981–990 of 1001 posts
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While you (and siblings) are all correct, I don't get the down voting of the poor guy trying to make a joke while being considerate-ish and hoping that you guys were actually warmer than you were. That said, I've been out in the hammock in 0F here, including snow and wind chill on top and been warm (oh wait, I'll be down voted too). It's all about insulation, which actually helps in both warm and cold weather. You ca…
Making jokes is for Reddit, not HN
The catch is that it can't be a low-effort joke. People on reddit run jokes into the ground so far that they need to bring a passport to be prepared for their arrival in China.
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Natural gas follows all rollouts of renewables, though. In fact I'm not even sure you can separate the two. Grids with renewables would absolutely collapse without natural gas. The only thing capable of replacing natural gas is batteries, which are extremely expensive and aren't exactly renewable, either.
Renewables may create demand for more natural gas on the grid, but you seem to be saying also that if Texas hadn't expanded renewables, they wouldn't have built so many natural gas plants. What would they have built instead to supply their power?
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429 TWh is average yearly usage, current "crippled" usage is 77% the yearly average usage, so 100% worldwide bitcoin usage would only account for ~1/3 the current "crippled" power delivery. Worldwide mining would have to pull a hell of a lot more than ~1/4 (of TX) of ~1/10 (TX of the US) ~1/7 (US of world) to be setting the price floor of electricity. http://www.ercot.com/gridinfo/load note some figures are in power…
Still, that's a lot of electricity that could have been warming houses.
Not much discussion here of the fundamental problem: why is Texas so energy intensive? In the last decade ERCOT energy generation has expanded 20%, which is much faster than the population of Texas has grown. Why? Just gigantic, detached houses for everybody? I think this is why people say the California housing crisis is such a calamity for the environment. A person in Texas consumes 150% more energy.
Haven't look up the numbers but it's possible that this and other industrial facilities consume a large amount.
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Yes, but no. Nuclear power plants are extremely costly because they lack prefabrication-level standardization. This is the main cost driver. And this is simply because there's no economies of scale. Because we're not building enough. Classic vicious cycle. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> because they lack prefabrication-level standardization It is not the only reason. Another reason is too many regulations and unpredictable government. As a private investor, you get lower ROI because you'd need spend several years fighting bureaucracy with no predictable outcome, and after the project started, it can be shut down in a couple years.
This is true for almost any energy project nowadays. EPA regulations change and bam, you're out of business.
> too many regulations
I don't think there's "too many", but I'm very far from an expert on this. What seems evident is that a prefab reactor/plant can amortize the cost of getting approved, whereas template plants, like the AP1000 are unique every time, even if they are fundamentally very-very similar, they are not identical. Hence the need for going through all the site specific differences, and their effects on the whole system.
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It hasn't been that many years since Texas was connected to other grids.
Why do you say that? Texas has had its own grid basically forever. There are, and have been, some small connections to the other grids, but nothing that substantial. https://www.texastribune.org/2011/02/08/texplainer-why-does-...
They didn't have to be that isolated until the feds clamped down.
And ERCOT's only been going since 1970.
Could just be a matter of political "leadership" whether the feds are a riskier bureaucracy or the Austin-based boneheads.
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Why would most places bother with the expense of a fireplace really designed to heat a room? I can assure you that most new construction in Oslo (pretty much only apartments these days) don't include fireplaces. And why would they? With steam pipes running through much of the city, there's no need for the expense and pollution involved with a fireplace except for show anyway. The fact is that cities in the US, like i…
Of course apartments in city centres shouldn't have wood burning fireplaces in them. This discussion wasn't about multi-story apartments, but about the uselessness of American-style fireplaces in detached homes.
Dallas suburb here (Las Colinas). No power since Monday 6am. I had to get room at holiday inn. I actually got the room yesterday, but the hotel lost power after an hour, so I had to go back home and sleep in 5 degree apartment. Don't believe anything you read about "rolling outages". It's only rolling, if you define that as "out until it's not freezing anymore".
Have the water pipes been emptied as a precaution? Otherwise they’ve all exploded due to being frozen, right?
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Once every two years FFS this makes the Handforth Parish Council look Good.
Continuing my theme from above; if legislators took a 6 month recess after every major crisis before starting to debate it the quality of law would probably be a lot better. Democracies naturally tend to deadlock anyway, stuff everyone agrees on got waved through years ago. Most of the time in session is grandstanding and making a fuss without achieving much. Legislators have a terrible habit of using a crisis to: 1)…