111–120 of 182 posts
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According to the Lazard estimate of levelized cost of energy, spending the same money on nuclear fission would produce one third of the power.
Is that with or without energy storage you'd need for the wind turbines? Does the estimate account for the fact that building a large number of nuclear plants means dramatically cheaper unit cost?
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It's going to take a lot more than $1T and a decade for fusion to be cost-competitive with wind and solar.
How are wind and solar cost-competitive when they can exist in Germany only with extreme high subsidies? Look at the new windfarm called "Wikinger" that Germany built near the island of Ruegen: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offshore-Windpark_Wikinger Cost: 1.4 billion Euros Lifetime: 20 years Power: 350 MW Max. capacity: 0.4 (40%) Price at the electricity stock exchange Leipzig: 36 Euro/MWh Thus: 350 0.4 24 365 20*36…
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A common argument; Michael Schellenberger addresses it here: https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shellenberger_why_renewabl... Basically, cats kills sparrows and other small and extremely prolific urban birds. Those birds aren't what wind turbines threaten. Wind turbines threaten larger prey birds like owls, eagles, falcons, etc.
Rather than trying to poke holes in my response you could look at all cause mortality tables for birds. You can compare wind turbines with the many other sources - heavy metal poising, car and plane collisions, habitat loss - and you can compare it to estimated turbine collisions. Cornell Ornithology Lab is a great resource. This isn't an ideal situation, but you can't talk about this sensibly without the background…
You don't get to lead with "meh the birds are not a big deal, they're mostly common ones" and then when challenged, pivot to "so what if it's endangered predatory birds? We're in an emergency here!"
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Yes. Land based ones are often on plains or ridges. Steady and unimpeded wind is why aerial and offshore have better EROI.
Do land-based ones compete with agricultural usage?
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Transmission!!! A huge appeal of offshore for densely populated areas is you can put the huge turbines far off the coast of a dense area and then have very effective transmission, something which onshore is vastly limited by due to NIMBYism and lobbying and regulation.
And offshore winds are steady, reliable, and really conveniently timed: early evening is the peak, right after solar is done.
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It's going to take a lot more than $1T and a decade for fusion to be cost-competitive with wind and solar.
> It's going to take a lot more than $1T and a decade for fusion to be cost-competitive with wind and solar. Wind and solar don't even compete in the same category as nuclear until you include storage. Cheap, bursty energy is useless for base-load. Wind/solar are still far more expensive than fossil and nuclear when you take into account the over-provisioning and energy storage requirements to provide reliable base-l…
The grid survives fine when nuclear and coal plants go offline for several days for maintenance/turn-arounds!
This is nuts. I wonder what the effect of spending $1T on nuclear would be in comparison. I bet it's enough money to get to practical nuclear fusion in a decade, which would largely obviate the need in most other energy generation methods.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that with or without energy storage you'd need for the wind turbines? Does the estimate account for the fact that building a large number of nuclear plants means dramatically cheaper unit cost?
Completely independent of storage. And that said, if you go offshore, you don't really need a lot of storage.
How does that work?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's going to take a lot more than $1T and a decade for fusion to be cost-competitive with wind and solar.
How are wind and solar cost-competitive when they can exist in Germany only with extreme high subsidies? Look at the new windfarm called "Wikinger" that Germany built near the island of Ruegen: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offshore-Windpark_Wikinger Cost: 1.4 billion Euros Lifetime: 20 years Power: 350 MW Max. capacity: 0.4 (40%) Price at the electricity stock exchange Leipzig: 36 Euro/MWh Thus: 350 0.4 24 365 20*36…
Is that really the lifetime of the farm, or is it just when turbines need to be replaced?
Oil and gas ("energy") companies are investing a lot into wind energy. They know they have to adopt. In the end they just want profits and they have the capital to make the right investments. I really wish the environmentalist movement saw them as just another money hungry corporation instead some evil villain out to destroy the planet. They would love to diversify their revenue stream, now is a good time to work wit…
Greed can destroy the planet all the same. So money hungry is hardly an excuse for evil behavior.