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Because solar and wind renewables are intermitent, and the factual reality of energy prices and grid stability in every fucking place of earth that went all in

Because solar and wind renewables are intermitent, and the factual reality of energy prices and grid stability in every fucking place of earth that went all in into renewables trumps the all the wishful thinking of the the rent seeking renewable energy industry. The reality nowadays is that for every single GW of renewable capacity generation you forcibly have to have another GW of dispatchable generation, usually natural gas, it is also inescapable that renewables, especially solar, displace baseload generation, reducing its ROI while not eliminating its fixed costs, making energy as a whole more expensive. Most people have no fucking idea of how electric power generation and distribution and are easy to be mistified with bullshit accounting concepts such as LCOE. But what matter is the total SYSTEM-WIDE cost of energy. And there is not a single place in the world where widespread adoption of intermitent non-dispatchable power sources haven't absurdly increased the final costs of electricity for the customers. Of course, lots of people are making a lot of money out of that, a lot of talking heads have their careers based on that and they will say otherwise. So, just move to germany, california, UK or south Australia, enjoy your expensive electric bills, and stop worrying and learn to love increasingly frequent blackouts. It is not that intermitent renewables are useless and can't be a part of the grid under some constraints. Also, if you have enough hydro-power potential, go ahead. But otherwise, unless you come up with a magic storage solution, solar and wind can't replace nuclear and thermal more than for a small percentage. And while we are at that, solar in a northern european country is a particularly dumb idea.

pfdietz 2y ago
Yes, renewables are intermittent, but the storage needed to deal with this is rapidly becoming cheaper. No natural gas is needed, although the last few percent of storage shouldn't be batteries. Burning hydrogen in turbines would work, and that can be sourced renewably. Nuclear is so out of the running economically that even with the (rapidly falling) cost of dealing with intermittency, renewables come out ahead.
- elzbardico 2y ago
  > Nuclear is so out of the running economically that even with the (rapidly falling) cost of dealing with intermittency, renewables come out ahead. Only if you do the funny math of LCOE. Because in the real world, in terms of system wide costs, this is laughable opposite to reality. More intermitent renewables -> Higher electricity bills, more grid instability. And no, storage costs are not even close to be economically viable. The biggest battery systems are able at most to cover the demand of a metropolitan area for a few hours by themselves. What you do in the winter on moderate to higher latitudes with fewer hours of daylight and the sun down in the horizon with very few wind?
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    No, the funny math is typically from the nuclear advocates. A usual bit of dishonesty you see from them is computing the cost of firming intermittent sources by assuming batteries are the only storage used. This massively inflates the cost, since batteries are unsuited for certain storage use cases (rare correlated outages, seasonal storage) for which there are other, cheaper options. They can massively inflate the cost by doing this kind of strawman engineering. Nuclear bros lap up the numbers produced by this sort of fraud and repeat them unquestioned. Careful analysis using all the options for dealing with intermittency (storage is not even close to #1) reveals that renewables are very affordable. But anyway: if nuclear really is so much better, it doesn't need subsidy. So let's let them compete head on. I don't think nuclear can survive if that happens though, since no unsubsidized nuclear power plant has ever been built, anywhere, selling into a competitive market. The whining about nuclear opposition eventually boils down to complaint that nuclear isn't being given the massive public subsidy it would need to get anyone to actually choose to build it.
    - elzbardico 2y ago
      Again. The real world. Tell me how how much bills have been lowered in California, Germany and the UK.
      - pfdietz 2y ago
        Tell me about how China installed two orders of magnitude more renewables than nuclear last year.

pfdietz 2y ago

Yes, renewables are intermittent, but the storage needed to deal with this is rapidly becoming cheaper. No natural gas is needed, although the last few percent of storage shouldn't be batteries. Burning hydrogen in turbines would work, and that can be sourced renewably. Nuclear is so out of the running economically that even with the (rapidly falling) cost of dealing with intermittency, renewables come out ahead.

elzbardico 2y ago
> Nuclear is so out of the running economically that even with the (rapidly falling) cost of dealing with intermittency, renewables come out ahead. Only if you do the funny math of LCOE. Because in the real world, in terms of system wide costs, this is laughable opposite to reality. More intermitent renewables -> Higher electricity bills, more grid instability. And no, storage costs are not even close to be economically viable. The biggest battery systems are able at most to cover the demand of a metropolitan area for a few hours by themselves. What you do in the winter on moderate to higher latitudes with fewer hours of daylight and the sun down in the horizon with very few wind?
- pfdietz 2y ago
  No, the funny math is typically from the nuclear advocates. A usual bit of dishonesty you see from them is computing the cost of firming intermittent sources by assuming batteries are the only storage used. This massively inflates the cost, since batteries are unsuited for certain storage use cases (rare correlated outages, seasonal storage) for which there are other, cheaper options. They can massively inflate the cost by doing this kind of strawman engineering. Nuclear bros lap up the numbers produced by this sort of fraud and repeat them unquestioned. Careful analysis using all the options for dealing with intermittency (storage is not even close to #1) reveals that renewables are very affordable. But anyway: if nuclear really is so much better, it doesn't need subsidy. So let's let them compete head on. I don't think nuclear can survive if that happens though, since no unsubsidized nuclear power plant has ever been built, anywhere, selling into a competitive market. The whining about nuclear opposition eventually boils down to complaint that nuclear isn't being given the massive public subsidy it would need to get anyone to actually choose to build it.
  - elzbardico 2y ago
    Again. The real world. Tell me how how much bills have been lowered in California, Germany and the UK.
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      Tell me about how China installed two orders of magnitude more renewables than nuclear last year.