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Amid explosive demand, America is running out of power
- 1oag 3y agoThe same can be said about WATER and how little or clean drinking water is available.. If Nuke firms needs tons of water where is the water going to come from which already is scarce.. NOW! While I'm at it.. get rid of all mobile devices which literally suck energy.. kill off streaming and go back to landlines/cable TV. :-O See, the problems are too vast to say one solution is better than the other but yet here we are.. Go figure but I'm not.. For starters, I know how to cook without electricity and I dont depend on a mobile device.. Small things we'll need to know and learn when we don't have electricity anymore..
- infecto 3y agoWhat is with the explosion of these manic sounding doomers? I appreciate conservation and am thoughtful of my use of resources but holy heck, these folks are pretty set on a lifestyle that we only read about in sci-fi books. While nuclear generation plants do create waste, I was under the impression that most modern designs do a pretty decent job of recycling water that is contaminated or not having contaminated water to begin with so cooling water just gets ejected back out?
- h2odragon 3y agohttps://archive.ph/xbA0V https://archive.ph/xbA0V
- h2odragon 3y agoWe don't all even have our electric cars and at home quick chargers yet. The electric utilities have been singing "We need more generation capacity" for a couple decades.
- thelastgallon 3y agoEVs provide flexible demand, they are parked 22 hours+ a day, can charge whenever power is negative (which happens 100s of millions of times/year) or power is zero. Right now, there is excess production from renewables, which is wasted. EVs can absorb all that. We don't need quick chargers at home, unless you mean 240V chargers? Which is in some of the countries with 110V/120V. We don't need more generation capacity. Utilities are keen on increasing costs, their profits are a percentage of cost, there is a nexus between generation, transmission and distribution companies to keep adding capacity. This was pointed out by many commenters, a recent out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39487714 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39487714 Energy demand will down with EVs and renewables: https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/iea-energy-scenarios https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/iea-energy-scenari... Whats needed is demand response. But utilities won't do it, because it won't increase their profits.
- quantified 3y agoHow does the amount of energy necessary to recharge the vehicles compare to the amount of energy required to run the additional industry?
- mschuster91 3y agoThe idea is to a) use V2G vehicles over a day / night cycle to "buffer out" gaps from renewables and b) incentivize high-demand consumers during low-production times to shut down by the power of the free market. Point a) has already been explained by GP, but b) is the interesting one. Right now there's barely any incentive for large consumers such as aluminium smelters to shut down or limit consumption during the night (where there is no solar energy), the only incentive these kind of consumers get is a premium for short-term load shedding. We would, as a society, need far less of generation capacity buildout if we can get the large consumers to drastically reduce their consumption at night.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoBut don’t we want them running at night today vs during the day when more power is used. Scheduling those work shifts at the smelter is going to be annoying. “Sorry Bob, the power market is spiking now, you’ll need to come in 8 hours later to start your shift.” We can solve this problem simply by closing all our plants and importing more aluminum from Japan.
- mschuster91 3y agoSure but you can predict that there will be no solar power available at night.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoWe can also predict that higher AC use correlates with more solar power.
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- bryanlarsen 3y agoElectric cars will take ~30 years to transition (~10 years before almost all new cars are electric, and then another 20 years before the old cars are off the road). They will increase electrical demand by 20% over 30 years, or under 1% a year increase to demand. The US increases its generating capacity by about 4% per year. (50GW added per year, 1.3TW total). EV's are a very small part of demand increase.
- foobarian 3y agoThe other day I was at a Target parking lot plugging in the EV at an island of about 6 superchargers. I looked over the rest of the parking lot at hundreds of ICE cars and it just struck me that getting the whole fleet electrified has got to be a substantial power demand increase, but maybe not. Which raises the question, what the heck is all the power being used for? :-)
- bryanlarsen 3y agoThe easy answer is bitcoin, AI & data centers. Those are noticeable because they're new. That's some of it, but AFAICT it is mostly air conditioning. Hotter days with more places being conditioned.
- luch 3y agoI don't think so, the adoption rate has done nothing accelerating since WWII. Once EV will be mainstream enough the switch will probably be quite brutal. I don't think it is economically viable to maintain two sets of power distribution (electricity and petrol) at the same time so countries will probably "push out" traditionnal petrol stations once they think EV distribution is okay enough
- Georgelemental 3y ago50 years ago yesterday, French Prime Minister Pierre Messmer announced an ambitious plan to build 13 nuclear power plants to fulfill most of the country's energy needs: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Messmer_Plan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#Mess... Time for America to do the same?
- 1oag 3y agoTHE USA hates to think outside the box especially for long term planning..
- bryanlarsen 3y agoGood idea 20 years ago. Announcing a program that'll solve the problem in 20 years won't solve today's problems.
- andruby 3y agotrue, but that's the short-term thinking that gets us here
- vianneychevalie 3y agoAt least in France we’ve been saying that for 8 years. The second best time to plant a tree is now.
- bryanlarsen 3y agoGigawatt scale solar installations can and have been built in under 2 years in the US.
- falserum 3y agohttps://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/nuclear-construction-time https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/nuclear-constructi... > It takes around 6 to 8 years to build a nuclear reactor. (Note: There is no data on planning part though; not so easy to methodically measure probably) Point still valid, but 20 years seems excessively pessimistic.
- grw_ 3y agoGreat news- if you're a fan of Nassim Taleb: "I've seen gluts not followed by shortages, but I've never seen a shortage not followed by a glut."
- 2devnull 3y agoAlready priced in. That’s the problem with Taleb. His insight is not actionable.
- whiterknight 3y agoIf it’s giving you true insight into how something works, then how is that not valuable? Are you suggesting everyone already knows it?
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoYes, but knowing what everyone knows is also knowledge. Being an economist is hard like that.
- diab0lic 3y agoI have no take on whether or not this specific situation is priced in or not. However I’d challenge you on the second comment. I’ve found Taleb’s advice very actionable but it did take a lot of thinking about it to move from abstract thoughts into practice.
- peteradio 3y agoYou've read infinite jest now try infinite jackass the story of a man with a stupid name and a single note to play.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- stuff4ben 3y agoThis is an easily solvable problem. Make crypto-bros subsidize the electric generation they consume. Levy a tax on bitcoin mining and use that to build more power stations.
- infecto 3y agoI don't think cryptos serve any use at the current moment but this comment is out of touch with reality.
- pavlov 3y agoWhy not levy a tax on Bitcoin transactions in general, including the new ETFs? All Bitcoin was generated through energy waste. Taxing it over its lifetime will reduce incentives to continue producing it.
- spacewrangler 3y agoWho determines what is "waste" ?
- falserum 3y agoI guess dictionary is a good start. > noun 1. an act or instance of using or expending something carelessly, extravagantly, or to no purpose.
- quirk 3y agoPeople who live in glass houses, and black kettles.
- pavlov 3y agoThe same people who determine what actions are “crime”, who gets to be “married”, what’s “pollution”, and so on. (See? The scare quotes apply to literally everything in society.) In a typical democracy, those people are legislators, courts, and government agencies tasked with oversight.
- staringback 3y ago
- mistrial9 3y agofat people demand donuts
- agentultra 3y agoA source of the increasing demand are data-centres scaling up for AI (machine learning) workloads... and crypto mining is still happening I guess. They're also sucking up a lot of fresh water for these tasks. I'm curious how significant this portion of the demand is. If it's big enough, maybe start making those companies pay for these externalities they're forcing on the rest of society. Though for other industrial uses... does the U.S. have a plan for SMR research and policies for deploying them when the tech is ready? I'm a bit ignorant on that one. I know Canada has been making moves in that direction.
- quirk 3y agoExternality of energy consumption? I'm pretty sure they are already paying for that. Or are you saying they should pay more per KWh than some other user for some reason? As for SMRs my guess is that local regulators will be the first hurdles to overcome. Cities and states will either embrace or reject the risk/reward there. I know the DOE approved one last year at the national level.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- prirun 3y agoMy small city of 50K is soon to be home to an $800M 700K sq ft Meta data center that will employ 100 people. I don't think the planners involved in these deals care much about risks, like the power company might have to petition the state regulator to increase rates for everyone so they can build a new power plant to satisfy demand. IMO they are only focused on the reward part. > Or are you saying they should pay more per KWh than some other user for some reason? I just checked, and residential electricity users pay more than commercial or industrial users: "Residential Sector: The average price is approximately 17.08 cents per kWh. Commercial Sector: The average price is around 13.10 cents per kWh. Industrial Sector: The average price is about 9.47 cents per kWh." https://shrinkthatfootprint.com/commercial-vs-residential-el https://shrinkthatfootprint.com/commercial-vs-residential-el... The good thing about a data center is at least with fewer employees, there isn't a huge pressure to build new housing and schools.
- jeffbee 3y agoAnother article that misrepresents the situation with hyperscale datacenters. They are concentrating loads into extremely efficient cloud facilities, which shifts a lot of energy from one column to another in EIA's reports. It used to be if you had a 100kW corporate datacenter with a PUE of 3.0 and a cost utilization of 1%, that was counted under "commercial buildings" or "office". With those workloads now running in PUE 1.1 datacenters where the cost utilization is 80%+, the true situation is much better, but the energy use is in another column.