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Yeah, there’s a lot of exaggeration, but the kernel of truth is that margins in energy generation are thin and it only takes a small shift away from ideal condi

by jl6 1y ago

Yeah, there’s a lot of exaggeration, but the kernel of truth is that margins in energy generation are thin and it only takes a small shift away from ideal conditions to make gas the cheaper option. Renewables+storage has to work in the bad times as well as the good.

zippothrowaway 1y ago
Read the transcript. "...the sunny places, think about Muscat in Oman, or Las Vegas in the US or Johannesburg in South Africa. So places like that get more than 90% of the way to 1 GW constant electricity with those cloudy days. In a place like Washington or Madrid, you're in the high 80s. So 88% in Madrid, if I remember correctly. And then for Washington, it would be somewhere there as well. And then if you have the bad luck to be stuck in Birmingham, in the UK. That's a cloudy place. And you barely have, like, two very, very sunny months, like in the middle of the year in summer when it's actually, it is actually sunny. Most of the time it's various degrees of cloudy. So even there you have more than 60% of the way to 24/365" So it's not as big as a drop-off as you might think with solar+battery. And that's not accounting for wind being a much better performer in the UK.
Guid_NewGuid 1y ago
That's fair and it was less a dig at the specific comment than the overall trend of American fatalism that can be summed up as "a new thing can't possibly work because we live in a weather torment nexus". While the point that the benchmark favours CA is reasonable what about the other 10+ states on California's latitude? Even as far North as New York is equivalent latitude to Madrid. I just struggle to believe the desert of Nevada for instance or Texas isn't also viable for solar. Plus those states have the advantage of not having California's crumbling transmission infrastructure (though even worse for Texas from what I understand) or anti-building regulatory regime. This strand of American pessimism seems to only ever lean one way, to ignore lessons from other countries and to oppose new tech. What would be favourable for that cost curve is not putting tarrifs on Chinese subsidised panels and this fatalism leeches energy from that consensus. When the tech is cheap enough to slap anywhere the optimal deployment is less important and why not make the most of China's 'blunder' with these below cost panels.

by jl6 1y ago

zippothrowaway 1y ago

Read the transcript. "...the sunny places, think about Muscat in Oman, or Las Vegas in the US or Johannesburg in South Africa. So places like that get more than 90% of the way to 1 GW constant electricity with those cloudy days. In a place like Washington or Madrid, you're in the high 80s. So 88% in Madrid, if I remember correctly. And then for Washington, it would be somewhere there as well. And then if you have the bad luck to be stuck in Birmingham, in the UK. That's a cloudy place. And you barely have, like, two very, very sunny months, like in the middle of the year in summer when it's actually, it is actually sunny. Most of the time it's various degrees of cloudy. So even there you have more than 60% of the way to 24/365" So it's not as big as a drop-off as you might think with solar+battery. And that's not accounting for wind being a much better performer in the UK.

Guid_NewGuid 1y ago

That's fair and it was less a dig at the specific comment than the overall trend of American fatalism that can be summed up as "a new thing can't possibly work because we live in a weather torment nexus". While the point that the benchmark favours CA is reasonable what about the other 10+ states on California's latitude? Even as far North as New York is equivalent latitude to Madrid. I just struggle to believe the desert of Nevada for instance or Texas isn't also viable for solar. Plus those states have the advantage of not having California's crumbling transmission infrastructure (though even worse for Texas from what I understand) or anti-building regulatory regime. This strand of American pessimism seems to only ever lean one way, to ignore lessons from other countries and to oppose new tech. What would be favourable for that cost curve is not putting tarrifs on Chinese subsidised panels and this fatalism leeches energy from that consensus. When the tech is cheap enough to slap anywhere the optimal deployment is less important and why not make the most of China's 'blunder' with these below cost panels.