10 ms·

Academics and the grid. Are they studying the right things?

27 points by 7402 4y ago

amw 4y ago
Nuclear definitely needs to be a larger part of our energy future. This article briefly alludes to its "social and political" challenges, but that undersells how nuclear is subject to more impact study per watt than any fossil fuel plant ever has. But the basis of that is simple economics: an economy dominated by fossil fuels (with an increasing share coming from "green" tech that will still always need a reliable base load that fossil fuels will be happy to provide) will spend large amounts of effort minimizing the benefits of a tech whose RoI to the owner is measured over tens of decades.
- dale_glass 4y ago
  > Nuclear definitely needs to be a larger part of our energy future. Why? I think nuclear is effectively obsolete at this point. It had a potential once upon a time, but no longer because the world just moved on, like happened with say steam powered trains. Nuclear is really ill-fitting tech to the modern age. Say, who's going to build it? Investors? But it has a terrible time making a profit. It's incredibly expensive to build, and has a very long payoff time. If you're into money, then you don't like a business plan that requires a loan of many billions and that might pay off in decades, if renewables don't ruin the business model. If you're a banker you probably don't like that either. Okay, let's say it's a political project then, we'll pay for it with taxes. But that's not great either because construction times are long. As a politician if you throw your effort behind nuclear, your chances are slim to see it being turned on while you retain your position. The chances of seeing that plan start to profit are even slimmer. The chances of a successor sabotaging your legacy are pretty big. So your incentives as a politician to get behind nuclear aren't great. Let's say the politicians are onboard anyway. Even then, it's tricky. Governments are sovereign. Even if the current government promised that this plant is guaranteed to sell its power for $X and therefore is guaranteed a profit... guess what, if in the future it turns out that solar is everywhere and your power costs 10X than anyone else's, people will likely get tired of paying for that, and might as well break the promise some other party made 15 years ago, and there goes your profit.
  - lettergram 4y ago
    Power companies where I have lived can charge a percentage over costs. Basically, they can build nuclear all they want; amortize it and charge 10% above cost to customers. Further, I can imagine an insurance broker (similar to the FDIC) collaborating across areas of nuclear was an option. Laws are what’s stopping nuclear, not finances or economics. I’ve mentioned it here before, my family was in the industry building nuclear plants. They’d have 3+ people for every weld, fit; etc. example of real situation: contractor is supposed to weld frame, the union guy is supposed to weld pipes, there are different inspectors for each. Pipe inspector comes Wednesday, frame inspector comes Thursday. Frame must be inspected before pipe is in. Contractor welds pipe and frame Tuesday because union guy is out sick. Pipe inspector approves on Wednesday. Pipe welder returns Thursday, frame inspector comes and pipe welder complains, take it out. Next week, the pipe welder drinks all week. Frame welder welds frame, inspection complete and passes. Following week pipe welder completes weld for pipe. But inspector was out sick. Further sections must be put on hold until inspected. Following week pipe inspector inspects and approve. At this point the project is 1 month behind where it could have been due to union rules (enforced by law) & legal requirements of inspection. What really put the nail in the coffin, was (I believe it was GE) was caught faking photos of pipes. There was then a requirement to remove and replace all the piping for a project(s) - at cost. Which was a hell of a lot of money and regulations were then dramatically increased. Haven’t built since.
    - dale_glass 4y ago
      > Power companies where I have lived can charge a percentage over costs. Basically, they can build nuclear all they want; amortize it and charge 10% above cost to customers. Okay, and if people are selling wind or solar at 30% of the price, why would anyone pay to the nuclear plant? > Laws are what’s stopping nuclear, not finances or economics. I’ve mentioned it here before, my family was in the industry building nuclear plants. They’d have 3+ people for every weld, fit; etc. Well, tough shit, that's how things work when you're dealing with dangerous stuff. I fully believe nuclear can be a safe technology. But it's only safe when everything is done by the rules, and there are inspectors for everything.
doctor_eval 4y ago
I didn’t read the whole article and honestly I’m not qualified to even comment about the materiality of it, but it certainly reminded me of Bob Metcalfe saying, quite loudly, that the internet was going to “catastrophically collapse” in 1996 or he would “eat his words”[0]. This is the guy who invented Ethernet, who knew in great technical detail what he was talking about. But just like the internet in 1996, I’m sure there are plenty of people in the industry who can also foresee what problems there are going to be with renewables - and an increasingly large number of those people have jobs that depend on solving them. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Metcalfe#Web_predictions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Metcalfe#Web_prediction...
- pjc50 4y ago
  Does anyone recall why he said that? There was also a lot of y2k doomerism and a lot of work put into preventing it.
  - wil421 4y ago
    Best I could find.[1] I think he had valid concerns that still plague us today. He was a little too far on the doom and gloom side. >Metcalfe offered several reasons for the collapse. For example, he believed that the internet’s crucial data links would be overloaded, and the “naïve flat-rate business model is incapable of financing the new capacity it would need to serve continued growth”. He contended that investor’s would be unwilling to “absorb projected continuing losses”. He thought that “another series of major security breaches will drive the rest of the productive Internet to safety and out of reach.” Yet, he was incorrect, and internet continued to grow exponentially in 1996. [1]https://quoteinvestigator.com/2020/03/09/collapse/?amp=1 https://quoteinvestigator.com/2020/03/09/collapse/?amp=1
    - badcppdev 4y ago
      So perhaps the investors who lost everything in the .com boom and bust absorbed the cost of upgrading the data links even though they did it unintentionally? I've never looked at a breakdown of the .com market around that time with any sort of estimate about how much investor "wealth" was lost during the bust phase.
Certhas 4y ago
There is a lot of research on exactly the supposedly overlooked problems. This article doesn't even name check the heavily researched solutions to low inertia in power grids. The term "grid forming" (including quotes) has 10.000 hits on google scholar. In summary, this is just another anti renewables "I know better than all the experts" blog post. Edit: If it turns out that we need conventional types of inertia and new technologies do not suffice we can use synchronous condensers. It will increase cost, but so will using nuclear.
- pjc50 4y ago
  > this is just another anti renewables "I know better than all the experts" blog post https://judithcurry.com/about/ https://judithcurry.com/about/ "Interview with Ron Paul" "Interview with Tucker Carlson (Fox News)" "Interview with John Stossel (Fox News)" Impressive list of disqualifications there.
  - boringg 4y ago
    If you had a good idea that you wanted to get traction instead of trying to make money on some opinion you would realize that going through that set of interviewers means you lost your credibility to the majority of people who are critical thinkers. 'Impressive list of disqualifications there.' < couldn't be truer.
    - pjc50 4y ago
      One of the sentences I've read that stuck with me for years is "Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance", from https://blog.danieldavies.com/2004_05_23_d-squareddigest_archive.html https://blog.danieldavies.com/2004_05_23_d-squareddigest_arc...
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    https://www.desmog.com/judith-curry/ https://www.desmog.com/judith-curry/ > Judith Curry resigned from her position at Georgia Tech on January 1, 2017, citing the “craziness” of climate science ... > Judith Curry wrote on her blog Climate Etc. that her views on climate change are best summarized by her Congressional Testimony on the President’s Climate Action Plan: [6], [7] > “Recent data and research supports the importance of natural climate variability and calls into question the conclusion that humans are the dominant cause of recent climate change: > – The hiatus in global warming since 1998 – Reduced estimates of the sensitivity of climate to carbon dioxide – Climate models predict much more warming than has been observed in the early 21st century”
jnsaff2 4y ago
I'm sure their premise that academics study something in isolation and extrapolate possibilities from there is problematic. But the author also focuses on papers that study 100% renewables grid. I find it pretty annoying that people want to scuttle the first 80% renewable grid because of the problems of the last 5%. Smells like good old fossil FUD.
mangecoeur 4y ago
I'm sitting in an energy system modelling conference, I can reach out and touch a dozen people who know and care an awful lot about grid stability and various solutions.

27 points by 7402 4y ago

amw 4y ago

Nuclear definitely needs to be a larger part of our energy future. This article briefly alludes to its "social and political" challenges, but that undersells how nuclear is subject to more impact study per watt than any fossil fuel plant ever has. But the basis of that is simple economics: an economy dominated by fossil fuels (with an increasing share coming from "green" tech that will still always need a reliable base load that fossil fuels will be happy to provide) will spend large amounts of effort minimizing the benefits of a tech whose RoI to the owner is measured over tens of decades.

dale_glass 4y ago
> Nuclear definitely needs to be a larger part of our energy future. Why? I think nuclear is effectively obsolete at this point. It had a potential once upon a time, but no longer because the world just moved on, like happened with say steam powered trains. Nuclear is really ill-fitting tech to the modern age. Say, who's going to build it? Investors? But it has a terrible time making a profit. It's incredibly expensive to build, and has a very long payoff time. If you're into money, then you don't like a business plan that requires a loan of many billions and that might pay off in decades, if renewables don't ruin the business model. If you're a banker you probably don't like that either. Okay, let's say it's a political project then, we'll pay for it with taxes. But that's not great either because construction times are long. As a politician if you throw your effort behind nuclear, your chances are slim to see it being turned on while you retain your position. The chances of seeing that plan start to profit are even slimmer. The chances of a successor sabotaging your legacy are pretty big. So your incentives as a politician to get behind nuclear aren't great. Let's say the politicians are onboard anyway. Even then, it's tricky. Governments are sovereign. Even if the current government promised that this plant is guaranteed to sell its power for $X and therefore is guaranteed a profit... guess what, if in the future it turns out that solar is everywhere and your power costs 10X than anyone else's, people will likely get tired of paying for that, and might as well break the promise some other party made 15 years ago, and there goes your profit.
- lettergram 4y ago
  Power companies where I have lived can charge a percentage over costs. Basically, they can build nuclear all they want; amortize it and charge 10% above cost to customers. Further, I can imagine an insurance broker (similar to the FDIC) collaborating across areas of nuclear was an option. Laws are what’s stopping nuclear, not finances or economics. I’ve mentioned it here before, my family was in the industry building nuclear plants. They’d have 3+ people for every weld, fit; etc. example of real situation: contractor is supposed to weld frame, the union guy is supposed to weld pipes, there are different inspectors for each. Pipe inspector comes Wednesday, frame inspector comes Thursday. Frame must be inspected before pipe is in. Contractor welds pipe and frame Tuesday because union guy is out sick. Pipe inspector approves on Wednesday. Pipe welder returns Thursday, frame inspector comes and pipe welder complains, take it out. Next week, the pipe welder drinks all week. Frame welder welds frame, inspection complete and passes. Following week pipe welder completes weld for pipe. But inspector was out sick. Further sections must be put on hold until inspected. Following week pipe inspector inspects and approve. At this point the project is 1 month behind where it could have been due to union rules (enforced by law) & legal requirements of inspection. What really put the nail in the coffin, was (I believe it was GE) was caught faking photos of pipes. There was then a requirement to remove and replace all the piping for a project(s) - at cost. Which was a hell of a lot of money and regulations were then dramatically increased. Haven’t built since.
  - dale_glass 4y ago
    > Power companies where I have lived can charge a percentage over costs. Basically, they can build nuclear all they want; amortize it and charge 10% above cost to customers. Okay, and if people are selling wind or solar at 30% of the price, why would anyone pay to the nuclear plant? > Laws are what’s stopping nuclear, not finances or economics. I’ve mentioned it here before, my family was in the industry building nuclear plants. They’d have 3+ people for every weld, fit; etc. Well, tough shit, that's how things work when you're dealing with dangerous stuff. I fully believe nuclear can be a safe technology. But it's only safe when everything is done by the rules, and there are inspectors for everything.

doctor_eval 4y ago

I didn’t read the whole article and honestly I’m not qualified to even comment about the materiality of it, but it certainly reminded me of Bob Metcalfe saying, quite loudly, that the internet was going to “catastrophically collapse” in 1996 or he would “eat his words”[0]. This is the guy who invented Ethernet, who knew in great technical detail what he was talking about. But just like the internet in 1996, I’m sure there are plenty of people in the industry who can also foresee what problems there are going to be with renewables - and an increasingly large number of those people have jobs that depend on solving them. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Metcalfe#Web_predictions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Metcalfe#Web_prediction...

pjc50 4y ago
Does anyone recall why he said that? There was also a lot of y2k doomerism and a lot of work put into preventing it.
- wil421 4y ago
  Best I could find.[1] I think he had valid concerns that still plague us today. He was a little too far on the doom and gloom side. >Metcalfe offered several reasons for the collapse. For example, he believed that the internet’s crucial data links would be overloaded, and the “naïve flat-rate business model is incapable of financing the new capacity it would need to serve continued growth”. He contended that investor’s would be unwilling to “absorb projected continuing losses”. He thought that “another series of major security breaches will drive the rest of the productive Internet to safety and out of reach.” Yet, he was incorrect, and internet continued to grow exponentially in 1996. [1]https://quoteinvestigator.com/2020/03/09/collapse/?amp=1 https://quoteinvestigator.com/2020/03/09/collapse/?amp=1
  - badcppdev 4y ago
    So perhaps the investors who lost everything in the .com boom and bust absorbed the cost of upgrading the data links even though they did it unintentionally? I've never looked at a breakdown of the .com market around that time with any sort of estimate about how much investor "wealth" was lost during the bust phase.

Certhas 4y ago

There is a lot of research on exactly the supposedly overlooked problems. This article doesn't even name check the heavily researched solutions to low inertia in power grids. The term "grid forming" (including quotes) has 10.000 hits on google scholar. In summary, this is just another anti renewables "I know better than all the experts" blog post. Edit: If it turns out that we need conventional types of inertia and new technologies do not suffice we can use synchronous condensers. It will increase cost, but so will using nuclear.

pjc50 4y ago
> this is just another anti renewables "I know better than all the experts" blog post https://judithcurry.com/about/ https://judithcurry.com/about/ "Interview with Ron Paul" "Interview with Tucker Carlson (Fox News)" "Interview with John Stossel (Fox News)" Impressive list of disqualifications there.
- boringg 4y ago
  If you had a good idea that you wanted to get traction instead of trying to make money on some opinion you would realize that going through that set of interviewers means you lost your credibility to the majority of people who are critical thinkers. 'Impressive list of disqualifications there.' < couldn't be truer.
  - pjc50 4y ago
    One of the sentences I've read that stuck with me for years is "Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance", from https://blog.danieldavies.com/2004_05_23_d-squareddigest_archive.html https://blog.danieldavies.com/2004_05_23_d-squareddigest_arc...
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  https://www.desmog.com/judith-curry/ https://www.desmog.com/judith-curry/ > Judith Curry resigned from her position at Georgia Tech on January 1, 2017, citing the “craziness” of climate science ... > Judith Curry wrote on her blog Climate Etc. that her views on climate change are best summarized by her Congressional Testimony on the President’s Climate Action Plan: [6], [7] > “Recent data and research supports the importance of natural climate variability and calls into question the conclusion that humans are the dominant cause of recent climate change: > – The hiatus in global warming since 1998 – Reduced estimates of the sensitivity of climate to carbon dioxide – Climate models predict much more warming than has been observed in the early 21st century”

jnsaff2 4y ago

I'm sure their premise that academics study something in isolation and extrapolate possibilities from there is problematic. But the author also focuses on papers that study 100% renewables grid. I find it pretty annoying that people want to scuttle the first 80% renewable grid because of the problems of the last 5%. Smells like good old fossil FUD.

mangecoeur 4y ago

I'm sitting in an energy system modelling conference, I can reach out and touch a dozen people who know and care an awful lot about grid stability and various solutions.