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Electricity Prices by Country

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Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#281

Post by jacquesm »

wil421 wrote: post #258
jacquesm wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but not by these quantities of people. Critical infrastructure would be much harder to keep alive without AC and the same goes for the elderly. I would expect the average lifespan of the region to take a serious hit during a prolonged power outage in summer.

Yea no. Been to Costa Rica many times and no one has AC. People aren’t dying on the streets. My brother in law lived there for 10 years with no AC and it’s hotter, for longer, than my home in the Deep South.

It's the combination of temperature, humidity, wind and other factors that poses health risks.

https://www.weather.gov/tsa/wbgt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature

This stuff can and does kill and if you're not aware of it then pay attention: this is one of the more direct consequences of climate change, it may well push zones that are currently marginally habitable right into inhabitable.

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#282

Post by akudha »

perardi wrote: post #84

One little thing that stuck out: The USA leads the way in terms of household electric usage in the world – an average US household consumes approximately 975 kilowatt-hours of electricity each month, three times more than for example the United Kingdom. Which got me wondering how big US domiciles are versus those in the UK. Turns out: lot of big-ass houses here in the US. https://shrinkthatfootprint.com/how-big-is-a-…

When visiting U.S for the first time, the thing that strikes you immediately are the sizes. Everything is bigger, much bigger in the U.S.

Food portions - you’re left wondering if you ordered one single meal, or one day’s worth. Shopping malls - I literally got lost at Macy’s in NYC. Cars - why are cars so big, especially the ones in cities? TVs are big. Even mundane stuff like glue sticks - they come in 3 packs, I can’t buy a single glue stick in most shops!! Most household items come in big packs.

Needless to say, all of this comically big items need space. So houses are big too!

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#283

Post by trashface »

In the US I suspect cheap and low quality appliances are source of a lot of wasted energy, which are the default in most new construction. My refrigerator runs ~75% of the time these days, despite my attempts to clean its exterior components. Its a pretty cheap model my home builder put in. I suspect it was intended to simply fail years ago and get replaced with typical family of 3-4 usage. But since I live by myself, my usage of it was not quite hard enough to trigger that failure. So it keeps on churning away, burning up the juice.

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#284

Post by HDThoreaun »

Robotbeat wrote: post #147
tzs wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd guess that a far bigger factor is that the US has a much higher percentage of houses the use electricity for room heating. I believe that it is similar for water heating. In the US there is also a high percentage of houses that use electricity for the stoves and oven and for clothes drying. A brief didn't turn up how much electricity is used for those things in the UK, but if it is like much of the rest of Europe…

Vast majority of people use electricity for stoves in the US. Electric is also common for water heating. Less common to use electricity for space heating except for the South and for auxiliary rooms.

That's wild. I guess it's location dependent because I don't know anyone with an electric stove.

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#285

Post by pythonguython »

dave333 wrote: post #262
pythonguython wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know anything about hydrinos, so I’m not qualified to evaluate your link myself. However, the Wikipedia page [1] has nothing good to say about that company. That video makes all my scam alarms go off. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brilliant_Light_Power

That wikipedia page is rigidly policed by skeptics that pointedly ignore any and all progress especially over the last 10 years. You have to review their progress with an independent mind and evaluate what they have achieved on its merits.

I don’t work in physics, nor do I have a physics degree, therefore I can’t evaluate the theory of their claim. I can’t find any reputable physicists backing the claim that hydrinos exist, in fact they all say that the hydrino state simply isn’t possible. I’d believe in this theory if they actually proved that they’ve generated all this energy or reputable physicists have backed hydrinos. Believing in it otherwise would just be faith.

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#286

Post by TheLoafOfBread »

tfourb wrote: post #242
belorn wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

During this fall when journalist was interviewing every kind of energy scientists, the estimates landed around 30-50 years from now before those fossil fuel replacements will start to be built at grid scale. That is a very long time into the future, with a very high uncertainty.

There are already grid scale chemical batteries being built, i.e. in Australia. Hydro has been used as a grid scale buffer for decades.

Capacity of those batteries is like a fart in a hurricane.

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#287

Post by tfourb »

TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #286
tfourb wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are already grid scale chemical batteries being built, i.e. in Australia. Hydro has been used as a grid scale buffer for decades.

Capacity of those batteries is like a fart in a hurricane.

Little thought experiment: - Offshore wind costs about 3 Million USD/MW to install - Germany currently has 218,000 MW installed capacity, about 130,000 MW of this is already renewable energy, but let's ignore that for the moment - So to add 218,000 MW installed renewable energy capacity you'll need 654 Billion USD - Germany currently has an annual federal budget of 476 Billion USD

So to add 100% to the currently installed electricity generation capacity in Germany, the German government would have to spend less than 5% of its current annual budget each year for 30 years. Let's say 6%, if you add some money to switch out network components to deal with greater variability in network loads.

That seems very achievable, especially because of course most of this money will come from private investments, not the state. If required, industrialized economies could of course spend the required sums to build out their installed capacities by a factor of 2,3 or 5. That would reduce the need for base load capable producers drastically, as well as the need for grid-scale storage.

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#288

Post by carlosjobim »

tfourb wrote: post #102
carlosjobim wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> conspiracy theories What? The pipeline didn't blow up by itself, so some party had to conspire to blow it up.

There is currently no evidence whatsoever that the US was involved in the attack on the pipeline in any way. To the best of my knowledge, the current best lead is a group of allegedly Ukrainian nationals who hired a private boat and were in the area where the explosions happened during the time in question. Ukraine is denying any involvement (of course) and the people in question have not been apprehended. The only r…

Biden made public utterances that falls within him admitting the USA would attack the pipeline, so that's at least some evidence.

But no matter who committed the terrorist attack, they for sure conspired to do it. The attack is a conspiracy by definition and by law, so any speculation as to the culprit will be a conspiracy theory - including your speculation that it was Ukrainians.

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#289

Post by adhesive_wombat »

pydry wrote: post #252
concordDance wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fukushima was a risk that was hard to ignore. Politically hard to ignore? Yes. Practicaly hard to ignore? No. Germany doesn't get any tsunamis and even if it did, the consequences of a fukushima level accident every few decades are less bad than the direct pollution effects of coal, even ignoring the CO2.

Practically too. The $800 billion clean up bill also comes on top of the already gargantuan cost of building and maintaining nuclear power stations. It's a roll of the dice. The next nuclear catastrophe probably won't look like Fukushima or Chernobyl but I imagine it will happen partly as a result of skimped/badly done maintenance on a plant whose operating life has been extended a bit too far.

> whose operating life has been extended a bit too far.

That's pretty much Fukushima. It was an old plant, older than Chernobyl by 6 years by date of commissioning. It was supposed to shut down in early 2011, but was granted an eleventh-hour 10-year extension in February that year. The earthquake and tsunami happened a month later, in March.

Granted, it probably wouldn't actually have made any difference as it would have been operating that specific month, but it was still a bit of a "he was only 2 weeks from retirement" moment. Unless actions like moving the backup generators uphill would have been done beforehand if it was known the plant was going to keep going until 2021.

Re: Electricity Prices by Country

#290

Post by lancesells »

wil421 wrote: post #258
jacquesm wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but not by these quantities of people. Critical infrastructure would be much harder to keep alive without AC and the same goes for the elderly. I would expect the average lifespan of the region to take a serious hit during a prolonged power outage in summer.

Yea no. Been to Costa Rica many times and no one has AC. People aren’t dying on the streets. My brother in law lived there for 10 years with no AC and it’s hotter, for longer, than my home in the Deep South.

Agreed. I would guess some desert areas might not be habitable but that's only a portion of a couple states. You can definitely live in places like Florida without AC.
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