people think the thick, black plumes of smoke coming out of a coal plant are safe? No, but at the time coal was cheap power and we build a lot of coal plants.
  - WJW 4y ago
    Nuclear power has at least three problems: - It has historically been associated with nuclear weaponry, giving it an unsafe imago. Chernobyl and related incidents didn't help, and remediation of nuclear incidents is much more difficult than something like the aftermath of a coal pile fire. - It was not really cheaper than fossil fuels for much of its life, and it is not cheaper than renewables now. - Not many countries have the capability to build nuclear power plants, which means they need assistance from abroad. This creates unwanted dependencies. As a simple example, I bet Finland is not very happy about its Russian-built nuclear power plants right now.
    - gryn 4y ago
      there's also the political side of things: - countries having nuclear not wanting developing countries to have nuclear energy that act as a gateway to developing nuclear weapons over time.(I think this was the case for iran, not sure) - in case of conflicts/wars a nuclear site blowing up is a much bigger deal than a coal plant or wind farm blowing up. renewable energy doesn't have these problems.
    - 6thaccount 4y ago
      [dead]
- jay_kyburz 4y ago
  It's not really fair for us to build Nuclear, but not allow other countries to build it. If we can't trust some leaders with it, then I don't see why we would trust any democratic country with it. As we have seen in the US, the mob can elect literally anybody.
metadat 4y ago
So many good insights in this article. I haven't encountered such coherent language covering the macro forces driving the Bitcoin mining scene until now. > Bitcoin miners are in the business of bidding electronics depreciation and electricity consumption against each other to win a tournament in generating random numbers with mystical properties. From this tournament arises a mediocre transaction processing network and a speculative asset. You get more of the speculative asset if you’re the global highest bidder in electricity used in generating random numbers and, hence, the huge overlap in professional Bitcoin miners and people with deep expertise in quirks of the power generation market.
- evronm 4y ago
  Yeah, I was really impressed with that paragraph. He's being kind of unfair to bitcoin, but put in context, that description is spot on.
- robocat 4y ago
  I am looking forward to seeing if Etherium has less correlation with Bitcoin after changing to proof-of-stake. The price of Etherium and Bitcoin were highly correlated, and was that partially due to production costs (power) or just market sector investments (large inflows or outflows to/from the crypto market in general).
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
People get a little bit hysterical about demand response. It's just a cheap and sensible thing to do. But since fossil fuel interests need to create that continuing narrative of chaos and collapse, doing the cheap and sensible thing is treated like one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. The rest of the article touches on why the peakiest peaks are expensive. But still, sending a text message to offer a financial incentive to do something trivial to help avoid an inefficient waste of resources, is a sign that civilization is on the verge of collapse, rather than a boring cost optimisation.
- pdonis 4y ago
  > sending a text message to offer a financial incentive to do something trivial to help avoid an inefficient waste of resources It might not be trivial. As the article notes, the main thing that ends up needing to be "shifted" (a misnomer, as we'll see in a moment) is residential air conditioning. But you can't "shift" air conditioning. What "shifting" actually means here is "leaving your A/C off and letting your house warm up". Some people can withstand that without much problem; but some can't (for a variety of reasons). For the ones that can't, running their A/C is not "an inefficient waste of resources", it's a necessity.
  - mikewarot 4y ago
    The inefficient waste of resources being discussed wasn't on the demand side, but rather on the generating side. It would be far better to shed the load, instead of firing up less efficient (i.e. wasteful) peaker units.
  - frxx 4y ago
    You can shift air conditioning, to a degree. You could cool down the house, maybe even one or two degrees under your usual temperature. Your house now acts as a thermal battery and you can leave the AC off for some time. How long will that work? With the general atrocious insulation in Japan and the very humid/hot summers, probably not super long. Of course not super on topic but the insulation in central Japan seems to be a big problem to me. Walls are thin and often made out of wood. There are ventilaton holes, often closeable, but with the thinnest plastic cover. Windows are single pane, and the window frames and doors are often of such shoddy construction, you can see the outside through some cracks. If there was a shift in construction quality, I'm sure the electricity use in summer and winter would drop, but I don't expect that to happen soon. Insulation and construction quality is expensive, so this isn't done in construction of rental apartments.
sideway 4y ago
Such an insightful article. I'm really curious how one acquires the knowledge and develops the skills needed to write so eloquently about a deeply complicated topic. What does patio11 read, who are the people he interacts with, what helped him nurture his exploratory traits, how does he structure new knowledge. It's all a fascinating mystery to me.
- jraines 4y ago
  It’s probably less who he reads, than how much he writes, and on top of that who reads him. By the latter I mean partially that he likely gets good feedback, but moreso that if you know your audience, have generally been rewarded for writing for them, and have a credible belief they’ll read the next thing, you’re going to aim high and be serious about self-criticism & improvement.
  - vjulian 4y ago
    I’m sure he reads and writes a lot—out of a love of language. Keen attention to detail and a sense of personal style…for instance his use of ‘make due’ instead if ‘make do’. That’s like wearing an ascot and sport coat where everyone else is wearing a boring fleece.
- roenxi 4y ago
  I suspect he is giving you a hint in the first paragraph of the article: > ...Europe generally (being fundamentally unserious about power policy)... What makes this article unusual is it is a serious attempt at grappling with a political topic - asking what the underlying pressures and technical requirements might be. That makes it read very differently to a lot of 'debates' where neither side is treating the topic seriously (whether that is not painting the full picture, repeating talking points, direct lies and people stopping to talk about lies, motivated or sloppy reasoning, illogical arguments, a refusal to engage with huge differences in order of magnitude, etc). If you write a lot of short-form comments (Twitter, HN, corporate media or reddit for example - anything that promotes slogans or soundbites) you probably won't learn to write like this in a million years, because they aren't environments that promote seriously dealing with topics. HN can just about manage to talk seriously on the subject programming/software, but it often has a weird disjointed style where the thought is spread across multiple comments with different authors.
shostack 4y ago
Great read. This had distinct "Connections" series vibes.
miki_tyler 4y ago
Seems like an unnecessary convoluted system to regulate demand. Why not simply leave kWh prices fluctuate during the day? Smart meters would adjust consumption accordingly. You can use your smart meter to kick-off powering some things, like charging your car, heating the house, AC, etc, only below a certain price level. If enough users do the same, the operator of the network can adjust dynamically the load of the grid by simply increasing/decreasing prices.

This article was fascinating - At least in large part due to patio11’s entertaining style. I have always wondered how it’s possible to have such regular power, when it seems like such a challenging problem to solve. Lastly…if you ever get a chance to support nuclear power in your community, please do. it’s safe.

megaman821 4y ago
I don't think nuclear's problem is safety. If it was cheap it would be built anyway. Do you think most people think the thick, black plumes of smoke coming out of a coal plant are safe? No, but at the time coal was cheap power and we build a lot of coal plants.
- WJW 4y ago
  Nuclear power has at least three problems: - It has historically been associated with nuclear weaponry, giving it an unsafe imago. Chernobyl and related incidents didn't help, and remediation of nuclear incidents is much more difficult than something like the aftermath of a coal pile fire. - It was not really cheaper than fossil fuels for much of its life, and it is not cheaper than renewables now. - Not many countries have the capability to build nuclear power plants, which means they need assistance from abroad. This creates unwanted dependencies. As a simple example, I bet Finland is not very happy about its Russian-built nuclear power plants right now.
  - gryn 4y ago
    there's also the political side of things: - countries having nuclear not wanting developing countries to have nuclear energy that act as a gateway to developing nuclear weapons over time.(I think this was the case for iran, not sure) - in case of conflicts/wars a nuclear site blowing up is a much bigger deal than a coal plant or wind farm blowing up. renewable energy doesn't have these problems.
  - 6thaccount 4y ago
    [dead]
jay_kyburz 4y ago
It's not really fair for us to build Nuclear, but not allow other countries to build it. If we can't trust some leaders with it, then I don't see why we would trust any democratic country with it. As we have seen in the US, the mob can elect literally anybody.

metadat 4y ago

So many good insights in this article. I haven't encountered such coherent language covering the macro forces driving the Bitcoin mining scene until now. > Bitcoin miners are in the business of bidding electronics depreciation and electricity consumption against each other to win a tournament in generating random numbers with mystical properties. From this tournament arises a mediocre transaction processing network and a speculative asset. You get more of the speculative asset if you’re the global highest bidder in electricity used in generating random numbers and, hence, the huge overlap in professional Bitcoin miners and people with deep expertise in quirks of the power generation market.

evronm 4y ago
Yeah, I was really impressed with that paragraph. He's being kind of unfair to bitcoin, but put in context, that description is spot on.
robocat 4y ago
I am looking forward to seeing if Etherium has less correlation with Bitcoin after changing to proof-of-stake. The price of Etherium and Bitcoin were highly correlated, and was that partially due to production costs (power) or just market sector investments (large inflows or outflows to/from the crypto market in general).

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

People get a little bit hysterical about demand response. It's just a cheap and sensible thing to do. But since fossil fuel interests need to create that continuing narrative of chaos and collapse, doing the cheap and sensible thing is treated like one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. The rest of the article touches on why the peakiest peaks are expensive. But still, sending a text message to offer a financial incentive to do something trivial to help avoid an inefficient waste of resources, is a sign that civilization is on the verge of collapse, rather than a boring cost optimisation.

pdonis 4y ago
> sending a text message to offer a financial incentive to do something trivial to help avoid an inefficient waste of resources It might not be trivial. As the article notes, the main thing that ends up needing to be "shifted" (a misnomer, as we'll see in a moment) is residential air conditioning. But you can't "shift" air conditioning. What "shifting" actually means here is "leaving your A/C off and letting your house warm up". Some people can withstand that without much problem; but some can't (for a variety of reasons). For the ones that can't, running their A/C is not "an inefficient waste of resources", it's a necessity.
- mikewarot 4y ago
  The inefficient waste of resources being discussed wasn't on the demand side, but rather on the generating side. It would be far better to shed the load, instead of firing up less efficient (i.e. wasteful) peaker units.
- frxx 4y ago
  You can shift air conditioning, to a degree. You could cool down the house, maybe even one or two degrees under your usual temperature. Your house now acts as a thermal battery and you can leave the AC off for some time. How long will that work? With the general atrocious insulation in Japan and the very humid/hot summers, probably not super long. Of course not super on topic but the insulation in central Japan seems to be a big problem to me. Walls are thin and often made out of wood. There are ventilaton holes, often closeable, but with the thinnest plastic cover. Windows are single pane, and the window frames and doors are often of such shoddy construction, you can see the outside through some cracks. If there was a shift in construction quality, I'm sure the electricity use in summer and winter would drop, but I don't expect that to happen soon. Insulation and construction quality is expensive, so this isn't done in construction of rental apartments.

sideway 4y ago

Such an insightful article. I'm really curious how one acquires the knowledge and develops the skills needed to write so eloquently about a deeply complicated topic. What does patio11 read, who are the people he interacts with, what helped him nurture his exploratory traits, how does he structure new knowledge. It's all a fascinating mystery to me.

jraines 4y ago
It’s probably less who he reads, than how much he writes, and on top of that who reads him. By the latter I mean partially that he likely gets good feedback, but moreso that if you know your audience, have generally been rewarded for writing for them, and have a credible belief they’ll read the next thing, you’re going to aim high and be serious about self-criticism & improvement.
- vjulian 4y ago
  I’m sure he reads and writes a lot—out of a love of language. Keen attention to detail and a sense of personal style…for instance his use of ‘make due’ instead if ‘make do’. That’s like wearing an ascot and sport coat where everyone else is wearing a boring fleece.
roenxi 4y ago
I suspect he is giving you a hint in the first paragraph of the article: > ...Europe generally (being fundamentally unserious about power policy)... What makes this article unusual is it is a serious attempt at grappling with a political topic - asking what the underlying pressures and technical requirements might be. That makes it read very differently to a lot of 'debates' where neither side is treating the topic seriously (whether that is not painting the full picture, repeating talking points, direct lies and people stopping to talk about lies, motivated or sloppy reasoning, illogical arguments, a refusal to engage with huge differences in order of magnitude, etc). If you write a lot of short-form comments (Twitter, HN, corporate media or reddit for example - anything that promotes slogans or soundbites) you probably won't learn to write like this in a million years, because they aren't environments that promote seriously dealing with topics. HN can just about manage to talk seriously on the subject programming/software, but it often has a weird disjointed style where the thought is spread across multiple comments with different authors.

shostack 4y ago

Great read. This had distinct "Connections" series vibes.

miki_tyler 4y ago

Seems like an unnecessary convoluted system to regulate demand. Why not simply leave kWh prices fluctuate during the day? Smart meters would adjust consumption accordingly. You can use your smart meter to kick-off powering some things, like charging your car, heating the house, AC, etc, only below a certain price level. If enough users do the same, the operator of the network can adjust dynamically the load of the grid by simply increasing/decreasing prices.