Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life • Hacker News Board

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#51

Post by rowanajmarshall » Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 3:22 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #18

tsjackson wrote: post #13

The cost per kWh of solar and wind is a third of natural gas and nuclear. It's not even close. Filling the gaps left by intermittent production with storage is rapidly decreasing in costs, and will soon be low enough that Solar/Wind/Storage will outcompete Natural Gas or nuclear 95% of the time. There is probably a small role for other sources in filling capacity gaps during uncommon weather events (i.e. natural gas…

>The cost per kWh of solar and wind is a third of natural gas and nuclear. It's not even close. So what? Or put another way, if its so cheap, why is Germany building natural gas pipelines to ship Russian gas for decades to come? What do they (and every other country) know that you don't? The reality is you're not comparing apples to apples. Natural gas can serve as base load and power a modern economy. Solar/wind can…

To be fair Germany isn't especially sunny or even _that_ windy. Somewhere like Colorado or Morocco is far more reliable for renewables. Maybe not to the point of baseload, but enough to plan for. So location is really important here.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#52

Post by rhn_mk1 » Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 3:22 PM UTC

boringg wrote: post #21

I would agree he has some valid points but on the whole he misses a fair bit and sounds very jaded. Like lets just do Natural Gas and Nuclear Power - which isn't a great solution in the long run. 1. Wind + Solar are insured for 20 years but last much longer. They are still in their early phase of adoption and costs are still falling. 2. Of course energy isn't a one size fits all - so you need to be aware of all the d…

Agreed. It seems the author is falling into another shortsighted position after getting out of the previous one.

> it’s time to be honest about all the costs and benefits of every energy source

is a good advice, but then you can't just say

> Solar farms need 75 times more land to produce the same amount of energy.

based on a study that compares the footprint of only the facility. To be honest about the costs, you have to compare the lifetime operating costs: the area lost to mining, the infrastructure to service the facilities, and to distribute the power (wind farms are farther out, pylons and roads are non-negligible land use).

Another interesting observation is:

> Trillionsof dollars were spent on wind and solar projects over the last 20 years, yet the world’s dependence on fossil fuels declined only 3 percentage points, from 87% to 84%.

which suggests that either solar and wind didn't take off, or they did take off but increased our hunger for energy. The author fails to consider the latter by later advocating that energy must be affordable. In fact, making energy affordable is likely to exacerbate the problem, as it drives demand high.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#53

Post by Tade0 » Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 3:23 PM UTC

> Nuclear plants can operate for over 80 years and run for 100 years if they are well-maintained. By contrast, solar panels and wind turbines last only about 20 years.

This is theorized. There doesn't exist a nuclear power plant that is even nearly that old.

The oldest still functioning reactor is the Benzau nuclear power plant in Switzerland. It started operating 53 years ago.

Meanwhile the oldest operating(IIRC), grid-connected array is the TISO-10 (also in Switzerland), which started operations in 1982.

Solar panels usually don't just fail catastrophically, but lose efficiency gradually. In the 35-year assessment of the mentioned plant it was noted that the rate of degradation was around 0.38%/year.

20 years is just the warranty period for a certain performance level.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#54

Post by jacobsimon » Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 3:23 PM UTC

modeless wrote: post #6

I recently heard (on HN, maybe you did too) about a form of energy that sounds pretty utopian to me. Ultra deep bore geothermal. Geothermal has been around for a long time and has problems like causing earthquakes and needing very specific geological formations that only exist in certain places. But these limitations are mostly due to the fact that we can't bore that deep. Geothermal energy exists under every point o…

Sounds too good to be true! Is geothermal truly renewable? Or is it just abundant enough that it would last us for thousands of years? I wonder if there are other long term side effects of releasing heat from the core.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#55

Post by svnt » Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 3:23 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #18

tsjackson wrote: post #13

The cost per kWh of solar and wind is a third of natural gas and nuclear. It's not even close. Filling the gaps left by intermittent production with storage is rapidly decreasing in costs, and will soon be low enough that Solar/Wind/Storage will outcompete Natural Gas or nuclear 95% of the time. There is probably a small role for other sources in filling capacity gaps during uncommon weather events (i.e. natural gas…

>The cost per kWh of solar and wind is a third of natural gas and nuclear. It's not even close. So what? Or put another way, if its so cheap, why is Germany building natural gas pipelines to ship Russian gas for decades to come? What do they (and every other country) know that you don't? The reality is you're not comparing apples to apples. Natural gas can serve as base load and power a modern economy. Solar/wind can…

Look up iron flow batteries and other developing solutions. Assuming no one has been working on this problem and that you know more than them is usually a poor choice.

The other countries know that if they hard stop energy flow their economies will suffer, and these projects take a decade to plan, a decade to sell, and a decade to implement. Anything Germany is building now was probably developed or announced in the 00s.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#56

Post by fundad » Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 3:23 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #9

Reading that is a sad reminder of why people make such poor decisions. He’s still arguing about things in the abstract without a basis in the underlying mechanics of these systems. And the sad thing is he’s effective at convincing people.

Sounds like anybody who goes to work for the fossil fuel industry.

"Trillions spent on solar and wind" but apparently what we spent annually on Fossil Fuels is not significant enough to mention and Nuclear power can't cost too much because government money pays to build the plants.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#57

Post by Splendor » Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 3:24 PM UTC

V__ wrote: post #38

323 wrote: post #14

During the current situation I learned an interesting thing about nuclear power plants: if you bomb them, the amount of radioactivity that will be released into atmosphere because of waste products storage on site is vastly larger than the one that would be released by a nuclear explosion in a random place. Because unfortunately most nuclear waste is stored on site because of the NIMBY problem. So every nuclear power…

My (not totally serious but kinda serious though uninformed) solution to the problem: Build a few big underground atomic bunkers around the world and store the long term waste there until we can find a solution (or leave it there). Do it in the middle of a desert far away from any people. No NIMBYs, not interesting for attacks.

Let me introduce you to Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. Even the middle of the desert is not safe from NIMBYs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r...

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#58

Post by XorNot » Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 3:24 PM UTC

V__ wrote: post #16

I don't really understand his conclusion. If I understand it correctly, it boils down to: Fossil fuels are cheaper (better ROI) than renewables, therefore changes/improvements to fossil fuels did more to reduce CO2 than renewables. My work on "utopian energy" didn't have the effect I wished it had. Climate change is a problem. Just because gas, oil, and coal are cheaper and made improvements doesn't change a thing ab…

He's a self-promotionist who seems to have built quite the profile marketing himself as providing energy "truth".

It's inevitably going to turn out he represents oil and gas in some way because boy does he just gloss over the subsidies those industries receive while uncritically spruiking the benefits.

EDIT: oh look, the very next story he has on this site is how fossil fuel companies can improve their image "to protect our prosperity" [1]

[1] https://briangitt.com/how-to-win-the-energy-war-tell-better-...

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#59

Post by herschel113 » Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 3:24 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #17

cybrox wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main social issue is that green energy is better used as marketing than to really do something about the ever rising levels of emissions. After all, most people don't care to read the actual facts on supposedly new, superior technology, they just endorse it because it's supposed to be green.

Cynical me says it's a big money maker / captialism; green energy projects receive billions in subsidies. At one point you could get "green energy" from your electricity provider at a few cents / kWh extra which they would (supposedly) invest in green energy projects. Then green energy became a marketing term at no extra cost.

In Germany, fossil and nuclear received billions in subsidies over decades too. And still will, even when decomissioned. See:

-There would be social subsidies for layed off fossil workers, as there is a massive discussion, while the solar / wind industry almost completely broke down, massive layoffs, after subsidies where cut and china took over (with subsidies there too). It is estimated that more jobs where lost there than actually working in coal (which is the primary discussion about). Forced moving of people / villages to make space for coal mining also holds a money-less cost to the people moved.

-Nuclear is a massive field of unknown money holes, as there is up of today still no final reasoning where to put the waste, and it has to be secured for 10k - 1000k years - of course opinions are different there - but there is no reasonable economic plan how to make sure the waste dump is financed for this time less then hundred years ago german society, and the soil to some extend was completely turned over - how include that into risk calculations for 10k+ years to come? So handling the waste will drop out of the private sector more earlier than later, and the state / people will keep it's finacial burden for generations. That is a massive subside, for sure.

Re: Chasing utopian energy: How I wasted 20 years of my life

#60

Post by seibelj » Wed, Jun 22, 2022, 3:25 PM UTC

tsjackson wrote: post #13

The cost per kWh of solar and wind is a third of natural gas and nuclear. It's not even close. Filling the gaps left by intermittent production with storage is rapidly decreasing in costs, and will soon be low enough that Solar/Wind/Storage will outcompete Natural Gas or nuclear 95% of the time. There is probably a small role for other sources in filling capacity gaps during uncommon weather events (i.e. natural gas…

If renewable is so radically better then why did the City of Boston automatically increase everyone's electricity bills by 30%, requiring customers to opt-out? https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2021/01/08/eversource-co...

I keep hearing its so much cheaper, but renewables keep requiring dark patterns, more money, more subsidies. If it was so much cheaper it would just win automatically because of the market.