621–630 of 632 posts
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wouldn’t you say that the article itself also contains a detailed (verbal) analysis? betteridge's law aside, it agrees with you
True. I didn't realize that Patio11's podcast links had built-in transcripts so my additional description was superfluous.
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> but 1.1 gigawatts of mainstream solar panels is 0.14 billion usd A solar farm is more than just solar panels. This 3.5GW solar farm cost 2.13B USD, so by your estimates the panels make up just 1/5 of the cost of the farm. I'd expect the load factor of the nuclear power station to offset the solar farm's nameplate capacity advantage, and lead to steadier prices/fewer storage requirements etc etc. https://www.pv-maga…
i agree that the difference in capacity factor is very important, and i should have made that clearer in my comment. nuclear is typically around 85%, solar typically around 20%. solar farms in the california desert are 29%, so this desert plant might have a similarly high capacity factor, but last time i checked, the prc average was more like 10%, and i don't understand why. possibly factors like transmission congest…
Transmission costs, yes. Plus if the solar is behind-the-meter you might avoid some of the taxes and levies applied to grid electricity.
(Note that I realise the focus of my comment from here on down has changed from China to the UK, but then again I've not helped install a solar installation over there!)
However with UK rooftop solar home-owners do not have much negotiating power as the market supply is restricted by the MCS scheme (Microgeneration Certification Scheme). This may be changing in the future (Flexi-Orb scheme), but until a greater pool of competent installers are in the market the prices will not decrease.
A relative had 6.4kW solar (and 5kW hybrid inverter) installed last summer for around £7,000. I added in some batteries for another few thousand. The panels generated around 5,100 kWh last year, for a capacity factor of around 9%.
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> They aren’t current or inflation adjust to the same year Page 41 states All costs are reported here in 2018 USD terms. > several costs associated with nuclear such as insurance Insurance is required for any industrial facility. The IEA report does not mention insurance. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-sec... puts insurance costs at around 1M USD/year (and separate conditional payments if an…
> All costs are reported here in 2018 USD terms. So even further out of date. > O&M is often quoted as 4x fuel costs The data in the IEA report differs; it is somewhere between the fuel costs and twice the fuel costs. Operations & Maintenance must include fuel costs… They are doing the thing where they break actual costs into several buckets to make actual operational costs seem lower. Refurbishment isn’t maintenance…
Do you have references for how much a solar plant costs to build and maintain? A breakdown of costs would be good.
> Operations & Maintenance must include fuel costs…
I presume this was done to make section 5.4 "Fuel cost sensitivity" easy.
> Rooftop solar however only supplies the grid with power after the houses needs are met which is a significantly narrower area.
What about if people are over-specifying their solar PV system to make use of net-energy-metering (or high feed in tariffs) to reduce their annual bill (for instance in California)?
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i agree that the difference in capacity factor is very important, and i should have made that clearer in my comment. nuclear is typically around 85%, solar typically around 20%. solar farms in the california desert are 29%, so this desert plant might have a similarly high capacity factor, but last time i checked, the prc average was more like 10%, and i don't understand why. possibly factors like transmission congest…
> i meant that they can't be single-digit meters from the point of use. solar panels can, and that dramatically drops costs Transmission costs, yes. Plus if the solar is behind-the-meter you might avoid some of the taxes and levies applied to grid electricity. (Note that I realise the focus of my comment from here on down has changed from China to the UK, but then again I've not helped install a solar installation ov…
The core realization of the article is that energy costs have increased 30-100%. This is inline broadly with inflation experienced post-COVID presumably due to all the helicopter money dumped on the economy. I suspect if these figures were revised for inflation, the same trends we've seen over the past ten years would persist.
There's a huge factor in the increase in energy costs during the pandemic that doesn't get talked about much, weirdly. It gets attributed to greedflation but it's actually far simpler. In 2020, the Trump administration pressured OPEC to cut production by about 9.7 million barrels a day [1], roughly 10% of the world's production. This was a 2 year deal. Look at the 5 year chart [2] and you can see exactly where this d…
The coincidence in the price rebound over two years reflects pandemic induced demand which took two years to recover and some time for the related supply chain issues to resolve: it is very difficult to shut off and restart an oil well, which is part of the reason why we had an overcapacity of oil during the pandemic which led to negative oil prices. In the same vein, oil prices shot up immediately due to demand pull and slow response from producers.
This persistence in the price increase reflects broader increases due to inflation caused by "helicopter money": the government printed money into the economy, which has inflationary consequences. It's not greedflation, it's governmentflation.
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This is also quite dependent on the microclimate: there's a number of places in the south of BC that get radically different levels of solar radiation. Kelowna for instance would be far better than North Vancouver for a solar setup. By and large most of BC wasn't economic enough to justify solar as a replacement for grid power, but I haven't checked those numbers in a while. We do have relatively cheap hydro power, s…
This was the guy I watched: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1ZyZNRYezA
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> All costs are reported here in 2018 USD terms. So even further out of date. > O&M is often quoted as 4x fuel costs The data in the IEA report differs; it is somewhere between the fuel costs and twice the fuel costs. Operations & Maintenance must include fuel costs… They are doing the thing where they break actual costs into several buckets to make actual operational costs seem lower. Refurbishment isn’t maintenance…
> So even further out of date. Do you have references for how much a solar plant costs to build and maintain? A breakdown of costs would be good. > Operations & Maintenance must include fuel costs… I presume this was done to make section 5.4 "Fuel cost sensitivity" easy. > Rooftop solar however only supplies the grid with power after the houses needs are met which is a significantly narrower area. What about if peopl…
Don’t just think about what happens when these systems are at 100% output. At 5% output that home is sucking power from the grid while the solar far is providing the grid with power. Which means even if every home and business adds panels a solar farm will still supply some electricity directly.
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The California Sierras, Death Valley, the Mojave desert, and of course Baja (obv not in the lower 48) have remote trails that can take days to get to- not so much because they’re actually extremely far away but because the trails are slow going and difficult. There are trails where average speeds in a vehicle are slower than walking, but you can’t really hike them either - at least without pack animals- because there…
Interestingly, I’ve spent time in all the places you mention. Keep in mind more people live in Southern California than all of Australia. The places you mention are busy, and not really remote. I’d be willing to bet you can drive out of the most remote on your list to a gas station in well under 10 hours. Probably 5
A fun thing about Baja is that often these super remote fuel stations end up being closed or out of fuel, so you can't realistically do it without having the supplies and fuel for at least 2x what it looks like you should need.
That's basically where I'm getting my "two days" from- the time from one fuel station to the next with about ~8 hours of actual travel per day.
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I've lived like that. I lived in the Mission in San Francisco with four of my closest friends (all from NJ) within walking distance. It was great being able to meet up for lunch or drinks or go out clubbing, it was always a pleasant surprise to run into them randomly on the street or in a park. I lived in midtown Manhattan and I loved being able to go out at 3am in the middle of the winter and find a fresh produce st…
Being older you need to factor in healthcare. I didn't when I moved remote, and it was a big mistake. I firmly believe my mother died of cancer because I convinced her to move to a rural local that didn't have the quality of cancer care that she would have had access to if she stayed in Santa Cruz. My advice is pick a touristy area that has enough money/population moving through to have a bit better medical system th…
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Ikea will sell you kitchens for 4k including appliances and set everything up for 2k. In Europe. (without electricity and plumbing)
You forgot that in US kitchens are huge. Could be bigger than typical studio apartment in a crowded EU city.