3 ms·
It's people being lied to by their sources, through a conflation of nameplate capacity and delivered power. You have to knock 90% off every claim you hear about
by samatman 4y ago
It's people being lied to by their sources, through a conflation of nameplate capacity and delivered power. You have to knock 90% off every claim you hear about a renewable, that puts the number in the ballpark of what users of electricity will actually get out of it.
It's of course the fossil fuel industry which profits from this relentless mendacity. Renewables are great, but they aren't coal's competition and coal knows it. Nuclear is.
- tchaffee 4y agoSources lying to people is a bold claim that needs to be supported by evidence. Lacking that, folks should ignore claims like this.
- Schroedingersat 4y agohttps://renewablesnow.com/news/portugal-reaches-record-low-price-in-solar-tender-awarding-670-mw-711343/ https://renewablesnow.com/news/portugal-reaches-record-low-p... Show me the $13/MWh nuclear reactor (or even fuel for that matter). Granted that's variable wholesale, and a full 100% renewable system costs $50-100/MWh in countries with high labour cost and without optimal climate, but this is still vastly cheaper than nuclear.
- Manuel_D 4y agoThat was an exceptionally low price, as per the article the other end was $.40 per MWh (actually Euro, but they're trading at better than 1:1 right now). Furthermore, this was excluding storage which more than triples the total price. Solar is indeed better than nuclear if your goal is to reduce the amount of fossil fuel use by shutting coal and gas plants down during sunny days. But if the goal is a total elimination of fossil fuel use, then the cost of storage has to be included and nuclear wins out.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago> That was an exceptionally low price, as per the article the other end was $.40 per MWh (actually Euro, but they're trading at better than 1:1 right now). Furthermore, this was excluding storage which more than triples the total price. Yes. Bringing the total price to almost that of nuclear. But unlike nuclear -- the price of which increased continuously from the 60s through early 90s while production was the highest it has ever been -- they are both dropping precipitously. So much so that the whole system cost could plausibly be lower than just the steam turbine and heat exchanger component before a new reactor would open (which is already mass produced more than any other production technology). By all means build nuclear, but do it on a level playing field. Either give 60 year guaranteed prices at 2-4x current market rate, zero risk loans, and free insurance to all zero carbon sources with >90% availability or none.
- Manuel_D 4y ago> But unlike nuclear -- the price of which increased continuously from the 60s through early 90s while production was the highest it has ever been This is the complete opposite of reality. Nuclear saw it's largest period of growth during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Following the mid 1970s growth tapered off, and higher prices ensued as economies of scale were lost. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516300106 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151... Here's a chart from that paper plotting plant construction vs cost over time. The big cluster of cheap plants in the late 60s and early 70s is what nuclear looks like when economies of scale are leveraged: https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0301421516300106-gr2.jpg https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S03014215163001...