Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not true.
You really refuted my argument there.
I'm simply tired of wasting time on renewable-energy-battery-storage fan service. We need stable power output.
In Defense of Electricity Markets
91–100 of 142 posts
Re: In Defense of Electricity Markets
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Europe" is not a country. France finished it's nuclear build-out decades ago. It's still got issues, but the matter is sorted. The UK is adding scads of wind power every day. Ditto for Spain, only with solar. Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and Finland have mix of hydro, nuclear, and renewables. Yes, Germany is screwing the pooch on this one. Most places east of Germany isn't doing much better. But their failure is the…
The wind power over here is nice, but hopefully the nuclear gets rolling[0]. [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61010605
Unfortunately, "UK Plans..." has become statements for the purpose of electioneering rather than serious intent.
See also the list of announced projects that mere days later had to said to be "illustrative": https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/oct/09/list-of-proj...
Re: In Defense of Electricity Markets
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nope. They are not fine. Europe is floundering with its renewable transition. Right now it's easy to build tons of cheap low-quality wind or solar generation, but it's not economic to build any kind of storage. As a result, Europe is now dependent on natural gas and coal during the winter. And there's nothing that can change that within the next decade.
"Europe" is not a country. France finished it's nuclear build-out decades ago. It's still got issues, but the matter is sorted. The UK is adding scads of wind power every day. Ditto for Spain, only with solar. Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and Finland have mix of hydro, nuclear, and renewables. Yes, Germany is screwing the pooch on this one. Most places east of Germany isn't doing much better. But their failure is the…
The western neighbours have outsized influence on EU policy compared to the east, of course they have to take part of the blame.
EU energy policy made visible changes on the markets and landscape of the eastern republics - and the people here hate the EU for it.
For example, it created a whole class of "solar barons" who used the EU regulation to get free money that now everyone has to pay for, and for the necessary energy storage that the "barons" are not on the hook for. The population here would've preferred to go nuclear, but EU forced it to support this instead.
Re: In Defense of Electricity Markets
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't say that a technology which would dump a ton of supply, affecting, if not disrupting the market, has "almost nothing to do with the topic at hand". it's unfortunately a bit of a fantasy and years out from being possible due to a natural disaster setting the industry back by yet another a decade but it's totally relevant for a threaded forum.
SMRs are going to have relatively high capital costs and (hopefully) low but non-zero operating costs. They will probably have similar ramping characteristics to coal. As such, they will probably operate like coal - generating most of the time when able to and get their lunch eaten by zero-marginal-cost solar in the middle of the day. One thing SMRs will absolutely not be used for is as peakers, which is where market…
Both France and Germany have nuclear plants with load following capabilities to the tune of 5% change per minute. That is 50-100MW change every minute for a single powerplant. It might not be peak-peak, but it is certainly going to handle the vast majority of all electricity generation with very small delay.
Re: In Defense of Electricity Markets
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
You really refuted my argument there.
I'm simply tired of wasting time on renewable-energy-battery-storage fan service. We need stable power output.
I don't get it, I didn't mention any of that? You're refusing to answer due to an imaginary reason you yourself came up with... Alright then.
Re: In Defense of Electricity Markets
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yea, that was when we refused to buy natural gas from a dictator attacking sovereign countries. And due to how the market was built, Germany's over-reliance on Russian gas affected everyone for a good while. On the other hand I've been enjoying pretty much free electricity for about 6 months now. A few rare spikes up to 40c/kWh, but it's mostly been under 1c/kWh.
> A few rare spikes up to 40c/kWh, but it's mostly been under 1c/kWh. The cheapest rate I can get in NL is ~30c/kwh, and that’s with a dynamic price contract. The government has applied an artificial limit of 40c/kwh for 2023, after energy companies here fleeced everyone last year. Unfortunately, it expires by 2024. The worst part is that NL privatized the energy market long ago, to give people “choice” - which has o…
I was one of those people who got fleeced. I moved here in the fall of 2022, right before winter started. My monthly fee to Vattenfall was €400/mo for an "A" rated new build apartment of 90m2. I had just moved and didn't know any better. I knew the war was contributing to energy prices but I had no idea to what extent.
Last winter, we kept the heat on to a minimum and tried to keep the lights off. Really, the killer was the price of gas for heating (in-floor) and hot water. But even by comparison, my 20 minute hot shower once every 2-3 days wasn't really the issue. Our "usage" for January was over €550. Luckily, I used basically nothing the first two months I lived here so it averaged out so I didn't need to pay anything. Had I known what I know now, I would have purchased electric space heaters and ran them 24/7... it probably would have been cheaper and I could have walked around my apartment naked while it was -2 outside.
I've switched to Tibber (Swedish company I think?) on a variable rate plan and have been much happier. It would be one thing if I could have locked in a rate at Vattenfall, but even that wasn't possible. You still pay out the ass for all of your usage, so I might as well not overpay when it's cheaper to produce. In the meantime, I'm saving some money each month for winter and will still likely invest in a couple of space heaters since the price of natural gas is still pretty high.
Now we've seen what some families have had to deal with paying their year-end balances and that is/should be criminal. I've seen people receiving bills for thousands of Euros. Their only crime was living in an older home with 2 kids. Got forbid you want your family to be clean and warm! I understand there is some personal responsibility to be taken, but obviously something went very very wrong.
Re: In Defense of Electricity Markets
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Europe" is not a country. France finished it's nuclear build-out decades ago. It's still got issues, but the matter is sorted. The UK is adding scads of wind power every day. Ditto for Spain, only with solar. Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and Finland have mix of hydro, nuclear, and renewables. Yes, Germany is screwing the pooch on this one. Most places east of Germany isn't doing much better. But their failure is the…
The western neighbours have outsized influence on EU policy compared to the east, of course they have to take part of the blame. EU energy policy made visible changes on the markets and landscape of the eastern republics - and the people here hate the EU for it. For example, it created a whole class of "solar barons" who used the EU regulation to get free money that now everyone has to pay for, and for the necessary…
Specifically what EU policies that the more renewable-and-nuclear friendly countries voted for do you have in mind?
Re: In Defense of Electricity Markets
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is a classic case of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good No. If you say they're exiting fossil fuels, but they're moving on to gas, your claim is just wrong. Gas might be better than coal, but that wasn't the claim.
Oh dear... They have a plan to exit the dirtiest form fossil fuel, one Germany heavily relies on today. I did not say Germany is gonna move to gas, since I didn't read everything, that was just an assumption. So, what you say is the current plan to exit coal, which you initially claimed didn't exist, is garbish because the result might include some gas. And hence, there is no such plan, and even if there was, said pl…
Again, this isn't about gas being better than coal. It's that the claim was they're exiting fossil fuels, when they aren't.
Re: In Defense of Electricity Markets
#99I, for one, want Gen IV small-modular nuclear reactors built. They solve all our climate change-related challenges AND they eat the waste of older generation reactors. I fail to see why we're not investing in more nuclear over solar and wind (whose components are not usually recycled)
This has almost nothing to do with the topic at hand, which was a commentary on the value of a functioning market for electricity (I hesitate to call it a "free" market because any electricity market ends up having a lot of rules). I personally think Gen IV nuclear reactors have stuff-all chance of competing in such a market, but if somebody believes otherwise and wants to put up the dollars to try, all power to them…
> I hesitate to call it a "free" market because any electricity market ends up having a lot of rules).
Markets without a lot of rules are not free, they are inevitably controlled by the biggest players or cartels.
Re: In Defense of Electricity Markets
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
PJM does have pricing for reliability. The first California deregulated electricity market had an auction every half hour and all pricing was spot. This caused blackouts and the bankruptcy of Pacific Gas and Electric, even though it was what PG&E had lobbied for. Today, most markets (at least PJM and CAISO) have a "day ahead" auction, and a current auction to fine-tune. Most of the market is in the day-ahead auction.…
Weren’t the California brownouts caused by Enron fucking with California’s supply to cause them to purchase electricity from Texas at insanely high rates. Also led to Gray Davis being recalled which must have been a nice bonus because the Bush administration was very allied with Enron execs.
> Weren’t the California brownouts caused by Enron fucking with California’s supply to cause them to purchase electricity from Texas at insanely high rates.
The Texas grid (ERCOT, specifically) is almost completely isolated, in order to avoid certain Federal level regulations. There's no real way for California or any other state to sell power into Texas or buy power from Texas.
Part of what happened with California is that Enron would schedule to deliver a bunch of power over transmission lines that were not rated to handle the power. When it came time to deliver the power, this forced a transmission constraint that in turn forced CAISO (CA grid operator) to buy power on the spot market (expensive) to cover the shortfall. Enron then had generation they could sell at a premium. I remember hearing stories of the ISO seeing the trade go in, recognize what was happening, and not have any legal recourse within the market's legal design.