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Sorry but you can't have EVs everywhere, WA and CA banning natural gas for heat and cooking, WA and OR sabotaging hydro plant output for salmon habitat restorat

Sorry but you can't have EVs everywhere, WA and CA banning natural gas for heat and cooking, WA and OR sabotaging hydro plant output for salmon habitat restoration, while shutting down your most reliable sources of power. The math does not add up. Solar and wind output is not constant or reliable. NIMBYs sabotaged nuclear years ago. It takes how many years to bring a new plant online? A lot of feel-good rules and regs were passed, pushing a massive shift to electric power, with no consideration as to where the additional power would come from. You can't wave your arms like a Peanuts cartoon and have all that extra power appear, which is the logic that was used in passing many of these impractical regulations.

reactordev 2mo ago
Solar and wind is extremely reliable. What isn’t reliable is deployment of it. Energy storage is required along with solar farms.
- sippingabonedry 2mo ago
  Until the sun goes down at night or the wind stops blowing. You ignored the word "output". > Energy storage is required along with solar farms How many batteries are we going to need for that? They literally just figured out how to get the child slaves in the Congo out of the supply chain with a shift to LFP.
  - WarmWash 2mo ago
    Enough to store the energy between gaps, plus a buffer? Batteries aren't exactly made from gold. Grid scale batteries especially, where weight and size doesn't matter as much, are totally viable on a mass scale.
  - Propelloni 2mo ago
    Fear really IS the mindkiller! Stop being afraid and start educating yourself. You are on HN, you are supposed to be smart.
    - sippingabonedry 2mo ago
      Smart people understand pragmatism, which means not throwing the baby out with the bath water in the name of ill thought-out feel-good measures.
      - harimau777 2mo ago
        That is literally what you are doing right now.
      - rainsford 2mo ago
        You're not being pragmatic, you're being myopic. Our current energy systems are the result of deliberate complex work. It seems shortsighted to think it's somehow the only system that can ever be built just because other systems have new challenges to overcome.
  - outside1234 2mo ago
    Fox brain alert! We have batteries for this. See Texas and California.
  - watwut 2mo ago
    This gets tiring. No, china has no electricity problem in the night and their share of solar is off the roof.
  - alexgieg 2mo ago
    There are technologies for battery storage that don't look like batteries. Thermal energy storage is an example. It consists of heating something very big that holds a lot of heat and releases it slowly, then using that stored heat to generate electricity while it cools down. This isn't suitable for home use, but at the city scale, or larger, it's quite efficient: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy_storage
    - blooalien 2mo ago
      > There are technologies for battery storage that don't look like batteries. Thermal energy storage is an example. Yeah, there's also pumped water storage, and other forms of gravity/kinetic storage, various means of chemical energy storage, and all kinda other neat battery-like ideas folks have been trying/using.
      - aaronmdjones 2mo ago
        The UK has Dinorwig power station, a pumped hydro station capable of storing over 9 GWh of energy. This alone rivals the entire combined 10.5 GWh of battery storage across the whole country. It certainly seems much more feasible when you have the terrain to allow it.
  - UncleMeat 2mo ago
    Oh yes, as opposed to the famously free from abuse oil and gas industry.
jsbisviewtiful 2mo ago
What an opinion to have when thus far evidence has concluded the opposite. Just because funding for the infrastructure keeps getting derailed, delayed and lied about by bad actors doesn’t make the anti-renewable parrots correct. There are situations where —at minimum- hybrid solutions are far more viable options but for many locations just those two solutions work very well.
- sippingabonedry 2mo ago
  > Just because funding for the infrastructure keeps getting derailed, delayed and lied about by bad actors Speaking of infrastructure, how about pushing a mass rollout of EVs before giving a single consideration as to where the charging infra would come from?
  - piva00 2mo ago
    Charging infra would only exist if there's demand for it, if you have a better solution for this catch-22 I'm all ears. Though it looks like rolling out EVs before the charging network existed worked, there are thousands upon thousands of chargers now that there are enough vehicles to use them.
  - rainsford 2mo ago
    That seems like a pretty bad example considering the rising popularity of EVs has coincided with an enormous grown in available charging infrastructure to service the EV customer base. It's almost like human society can handle complex, interdependent systems as they change, either through deliberate organization or natural market incentives. It's not like the current mix of electrical generation and fossil fuel distribution is some naturally occurring phenomenon or alien technology. It's an enormously complex and interdependent system we built. I'm pretty confident we can build new and different things.
  - wat10000 2mo ago
    Are you from the past?
mbgerring 2mo ago
> the math doesn’t add up There’s no way for you to know that. You don’t do the math. People like me, who work in the clean energy industry, do the math. The math works fine. You should try working as hard as the math does, instead of complaining.
toast0 2mo ago
> WA and OR sabotaging hydro plant output for salmon habitat restoration, while shutting down your most reliable sources of power. Have a closer look at the hydro dams that have been removed for salmon habitat. From what I've seen capacity was tens of MegaWatts [1] and some were just for irrigation. Meanwhile, large dams [2] are doing gigawatts. Large dams also have negative environmental effects and maybe one day they'll get removed too, but accepting the tradeoff for large amounts of power makes more sense than destroying samon fishing to get irrigation water or a piddly amount of power. Especially at a time when electrical power use was trending down due to efficiency gains and offshoring manufacturing, and samon fisheries were in danger of failing, it made sense to remove dams that weren't terribly productive. And start considering actually doing the work to make the larger dams fish friendly, eventually. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20161221064310/http://www.water.ca.gov/fishpassage/docs/dams/dams.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20161221064310/http://www.water.... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Coulee_Dam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Coulee_Dam
lemmetellya 2mo ago
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reactordev 2mo ago

Solar and wind is extremely reliable. What isn’t reliable is deployment of it. Energy storage is required along with solar farms.

sippingabonedry 2mo ago
Until the sun goes down at night or the wind stops blowing. You ignored the word "output". > Energy storage is required along with solar farms How many batteries are we going to need for that? They literally just figured out how to get the child slaves in the Congo out of the supply chain with a shift to LFP.
- WarmWash 2mo ago
  Enough to store the energy between gaps, plus a buffer? Batteries aren't exactly made from gold. Grid scale batteries especially, where weight and size doesn't matter as much, are totally viable on a mass scale.
- Propelloni 2mo ago
  Fear really IS the mindkiller! Stop being afraid and start educating yourself. You are on HN, you are supposed to be smart.
  - sippingabonedry 2mo ago
    Smart people understand pragmatism, which means not throwing the baby out with the bath water in the name of ill thought-out feel-good measures.
    - harimau777 2mo ago
      That is literally what you are doing right now.
    - rainsford 2mo ago
      You're not being pragmatic, you're being myopic. Our current energy systems are the result of deliberate complex work. It seems shortsighted to think it's somehow the only system that can ever be built just because other systems have new challenges to overcome.
- outside1234 2mo ago
  Fox brain alert! We have batteries for this. See Texas and California.
- watwut 2mo ago
  This gets tiring. No, china has no electricity problem in the night and their share of solar is off the roof.
- alexgieg 2mo ago
  There are technologies for battery storage that don't look like batteries. Thermal energy storage is an example. It consists of heating something very big that holds a lot of heat and releases it slowly, then using that stored heat to generate electricity while it cools down. This isn't suitable for home use, but at the city scale, or larger, it's quite efficient: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy_storage
  - blooalien 2mo ago
    > There are technologies for battery storage that don't look like batteries. Thermal energy storage is an example. Yeah, there's also pumped water storage, and other forms of gravity/kinetic storage, various means of chemical energy storage, and all kinda other neat battery-like ideas folks have been trying/using.
    - aaronmdjones 2mo ago
      The UK has Dinorwig power station, a pumped hydro station capable of storing over 9 GWh of energy. This alone rivals the entire combined 10.5 GWh of battery storage across the whole country. It certainly seems much more feasible when you have the terrain to allow it.
- UncleMeat 2mo ago
  Oh yes, as opposed to the famously free from abuse oil and gas industry.

jsbisviewtiful 2mo ago

What an opinion to have when thus far evidence has concluded the opposite. Just because funding for the infrastructure keeps getting derailed, delayed and lied about by bad actors doesn’t make the anti-renewable parrots correct. There are situations where —at minimum- hybrid solutions are far more viable options but for many locations just those two solutions work very well.

sippingabonedry 2mo ago
> Just because funding for the infrastructure keeps getting derailed, delayed and lied about by bad actors Speaking of infrastructure, how about pushing a mass rollout of EVs before giving a single consideration as to where the charging infra would come from?
- piva00 2mo ago
  Charging infra would only exist if there's demand for it, if you have a better solution for this catch-22 I'm all ears. Though it looks like rolling out EVs before the charging network existed worked, there are thousands upon thousands of chargers now that there are enough vehicles to use them.
- rainsford 2mo ago
  That seems like a pretty bad example considering the rising popularity of EVs has coincided with an enormous grown in available charging infrastructure to service the EV customer base. It's almost like human society can handle complex, interdependent systems as they change, either through deliberate organization or natural market incentives. It's not like the current mix of electrical generation and fossil fuel distribution is some naturally occurring phenomenon or alien technology. It's an enormously complex and interdependent system we built. I'm pretty confident we can build new and different things.
- wat10000 2mo ago
  Are you from the past?

mbgerring 2mo ago

> the math doesn’t add up There’s no way for you to know that. You don’t do the math. People like me, who work in the clean energy industry, do the math. The math works fine. You should try working as hard as the math does, instead of complaining.

toast0 2mo ago

> WA and OR sabotaging hydro plant output for salmon habitat restoration, while shutting down your most reliable sources of power. Have a closer look at the hydro dams that have been removed for salmon habitat. From what I've seen capacity was tens of MegaWatts [1] and some were just for irrigation. Meanwhile, large dams [2] are doing gigawatts. Large dams also have negative environmental effects and maybe one day they'll get removed too, but accepting the tradeoff for large amounts of power makes more sense than destroying samon fishing to get irrigation water or a piddly amount of power. Especially at a time when electrical power use was trending down due to efficiency gains and offshoring manufacturing, and samon fisheries were in danger of failing, it made sense to remove dams that weren't terribly productive. And start considering actually doing the work to make the larger dams fish friendly, eventually. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20161221064310/http://www.water.ca.gov/fishpassage/docs/dams/dams.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20161221064310/http://www.water.... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Coulee_Dam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Coulee_Dam

lemmetellya 2mo ago

[dead]