18 ms·

We need more of these. The path to 100% green energy without coercing people and making decisions that could backfire, is to upgrade the energy grid to the poin

by proc0 4y ago

We need more of these. The path to 100% green energy without coercing people and making decisions that could backfire, is to upgrade the energy grid to the point that electricity is dirt cheap. At that point people will want to buy electric vehicles because it will make more sense.

DisjointedHunt 4y ago
Looking at the F150 lightning convincing people who typically might fall in a cohort skeptical of EVs is eye opening. People will happily buy EVs if it fills the gap their present vehicles do and proponents of EVs will do well to remember that not everyone leads the same lifestyle, living in dense cities with lots of highway driving. I'm very hopeful for the future seeing the swarm of Nuclear startups pushing the boundaries in the United States. It feels like we're in ~2004 of the space startup phase with Nuclear tech startups.
- dylan604 4y ago
  >People will happily buy EVs if it fills the gap their present vehicles do and proponents of EVs will do well to remember that not everyone leads the same lifestyle, living in dense cities with lots of highway driving. Yes, but... The dense cities are where the pollution is, and is low hanging fruit. Converting the rural areas with much less dense population is not achieving much. So it makes sense to target those dense population centers first.
  - tonmoy 4y ago
    Do you have any concrete data for that? Just because urban areas are denser doesn’t mean more number of people let alone it may not be more overall miles travelled
    - dylan604 4y ago
      Nothing more than my personal experience of living in the boonies for ~20 years then moving to the "big city" for the remaining ~25 years, reading information online, looking at pollution maps, etc. Edit: here's an example of online pollution maps: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/10/climate/driving-emissions-map.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/10/climate/drivi...
  - edmundsauto 4y ago
    Maybe, but rural vehicles are bigger, higher rate of diesel engines, and carry heavier loads (reduced fuel efficiency) and drive farther. That seems like an opportunity worth exploiting.
    - dylan604 4y ago
      Maybe my personal experience is biased, but in Texas, the vehicles are not smaller because of being located in urban areas. From my experience, F150 type trucks, SUVs, etc are the same size no matter their location. Urban areas have way more construction going on which is the larger, dirtier fuel using, etc equipment. And if you're trying to compare farming equipment to dense population areas, then I'd love to see some proof of what you're claiming that they are producing more rurally than in urban centers.
- kodah 4y ago
  I looked at the F150 Lightning and originally thought, "This might actually help people who are against current EVs" until I discovered the estimated mileage while towing. It's absolutely awful. That puts it squarely in the Tesla market as a luxury vehicle as opposed to something useful. https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/ford-f150-lightning-electric-truck-towing-test/ https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/ford-f150-lightning-elect...
  - twerkmonsta 4y ago
    Most F-150 owners never tow anything, and if they frequently have the need to tow, they usually go for the F-250 and above.
ajross 4y ago
> The path to 100% green energy without coercing people and making decisions that could backfire, is to upgrade the energy grid to the point that electricity is dirt cheap How does installing the most expensive generator in the country not work directly against that principle? Per a quick check on Wikipedia, it looks like the ~1.2GW Vogtle 3/4 is going to cost $28.5B, which is about eighteen times what an equivalent windfarm (at $1.3M/MW) would cost to install. And that's just counting construction costs, operating costs are even more skewed against nuclear. Sorry, but to be blunt: nuclear is snake oil being marketed to right-leaning tech bros who think wind and solar are something only granola munching hippies should love. It doesn't work on a balance sheet. And frankly it's not remotely close. If you genuinely care about the goals you espoused, you need to get off then nuclear horse. Once we've filled the channel with actually cheap renewables, it's time to go back and cover the remaining 2-5% or whatever with expensive stuff. Not now.
- endisneigh 4y ago
  Why do you believe people who like nuclear are right leaning?
- mh7 4y ago
  >equivalent windfarm (at $1.3M/MW) Does that include storage costs? Because a windfarm alone cannot replace a nuclear power plant no matter how cheaper or how much electricity the windturbines generate because on days without wind they generate zero Wh.
  - ajross 4y ago
    That's simply not true, because wind output never goes to zero across the whole grid. Even assuming the pessimal case[1], wind needs to drop below 5.5% (1/18th) of its average capacity before nuclear even reaches break-even! What fraction of the time is whole-grid-amortized wind capacity running at 5% of average? Has that ever even happened? I don't have numbers, but I'm willing to bet that this has never actually happened. What you've done is try to counter my overwhelming quantitative argument with a qualitative hedge ("but storage"). Please, (please!) look up the numbers here. Nuclear is a borderline scandal. If it was some other federal subsidy of an industry you disliked, you'd almost certainly call it fraud. [1] i.e. no use of gas peaker plants, legacy nuclear, solar, pumped hydro, batteries, etc... Literally trying to run the whole grid on wind and wind alone.
mradek 4y ago
How would hydrogen fare for big (<-- keyword) trucks vs battery powered? For ex. I read that you lose a ton of efficiency if you start hauling or carrying a heavy load.
- exabrial 4y ago
  It's not about efficiency, it's about convenience; and this is where the damned hydrogen conversation keeps going off the rails! A tesla converts nearly 100% of it's potential energy into kinetic energy, but "refueling" is not convenient as an F150; which converts something like 15% of it's potential energy into kinetic energy, but can hold a _ton_ more energy and refueled in minutes. It's ok to be far less efficient if convenience to the consumer is increased, as long as the power source was carbon neutral.
  - mradek 4y ago
    I know, that's why I'm asking for big trucks only, like the people who use F250/350 for hauling, or larger. F150 is kind of a small truck, in the world of work trucks. It should be fine as a standard EV for most contractors, etc.
  - aidenn0 4y ago
    Colloquially, efficiency can be either dimensionless (e.g. x% efficient) or carry a dimension (e.g. L/100km, MPG, Wh/mi). In the latter sense, towing a load (particularly a high-drag load) will lower your efficiency.
  - nicoburns 4y ago
    It seems likely to me that this will get solved with better battery tech. Solid state lithium-ion batteries seem poised to hit commercial availability sometime this decade. And there are hundreds of other more battery techs in the research stages. They're obviously not available yet, but it's not so long ago that lithium-ion wasn't either. We can also have things like extra batteries that one can rent and stick in your trunk for longer journeys or times when you don't have time to wait. > It's ok to be far less efficient if convenience to the consumer is increased It's also ok if convenience to the consumer is decreased. Nobody is owned convenience.
epistasis 4y ago
> We need more of these. The path to 100% green energy without coercing people and making decisions that could backfire, is to upgrade the energy grid to the point that electricity is dirt cheap. These two statements are at odds with each other, however. Every new nuclear plant we build like Vogtle will end up increasing our cost of carbon-free energy rather than decreasing it. Buying a nuclear power plant locks the energy price for 40-60 years, and all the current buildable designs are more expensive than current renewables plus the cost of storage to make the renewables a firm energy source. And the trend for renewables and storage is drastic price decreases, slowed down only by occasional supply shortages that get innovated around, which in turn drive prices even lower. So when we replace the storage in 15-20 years at EoL, the replacement will be vastly cheaper. And we get 2-3 of those price drops during the time that we would be locked into the cost of current nuclear. Our energy future is one of energy abundance, and cheap cheap cheap energy, but it's very unlikely to include nuclear as part of that mix. And any nuclear we do invest in will hinder energy abundance and energy cheapness.
- algoatecorn 4y ago
  How do you envision energy storage of the future? Where are you going to get the metals? How much fossil fuel is going to burn in order to extract it? Also, why are energy prices locked for 40-60 years? The energy required to create a nuclear plant is equal to what it can produce in ~5 years. I don't understand how you believe the future is "very unlikely to include nuclear". How else do you provide base load requirements? It's naive to think we can transition to a "green grid" without nuclear.
  - audunw 4y ago
    > How do you envision energy storage of the future? Not the guy you responded to, but: a combination of traditional batteries, molten metal batteries, liquid air or CO2 storage, pumped hydro, gravity storage, stored thermal energy, and more. All of which are around the commercial demonstration plant phase right now. > Where are you going to get the metals? Many of these don't require much metals. Molten metal batteries use metals that are extremely abundant. > How much fossil fuel is going to burn in order to extract it? In a decarbonized world? Zero. What? You think climate change can be solved without making mining zero-emission? If you're wondering how this will be done, it'll be battery/hydrogen/ammonia/e-fuel for mining equipment, trucks, ships, etc. We have to do that no matter what, otherwise we've just postponed climate change, not solved it. > How else do you provide base load requirements? Personally I believe a good share of base load will be provided by nuclear in many countries. I have nothing against nuclear. But I also think the base load problem can be solved without nuclear quite easily, assuming we actually solve CO2-emissions. This is because solving CO2-emissions means we'll produce batteries/hydrogen/ammonia/e-fuels on the same order of magnitude needed to balance renewables to provide baseload. If you want to dive into more detail, look at Marc Z Jacobsens studies: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0960148121016499?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09601... I think advanced geothermal may become a significant part of renewable base load in the future. It would be a huge hail mary for the climate change cause, because it'd make it SO much easier to get political willpower and investments from the whole oil/gas-sector. Check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2P2stuQ_KY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2P2stuQ_KY > It's naive to think we can transition to a "green grid" without nuclear. Optimistic, but not naive. There's a clear path. Difficult, but not much more difficult than rebooting the nuclear energy industry. And you have to be optimistic to think we can get to zero CO2-emissions anyway.
anigbrowl 4y ago
We do, and yet I've never heard any of the 'nuclear is the greenest technology' crowd give credit (qua political capital) for bringing this project to fruition. Why aren't nuclear advocates loudly praising the state/federal/business decision-makers that delivered here?

by proc0 4y ago

DisjointedHunt 4y ago

Looking at the F150 lightning convincing people who typically might fall in a cohort skeptical of EVs is eye opening. People will happily buy EVs if it fills the gap their present vehicles do and proponents of EVs will do well to remember that not everyone leads the same lifestyle, living in dense cities with lots of highway driving. I'm very hopeful for the future seeing the swarm of Nuclear startups pushing the boundaries in the United States. It feels like we're in ~2004 of the space startup phase with Nuclear tech startups.

dylan604 4y ago
>People will happily buy EVs if it fills the gap their present vehicles do and proponents of EVs will do well to remember that not everyone leads the same lifestyle, living in dense cities with lots of highway driving. Yes, but... The dense cities are where the pollution is, and is low hanging fruit. Converting the rural areas with much less dense population is not achieving much. So it makes sense to target those dense population centers first.
- tonmoy 4y ago
  Do you have any concrete data for that? Just because urban areas are denser doesn’t mean more number of people let alone it may not be more overall miles travelled
  - dylan604 4y ago
    Nothing more than my personal experience of living in the boonies for ~20 years then moving to the "big city" for the remaining ~25 years, reading information online, looking at pollution maps, etc. Edit: here's an example of online pollution maps: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/10/climate/driving-emissions-map.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/10/climate/drivi...
- edmundsauto 4y ago
  Maybe, but rural vehicles are bigger, higher rate of diesel engines, and carry heavier loads (reduced fuel efficiency) and drive farther. That seems like an opportunity worth exploiting.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    Maybe my personal experience is biased, but in Texas, the vehicles are not smaller because of being located in urban areas. From my experience, F150 type trucks, SUVs, etc are the same size no matter their location. Urban areas have way more construction going on which is the larger, dirtier fuel using, etc equipment. And if you're trying to compare farming equipment to dense population areas, then I'd love to see some proof of what you're claiming that they are producing more rurally than in urban centers.
kodah 4y ago
I looked at the F150 Lightning and originally thought, "This might actually help people who are against current EVs" until I discovered the estimated mileage while towing. It's absolutely awful. That puts it squarely in the Tesla market as a luxury vehicle as opposed to something useful. https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/ford-f150-lightning-electric-truck-towing-test/ https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/ford-f150-lightning-elect...
- twerkmonsta 4y ago
  Most F-150 owners never tow anything, and if they frequently have the need to tow, they usually go for the F-250 and above.

ajross 4y ago

> The path to 100% green energy without coercing people and making decisions that could backfire, is to upgrade the energy grid to the point that electricity is dirt cheap How does installing the most expensive generator in the country not work directly against that principle? Per a quick check on Wikipedia, it looks like the ~1.2GW Vogtle 3/4 is going to cost $28.5B, which is about eighteen times what an equivalent windfarm (at $1.3M/MW) would cost to install. And that's just counting construction costs, operating costs are even more skewed against nuclear. Sorry, but to be blunt: nuclear is snake oil being marketed to right-leaning tech bros who think wind and solar are something only granola munching hippies should love. It doesn't work on a balance sheet. And frankly it's not remotely close. If you genuinely care about the goals you espoused, you need to get off then nuclear horse. Once we've filled the channel with actually cheap renewables, it's time to go back and cover the remaining 2-5% or whatever with expensive stuff. Not now.

endisneigh 4y ago
Why do you believe people who like nuclear are right leaning?
mh7 4y ago
>equivalent windfarm (at $1.3M/MW) Does that include storage costs? Because a windfarm alone cannot replace a nuclear power plant no matter how cheaper or how much electricity the windturbines generate because on days without wind they generate zero Wh.
- ajross 4y ago
  That's simply not true, because wind output never goes to zero across the whole grid. Even assuming the pessimal case[1], wind needs to drop below 5.5% (1/18th) of its average capacity before nuclear even reaches break-even! What fraction of the time is whole-grid-amortized wind capacity running at 5% of average? Has that ever even happened? I don't have numbers, but I'm willing to bet that this has never actually happened. What you've done is try to counter my overwhelming quantitative argument with a qualitative hedge ("but storage"). Please, (please!) look up the numbers here. Nuclear is a borderline scandal. If it was some other federal subsidy of an industry you disliked, you'd almost certainly call it fraud. [1] i.e. no use of gas peaker plants, legacy nuclear, solar, pumped hydro, batteries, etc... Literally trying to run the whole grid on wind and wind alone.

mradek 4y ago

How would hydrogen fare for big (<-- keyword) trucks vs battery powered? For ex. I read that you lose a ton of efficiency if you start hauling or carrying a heavy load.

exabrial 4y ago
It's not about efficiency, it's about convenience; and this is where the damned hydrogen conversation keeps going off the rails! A tesla converts nearly 100% of it's potential energy into kinetic energy, but "refueling" is not convenient as an F150; which converts something like 15% of it's potential energy into kinetic energy, but can hold a _ton_ more energy and refueled in minutes. It's ok to be far less efficient if convenience to the consumer is increased, as long as the power source was carbon neutral.
- mradek 4y ago
  I know, that's why I'm asking for big trucks only, like the people who use F250/350 for hauling, or larger. F150 is kind of a small truck, in the world of work trucks. It should be fine as a standard EV for most contractors, etc.
- aidenn0 4y ago
  Colloquially, efficiency can be either dimensionless (e.g. x% efficient) or carry a dimension (e.g. L/100km, MPG, Wh/mi). In the latter sense, towing a load (particularly a high-drag load) will lower your efficiency.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  It seems likely to me that this will get solved with better battery tech. Solid state lithium-ion batteries seem poised to hit commercial availability sometime this decade. And there are hundreds of other more battery techs in the research stages. They're obviously not available yet, but it's not so long ago that lithium-ion wasn't either. We can also have things like extra batteries that one can rent and stick in your trunk for longer journeys or times when you don't have time to wait. > It's ok to be far less efficient if convenience to the consumer is increased It's also ok if convenience to the consumer is decreased. Nobody is owned convenience.

epistasis 4y ago

> We need more of these. The path to 100% green energy without coercing people and making decisions that could backfire, is to upgrade the energy grid to the point that electricity is dirt cheap. These two statements are at odds with each other, however. Every new nuclear plant we build like Vogtle will end up increasing our cost of carbon-free energy rather than decreasing it. Buying a nuclear power plant locks the energy price for 40-60 years, and all the current buildable designs are more expensive than current renewables plus the cost of storage to make the renewables a firm energy source. And the trend for renewables and storage is drastic price decreases, slowed down only by occasional supply shortages that get innovated around, which in turn drive prices even lower. So when we replace the storage in 15-20 years at EoL, the replacement will be vastly cheaper. And we get 2-3 of those price drops during the time that we would be locked into the cost of current nuclear. Our energy future is one of energy abundance, and cheap cheap cheap energy, but it's very unlikely to include nuclear as part of that mix. And any nuclear we do invest in will hinder energy abundance and energy cheapness.

algoatecorn 4y ago
How do you envision energy storage of the future? Where are you going to get the metals? How much fossil fuel is going to burn in order to extract it? Also, why are energy prices locked for 40-60 years? The energy required to create a nuclear plant is equal to what it can produce in ~5 years. I don't understand how you believe the future is "very unlikely to include nuclear". How else do you provide base load requirements? It's naive to think we can transition to a "green grid" without nuclear.
- audunw 4y ago
  > How do you envision energy storage of the future? Not the guy you responded to, but: a combination of traditional batteries, molten metal batteries, liquid air or CO2 storage, pumped hydro, gravity storage, stored thermal energy, and more. All of which are around the commercial demonstration plant phase right now. > Where are you going to get the metals? Many of these don't require much metals. Molten metal batteries use metals that are extremely abundant. > How much fossil fuel is going to burn in order to extract it? In a decarbonized world? Zero. What? You think climate change can be solved without making mining zero-emission? If you're wondering how this will be done, it'll be battery/hydrogen/ammonia/e-fuel for mining equipment, trucks, ships, etc. We have to do that no matter what, otherwise we've just postponed climate change, not solved it. > How else do you provide base load requirements? Personally I believe a good share of base load will be provided by nuclear in many countries. I have nothing against nuclear. But I also think the base load problem can be solved without nuclear quite easily, assuming we actually solve CO2-emissions. This is because solving CO2-emissions means we'll produce batteries/hydrogen/ammonia/e-fuels on the same order of magnitude needed to balance renewables to provide baseload. If you want to dive into more detail, look at Marc Z Jacobsens studies: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0960148121016499?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09601... I think advanced geothermal may become a significant part of renewable base load in the future. It would be a huge hail mary for the climate change cause, because it'd make it SO much easier to get political willpower and investments from the whole oil/gas-sector. Check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2P2stuQ_KY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2P2stuQ_KY > It's naive to think we can transition to a "green grid" without nuclear. Optimistic, but not naive. There's a clear path. Difficult, but not much more difficult than rebooting the nuclear energy industry. And you have to be optimistic to think we can get to zero CO2-emissions anyway.

anigbrowl 4y ago

We do, and yet I've never heard any of the 'nuclear is the greenest technology' crowd give credit (qua political capital) for bringing this project to fruition. Why aren't nuclear advocates loudly praising the state/federal/business decision-makers that delivered here?