California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045 • Hacker News Board

Re: California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

#151

Post by Nasrudith » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 7:16 PM UTC

dublin wrote: post #122

true_tuna wrote: post #5

We are going to need some more big batteries. Don’t we pay our neighbors to take our excess during peak times?

Get a clue and do the math. (Seriously, this is a one-to-two hour google for info and apply third-grade arithmetic back-of-an-envelope project.) Batteries are NOT the answer - the quantity of batteries required is astronomically beyond the world's battery production capacity, even in Musk's most fevered dreams. Seriously - the mining impact of REALLY trying to build enough batteries to stabilize an area the size of C…

Putting aside the lithium mining myths (it works via brine evaporation making it damn clean compared to most mining) less storage is needed than you think thanks to wind power. Actual voltage stabilization requires shockingly little of energy storage compared to the size of the grid as demonstrated by the Australian battery project generating millions per day via stabilization services and doing it so quickly it outran the instability detection.

Wind turbines actually produce more power at night - as to be expected with wind being caused by temperature differentials. Texas for one has a lot of wind power to grid export thanks to its geography.

Re: California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

#152

Post by garmaine » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 7:18 PM UTC

tomnipotent wrote: post #149

llukas wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?location... Looks pretty good on what metric?

Misleading chart. It's showing the average across the EU and not the total.

Why should we care about the total? EU and US are different sizes to begin with. Per capita seems to be appropriate here.

Re: California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

#153

Post by abtinf » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 7:18 PM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #148

I am still baffled by the focus on private housholds and private consumption when it comes to the discussion of clean energy and emissions. The reality is that private households have very little to do with our problems and even less to do about them. Stop eating cow sound great but it's not going to do anything of any impact. Most emissions (70%) come from very few companies (around a 100 or some). Instead of making…

How will normal people be affected if you severely restrict the activities of those 100 companies?

Re: California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

#154

Post by garmaine » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 7:20 PM UTC

eikenberry wrote: post #18

Is nuclear part of the bill? It is clean but I don't see any mention of it either way in the article other than in the graph of current sources.

There is only one nuclear power plant in California (Diablo Canyon) and it is scheduled to be decommissioned without a replacement.

Re: California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

#155

Post by SllX » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 7:20 PM UTC

_rpd wrote: post #144

SllX wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New construction of nuclear plants is constitutionally limited in California and has been since well before I was born. Existing capacity is just leftover from before that era.

There may be some imports of nuclear-sourced power from Arizona and Washington state.

That might be a possibility, but I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that it is actually pretty pathetic we have to import power to make up our energy needs at all.

When I last looked at the stats a few years ago we were importing about 30% of our power from other States and it was trending upwards.

Re: California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

#156

Post by garmaine » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 7:23 PM UTC

hodgesrm wrote: post #117

nickik wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear waste is not an actual problem and the only reason there is no 'solution' is because it has turned into a political shit show. Worrying about nuclear waste at the beginning of the nuclear age when most of that waste is actually valuable fuel is downright idiotic.

You can't dismiss the waste problem out of hand given the environmental problems at places like Hanford [0] and the costs of safely decommissioning old plants, especially damaged ones like Fukushima [1]. There's abundant evidence that it's a costly, poisonous mess if done badly. Personally I don't think this is the biggest problem with nuclear power, and it's certainly not in and of itself a reason to switch to alter…

The output of a nuclear reactor isn’t waste, it is fuel for a different kind of reactor. If we built those reactors (called a breeder reactor) then we could safely and economically use that fuel, recycling so much that the actual waste would go from tons of material filling Olympic class swimming pools, to a few barrels. Nuclear power, done properly, is the cleanest source of energy we have.

Why don’t we? Politics and the lack of military uses.

Re: California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

#157

Post by ruipgil » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 7:24 PM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #148

I am still baffled by the focus on private housholds and private consumption when it comes to the discussion of clean energy and emissions. The reality is that private households have very little to do with our problems and even less to do about them. Stop eating cow sound great but it's not going to do anything of any impact. Most emissions (70%) come from very few companies (around a 100 or some). Instead of making…

But then again, from that report, most are fossil fuel producing companies. So one would imagine that less fossil fuel demand would reduce the impact of those companies and have an even more important effect on CO2 emissions

Re: California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

#158

Post by ThomPete » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 7:25 PM UTC

abtinf wrote: post #153

ThomPete wrote: post #148

I am still baffled by the focus on private housholds and private consumption when it comes to the discussion of clean energy and emissions. The reality is that private households have very little to do with our problems and even less to do about them. Stop eating cow sound great but it's not going to do anything of any impact. Most emissions (70%) come from very few companies (around a 100 or some). Instead of making…

How will normal people be affected if you severely restrict the activities of those 100 companies?

That depends on how you do it.

How were normal people affected by putting in carburetors in cars so they didn't spit out lead into the air?

Edit: My bad I meant catalytic converter not carborators (katalysatorer in Danish)

Re: California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

#159

Post by NeedMoreTea » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 7:25 PM UTC

merpnderp wrote: post #141

washingtub wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> vertical-drum washing machines (!!!) There are a number of issues with front-loading washers. While they use less water, they are also worse at cleaning clothes and much worse at sanitizing them. There was a recent post here on HN where a biologist did several experiments in her own washer to show how poorly they sanitized things compared to her older one. They also tend to trap water in the bottom and it gets must…

Yeah, I have yet to see a side loading washing without the moldy ring on the side of the door. I'm unsure how this is in any way a net improvement, as whatever action people take to fix the mold problem is likely to more than make up for the energy saved processing the water.

20 seconds with a damp cloth every few months, which is all our washer requires to keep the door seal crud-free, doesn't seem likely to raise energy requirements much.

Re: California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

#160

Post by ajross » Thu, Aug 30, 2018, 7:28 PM UTC

jwr wrote: post #88

I think another great move would be to start dealing with excessive energy consumption. Compared to what I'm used to in Europe, California is wasting crazy amounts of energy. Poorly insulated homes, old and inefficient AC/heating units, vertical-drum washing machines (!!!), poorly designed gas stoves, oversized cars, monstrous gas-guzzling trucks, energy waste is all over the place. People behave just as if energy we…

> Compared to what I'm used to in Europe, California is wasting crazy amounts of energy. Poorly insulated homes, old and inefficient AC/heating units,

Are you living in a particularly new region?

Every time I've seen this come up, the data actually says the opposite: the median US home is better insulated, more recently built and more efficiently climate-controlled. Which is unsurprising, because they're newer, basically. Home technology over the last half century has made huge improvements in energy consumption.

It's true that the median US home is much larger than what you probably see where you are. And obviously that goes to total consumption. But it's not an issue with housing technology at all.