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doverhog posted:Do you think once the effects of climate change really start to hit, it will have a revival? Probably not, at that point it will be too late. Who are we kidding it's already too late. This is part of why renewables, storage, demand response and curtailment are increasingly the most viable answer. Regardless of future actions right now we can online more renewables and do it cheaper and faster. So maybe there will be a role once renewable penetration is so high that ancillary services make nuclear competitive.
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Sep 9, 2018 08:08
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Pander posted:None of that happens of the US doesn't nationalize the energy market. The capital requirements and risks for nuclear essentially preclude private investment. Republicans have no incentive to push nuclear over gas, and Democrats have no desire or stomach to reduce industrial regulation in ways that'd ease capital risk/requirements. If you literally tax coal and gas out of the market then utilities will build nuclear with gritted teeth because what else are they going to do for the baseload part of the grid? More broadly the SMR push is about making nuclear more capitalism friendly by reducing upfront cost and time until the investment pays for itself. I doubt it'll be enough to displace fossil fuels without any carbon tax/zero carbon subsidy but it might make enough of a dent to show the idea is viable and make it politically easier to get subsidised at that point because congresscritters can just shift pork from the local coal company to the local nuke company. Trabisnikof posted:This is part of why renewables, storage, demand response and curtailment are increasingly the most viable answer. Regardless of future actions right now we can online more renewables and do it cheaper and faster. So maybe there will be a role once renewable penetration is so high that ancillary services make nuclear competitive. We, uh, tried that in Germany and it's failing hilariously. There were failed attempts to build peaking gas power plants to buffer out wind (the utilities started dropping the things like a hot potato within the year because they turned out to be insufficiently profitable and nobody wanted to pay to keep them open in our deregulated electricity markets) and also tried to put hydro in increasingly ambitious locations (it turned out that 1. NIMBYs and greens hate any kind of large infrastructure, not just nuclear power plants and 2. we've forgotten how to build any kind of large infrastructure project on time and on budget, not just nuclear power plants). There is a current attempt to finally build some North/South grid lines to at least make minimally better use of offshore wind but those are also going to take a decade to build, additionally they also keep getting stalled out due to NIMBYs and will cost billions in government spending, so they're not exactly more capitalism friendly than reactors. Except in special cases like Norway where you can build a hydro dam for every lone farmhouse, either the government is willing to spend literal boatloads of money and push opposition out of the way, or zero/low carbon sources will not be more than ~ 1/3 of electricity in any meaningful time frame, regardless of whether you're trying to build the existing large reactor types or renewables. Renewables becoming cheaper might mean that 1/3 happens faster, which is good by itself, but won't push that 1/3 to say 3/4. suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 08:35 on Sep 9, 2018 |
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Sep 9, 2018 08:30
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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suck my woke dick posted:(it turned out that 1. NIMBYs and greens hate any kind of large infrastructure, not just nuclear power plants and 2. we've forgotten how to build any kind of large infrastructure project on time and on budget, not just nuclear power plants). Therefore to say that we can't build nuclear power to solve climate change because of the economics of it, is to more or less completely miss the point. The economics of climate change *is* the problem. StabbinHobo fucked around with this message at 16:17 on Sep 9, 2018 |
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Sep 9, 2018 16:15
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Nobody's going to tax gas. Democrats won't, it's seen as "clean" compared to coal. The only thing they could try is restricting fracking, but I think that genie's out of the bottle already, and they'd lose lawsuits trying to prohibit it on a statewide basis. If you want an instructive lesson, look at California. By far, it is the most environmentally conscious state, and nuclear is fading there. Even if San onofre didn't get hosed by a mechanical failure, they'd still be rooting for closure because there is a fundamental disconnect between liberal environmentalism and promoting nuclear viability. Leftists who would push economic policities to specifically support nuclear are very few and far between, and are generally ignored. And trying to find common ground with conservative nuclear supporters results in poison pills. It's not like they don't ALSO want to see coal and gas supported, and would push nuclear just for the corporate economic benefits, not environmental.
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Sep 9, 2018 16:56
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Pander posted:Nobody's going to tax gas. Democrats won't, it's seen as "clean" compared to coal. The only thing they could try is restricting fracking, but I think that genie's out of the bottle already, and they'd lose lawsuits trying to prohibit it on a statewide basis. I agree, this ignorance and baseless fear of modern technology is a problem we need to address.
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Sep 9, 2018 18:44
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Pander posted:Nobody's going to tax gas. Democrats won't, it's seen as "clean" compared to coal. The only thing they could try is restricting fracking, but I think that genie's out of the bottle already, and they'd lose lawsuits trying to prohibit it on a statewide basis. Self-described liberal environmentalists are also against other useful things such as GMOs, so Nevvy Z is right that Nevvy Z posted:this ignorance and baseless fear of modern technology is a problem we need to address. e: Finland also offers a real-world example of the green party unfucking itself and ceasing to be a bunch of Cold War-era fossils and young idiots who insist on wasting their time fighting the same counterproductive battle over and over again. Actual green party politicians asking for more reactors to be built makes me not totally lose my faith in humanity. suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Sep 9, 2018 |
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Sep 9, 2018 20:07
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Pander posted:Nobody's going to tax gas. Democrats won't, it's seen as "clean" compared to coal. The only thing they could try is restricting fracking, but I think that genie's out of the bottle already, and they'd lose lawsuits trying to prohibit it on a statewide basis. California shut down their nuclear plants because the big businesses didn’t want to pay to keep operating them rather than because of those darn liberal environmentalists. And Diablo Canyon will be replaced with 100% carbon neutral power, so you’re correct that California is a useful lesson about nuclear, but not for the reasons you claim.
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Sep 9, 2018 20:11
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Trabisnikof posted:Diablo Canyon will be replaced with 100% carbon neutral power [citation needed] [citation needed] for the other one too, since otherwise it's just creative accounting where people get to claim one project was clean while trying to ignore the other one. e: iirc, SONGS was initially promised to be replaced with carbon neutral sources too but that plan was quietly dropped suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Sep 9, 2018 |
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Sep 9, 2018 20:14
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suck my woke dick posted:[citation needed] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB1090
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Sep 9, 2018 20:29
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Trabisnikof posted:https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB1090 So it's basically a statement of intent which I fully expect will turn into "eh natural gas is good enough" and/or "let's just shuffle these already-planned renewables projects under the right heading so we're technically compliant" until proven otherwise, given how this poo poo has turned out in previous cases. e: and even if a serious effort did result in Diablo Canyon just about being replaced by zero carbon alternatives, that's still a loss because this stuff could have been rolled out in addition. suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Sep 9, 2018 |
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Sep 9, 2018 20:41
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Brown just signed SB100 which is:quote:SB100, includes an amendment to California’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS). An RPS is a regulatory standard requiring a certain amount of energy to come from renewable sources like solar and wind. Currently, the California’s RPS requires half of all electricity delivered by utilities to come from renewable sources of energy by 2030. So the theory will very much be put to the test. There are also provisions to prevent the outsourcing of emissions for those wondering.
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Sep 10, 2018 19:05
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Trabisnikof posted:Brown just signed SB100 which is: That sets targets. Are they any requirements to meet those targets? Are they any penalties that attach if those targets are not met?
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Sep 10, 2018 19:47
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Phanatic posted:That sets targets. And to follow up on that, California is connected to a grid that covers the Western US. Is there some sort of system in place to monitor how the electric markets operate and track it in real time? Or does it just have to be capacity on paper? Because I can guarantee you that the utilities will buy power from outside the state if the load warrants it (due to outages, or higher than forecasted demand), and real time markets don’t usually break down by carbon emission.
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Sep 10, 2018 21:40
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Orvin posted:And to follow up on that, California is connected to a grid that covers the Western US. Is there some sort of system in place to monitor how the electric markets operate and track it in real time? Or does it just have to be capacity on paper? Because I can guarantee you that the utilities will buy power from outside the state if the load warrants it (due to outages, or higher than forecasted demand), and real time markets don’t usually break down by carbon emission. In theory you could track it. In practice that just means randomly saying "oh sure all this current assigned to California is being traded from Bob's Clean Solar Co instead of Idaho Unified Coal And Smog. So there has to be enough on the total available grid that you can plausibly assign all the "clean sources" to California but there's still going to be current from the biggest polluting plants available going into the state. Because if California needs 5 billion units of power but the grid can only supply 3 billion under the specific constraints, then its clear not even the spirit of the regulation was adhered to.
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Sep 10, 2018 21:58
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Orvin posted:And to follow up on that, California is connected to a grid that covers the Western US. Is there some sort of system in place to monitor how the electric markets operate and track it in real time? Or does it just have to be capacity on paper? Because I can guarantee you that the utilities will buy power from outside the state if the load warrants it (due to outages, or higher than forecasted demand), and real time markets don’t usually break down by carbon emission. The California Air Resources Board and the California Public Utility Commission are relatively strong and well resourced for American regulators. They've already shown a track record of enforcing compliance on California's Investor Owned Utilities through the first RPS standard. SB100 is mostly an acceleration of existing frameworks. quote:Right now, much attention is focused on the 100 Percent Clean Energy Act of 2017 (“SB 100” for short). SB 100 would accelerate the state’s primary renewable energy program—the Renewables Portfolio Standard (RPS)—which was created to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and improve air quality. The RPS currently requires every utility in the state to source 50% of its electricity sales from renewables by 2030. To the specific question of how does it account for real time market, Californian utilities are already required to track the delivered mix to their customers to meet the existing RPS. So it is in terms of kilowatt-hours delivered to retail customers. So it averages out. sb100 posted:The California Renewables Portfolio Standard Program requires the PUC to establish a renewables portfolio standard requiring all retail sellers, as defined, to procure a minimum quantity of electricity products from eligible renewable energy resources, as defined, so that the total kilowatthours of those products sold to their retail end-use customers achieve 25% of retail sales by December 31, 2016, 33% by December 31, 2020, 40% by December 31, 2024, 45% by December 31, 2027, and 50% by December 31, 2030. The program additionally requires each local publicly owned electric utility, as defined, to procure a minimum quantity of electricity products from eligible renewable energy resources to achieve the procurement requirements established by the program. The Legislature has found and declared that its intent in implementing the program is to attain, among other targets for sale of eligible renewable resources, the target of 50% of total retail sales of electricity by December 31, 2030. And likewise, for out soucing emissions the bill orders the regulators to prevent that sb100 posted:This bill would state that it is the policy of the state that eligible renewable energy resources and zero-carbon resources supply 100% of retail sales of electricity to California end-use customers and 100% of electricity procured to serve all state agencies by December 31, 2045. The bill would require that the achievement of this policy for California not increase carbon emissions elsewhere in the western grid and that the achievement not allow resource shuffling. The bill would require the PUC and the Energy Commission, in consultation with the state board, to take steps to ensure that a transition to a zero-carbon electric system for the State of California does not cause or contribute to greenhouse gas emissions increases elsewhere in the western grid. The bill would require the PUC, Energy Commission, state board, and all other state agencies to incorporate that policy into all relevant planning. The bill would require the PUC, Energy Commission, state board, and all other state agencies to ensure actions taken in furtherance of these purposes achieve specified objectives. The bill would require the PUC, Energy Commission, and state board to utilize programs authorized under existing statutes to achieve that policy and, as part of a public process, issue a joint report to the Legislature by January 1, 2021, and every 4 years thereafter, that includes specified information relating to the implementation of the policy. That last part is what I mean when, by American standards, these Californian regulators actually some small teeth. Edit:Also it makes a difference between 60% renewables and the remaining 40% carbon neutral. Big hydro doesn't count as renewables so that's part of that 40% but that also leaves open the door for nuclear or CCS. Trabisnikof fucked around with this message at 00:15 on Sep 11, 2018 |
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Sep 11, 2018 00:13
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It’s all going to depend on how bad the fines are for violating parts of all that. At some point there will be shortage situations. Either load is higher than expected, or equipment failures during peak days will occur. Unless the fines are particularly nasty, the California utilities will buy “green” energy on paper from their neighbors. The reality will be that the neighbor will start some sort of peaking unit to replace the sold energy. That will be hard to track, and the alternative of rolling blackouts is going to be a really hard sell.
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Sep 11, 2018 02:00
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Orvin posted:It’s all going to depend on how bad the fines are for violating parts of all that. At some point there will be shortage situations. Either load is higher than expected, or equipment failures during peak days will occur. Unless the fines are particularly nasty, the California utilities will buy “green” energy on paper from their neighbors. The reality will be that the neighbor will start some sort of peaking unit to replace the sold energy. That will be hard to track, and the alternative of rolling blackouts is going to be a really hard sell. It's not hard to track. It's very easy to track what facilities were active at what times, it will be completely obvious that a peaker came up on the grid to service demand from California. Which is precisely why all the people involved know you can't really receive guaranteed clean power. There's plenty of "clean" power to buy between California and all the way up to the Yukon, all the way east to Nebraska and Texas, etc. In a pinch there's plenty of expensive "clean" power to buy over the HVDC connections into other interconnects.
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Sep 11, 2018 02:28
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Orvin posted:It’s all going to depend on how bad the fines are for violating parts of all that. At some point there will be shortage situations. Either load is higher than expected, or equipment failures during peak days will occur. Unless the fines are particularly nasty, the California utilities will buy “green” energy on paper from their neighbors. The reality will be that the neighbor will start some sort of peaking unit to replace the sold energy. That will be hard to track, and the alternative of rolling blackouts is going to be a really hard sell.
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Sep 11, 2018 18:36
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Test results are in on one of the thread's favorite idiotic ideas: Solar panels replaced tarmac on a motorway. Here are the results. quote:Four years ago a viral campaign wooed the world with a promise of fighting climate change and jump-starting the economy by replacing tarmac on the world’s roads with solar panels. The bold idea has undergone some road testing since then. The first results from preliminary studies have recently come out, and they’re a bit underwhelming. Who could possibly have guessed that solar roadways would be inefficient, prohibitively expensive, and utterly impractical?
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Sep 23, 2018 22:31
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Deteriorata posted:Test results are in on one of the thread's favorite idiotic ideas:  That's about 3x more expensive than nuclear even after cost overruns, with the capacity factor it's orders of magnitude more expensive.
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Sep 23, 2018 22:50
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lol surprise surprise, stupid idea turned out to be stupid
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Sep 23, 2018 23:51
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wait is that just the solar cost or the cost of the road too? roads cost ~six figures/lane-mile so if its more than six miles it could still be interesting.
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Sep 24, 2018 00:12
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StabbinHobo posted:wait is that just the solar cost or the cost of the road too? roads cost ~six figures/lane-mile so if its more than six miles it could still be interesting. It doesn't look like the road was created from scratch, just resurfaced with cells
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Sep 24, 2018 00:31
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StabbinHobo posted:wait is that just the solar cost or the cost of the road too? roads cost ~six figures/lane-mile so if its more than six miles it could still be interesting. The one in Tourouvre au Perche is 1km long. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/12/worlds-first-solar-road-opens-in-france/
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Sep 24, 2018 00:52
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QuarkJets posted:lol surprise surprise, stupid idea turned out to be stupid It's still important to try out ideas that are stupid on paper on the off-chance that something revolutionary is discovered, and to get people who support the idea to finally focus their efforts on supporting better ideas.
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Sep 24, 2018 01:11
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QuarkJets posted:lol surprise surprise, stupid idea turned out to be stupid I think we're testing a lane-mile or two of it around here too, but it being Texas we at least don't have to worry about the fancy-schmancy ice-melting gimmick.
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Sep 24, 2018 01:39
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qkkl posted:It's still important to try out ideas that are stupid on paper on the off-chance that something revolutionary is discovered, and to get people who support the idea to finally focus their efforts on supporting better ideas. This too.
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Sep 24, 2018 01:39
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qkkl posted:It's still important to try out ideas that are stupid on paper on the off-chance that something revolutionary is discovered, and to get people who support the idea to finally focus their efforts on supporting better ideas. I mean yeah, in principle. But anyone with a brain knew you could do "solar roadways" but with a solar roof instead of paving the road itself and it would make way more sense. That would probably also be impractical, but worth trying at least. Actual soar roadways are just.... Completely non-sensical.
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Sep 24, 2018 04:12
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How did solar roads actually happen? The whole idea is like something I'd come up with to explain the concept of "green washing" to someone, as in an idea anyone would instantly identify as extremely stupid and wasteful. Like how did it get past multiple meetings and engineers and anyone with half a brain?
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Sep 24, 2018 05:53
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It didn't
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Sep 24, 2018 05:54
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Baronjutter posted:How did solar roads actually happen? The whole idea is like something I'd come up with to explain the concept of "green washing" to someone, as in an idea anyone would instantly identify as extremely stupid and wasteful. I think it was a viral video on Kickstarter or something. It sounded cool and futuristic and that's all it takes. Then more companies jumped on the gravy scam train (The guys who promised to develop a handheld laser shaver that is the same size as a Gillette wet razor and won't burn your face off got a even more money IRC. That's just how people who donate on Kickstarter roll)
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Sep 24, 2018 07:21
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qkkl posted:It's still important to try out ideas that are stupid on paper on the off-chance that something revolutionary is discovered, and to get people who support the idea to finally focus their efforts on supporting better ideas. I am all about empiricism but a trial run consisting of a kilometer of solar road is about 990 meters too long. "Well let's just try everything in big demonstrations all the time" is actually not a valuable or even a good concept and ultimately just wastes time and money
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Sep 24, 2018 07:39
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I can make a self-powered airplane out of fancy solar cells, and I'll call them solar planes, the future of air travel, they're going to be totally green and won't consume any jet fuel and they'll be just as cheap as a normal plane but THE MAN isn't letting my designs be funded to completion! That paragraph and a hype video should not be enough to fund the attempted creation of such a plane, but link the video to a bunch of people on Facebook and suddenly you'd be rolling in Kickstarter money for what is actually just an untenable half-baked idea. Solar roads are the kind of thing that someone might come up with while very high but it consistently fell apart under any serious scrutiny and the people funding these trials should be loving fired QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 07:49 on Sep 24, 2018 |
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Sep 24, 2018 07:46
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QuarkJets posted:I am all about empiricism but a trial run consisting of a kilometer of solar road is about 990 meters too long. "Well let's just try everything in big demonstrations all the time" is actually not a valuable or even a good concept and ultimately just wastes time and money I disagree about that though, cuz half the point is that you need to show it being safe enough to drive on, which just a 10 meter chunk won't. And a few of the different installs like along the bike path in the Netherlands showed that the design has serous issues even when you just have people and bikes on top it without any heavy trucks or the extra debris to handle from automobile traffic. For example, shattering with those low loads: https://twitter.com/percytwits/status/548754743557128192 Probably wouldn't have found that nasty surprise with just a short length.
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Sep 24, 2018 17:49
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or, how about people who can do things do them and internet bitch artists delete their accounts?
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Sep 24, 2018 17:49
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fishmech posted:I disagree about that though, cuz half the point is that you need to show it being safe enough to drive on, which just a 10 meter chunk won't. And a few of the different installs like along the bike path in the Netherlands showed that the design has serous issues even when you just have people and bikes on top it without any heavy trucks or the extra debris to handle from automobile traffic. Alas, no such methods exist so we must waste large sums of money to verify these things
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Sep 24, 2018 18:25
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fishmech posted:For example, shattering with those low loads: How is "a truck has a blowout and scrapes a path down $200,000 of solar cells" a 'surprise' to anyone who thinks about what a road is and does?
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Sep 24, 2018 18:32
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bawfuls posted:if only the field of engineering had developed some method of predicting potential loads and load limits *before* building something, perhaps by applying principles of physics and materials science?? or perhaps, some way to simulate such loads on a smaller, laboratory scale where the cost would be a fraction of a real world installation?? No, you see, everything we know about solar energy, materials science, and engineering might be wrong thus we must test to make sure!
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Sep 24, 2018 18:37
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Deteriorata posted:No, you see, everything we know about solar energy, materials science, and engineering might be wrong thus we must test to make sure! Perhaps if the test was on a bigger scale, like maybe an entire highway, it could have had different results. The problem is they didn't waste enough money on this test!
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Sep 24, 2018 18:44
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bawfuls posted:if only the field of engineering had developed some method of predicting potential loads and load limits *before* building something, perhaps by applying principles of physics and materials science?? or perhaps, some way to simulate such loads on a smaller, laboratory scale where the cost would be a fraction of a real world installation?? You must be absolutely furious that car companies have to also test their car's safety in real labs with the cars as built, instead of just having the car company say they ran a simulation and it was perfectly fine. To go back to the case of that bike path solar road shattering, it turned out the simulations they'd done before installing it hadn't properly simulated the interaction between frost conditions and the loading from people biking, which is what tore apart the panel and shattered it. Which was extra funny because the length was electrically heated in cold weather.
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Sep 24, 2018 18:54
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