Where I live in Scotland about 73% of electricity generated come from renewables (mostly wind and hydro). I’m hugely in favour of this, but the bills keep rising.
I firmly believe the utility companies should be nationalised. I’m not against capitalism per se, but the current setup is a racket.
Public necessaries like energy, water, public transport etc should never have been handed over to companies to begin with in my opinion.
You know why right?
The grid is constraint and because of this it makes prices really high where the congestion is. Now the logical thing is to allow a different price where there is free energy like in Scotland verse where it is constraint.
But! The issue is where it is constraint and that’s south east England. And as everyone in the country knows no one gets anything in the UK unless south east England has more of it for less.
So higher prices in SE England is not going to happen. If it was the other way around I’m certain the government would say fuck the Scots they should have more wind power if they wanted cheap electricity.
Yeah honestly even if we were at 100% renewables, the price has been set and people are used to it now. No company is going to voluntarily start discounting unless more competition enters the market to start a price war. So far most of the energy “competition” has gone bust.
Will they really though?
Have you looked at your power bill and seen how much of the bill is not power consumption?
We have also seen multiple times where the wholesale price of electricity is below zero yet consumers are still paying for power during those times.
Have you looked at your power bill and seen how much of the bill is not power consumption?
Not in US, but after our power went private it literally doubled. The nice lady tried to convince me the “extra” charges were always there but not itemized, but while holding the previous bill with the same (within a few points) my usage was the same but the “fees” were as much as my power usage
Did she open the flaps on her shirt and start rubbing her nipples?
Now that you mention it, I think I did hear that velcro ripping noise
In the long run, yes. In the short term, the grid upgrades are quite expensive.
One form of government investment is subsidized panels for homes so you rely on utilities less.
Would also be cheaper if the government owned the energy infrastructure and ran at cost.
but that’s communism!!!
Ikr? What else is it? A good idea that would benefit people broadly instead of specific people narrowly?
You want elected officials to be competent and follow the will of those whom they represent?
that’s woke nonsense
Pfft caring about anything but myself, what a suckers game.
Empathy? what woke bs is that, as a true Jesus loving Christian I hate my neighbors
China does subsidize their electricity, and are self declared communists. It seems like if it goes to corporations it would be more of a Corporatocracy however.
How would it be cheaper?
How is it so expensive?
That’s not an answer. In my city for example, the water and trash service are public and price duplicated from 2024, water pipes, sanitation and all that is public infrastructure maintained by the city, the only thing private in this whole thing may be the trash trucks.
Energy is also heavily subsidized and we still have to pay a lot.
In my experience government doesn’t make utilities cheaper.
If it was private, you would pay more for the same service, because the private company has all the same costs as now, but also needs to make a profit. So if you keep it public, it will cost less.
Not necessarily, it could also be better run, more efficient with less employees.
For example maybe instead of 4 sets of at least 2 trash containers around my street there would only be 2 or 1 with all the pertinent colors (the company does more stuff than water)
But I guess this is the bad side of living in a country with more public employees than private.
That would be a reduction in the service quality, which is the other thing that always happens when utility services are privatised. So you get to pay more money for less service. The company has no incentive to provide a good service, because what else are you going to do?
The government has no incentive to provide a good service because what are you going to do? Stop paying?
Or the quicker way: the government nationalises all power companies, and sold electricity for cheap… Because it’s necessary… For society…
Both. Both is good.
Yes but how would the fascists get kickbacks and bribes then? That’s a big chunk of their income. Won’t someone think of the oligarchy???
Solar is so cheap now, that some people can just build their own solar and battery setup themselves.
Yes, but at scale it is significantly cheaper to build larger and distribute it. It also means people don’t have to over invest in their own set up just to cover their peak usage. There is also a large amount of up front capital required to build with usually years before you get back what was invested. Its also almost impossible for renters or apartment buildings to do it themselves.
Yes I know all of that, I’m saying that solar is so much cheaper than coal power that even private individuals can buy it, so we shouldn’t be wasting money on new coal plants or gas plants.
Same for nuclear. U.S.-Americans are brainwashed on this topic.
First, they pay with their tax dollars for the subsidies that the private for-profit companies use to build the nuclear reactors. After that, they pay again, because the private company charges them extra on the electricity bill for the electricity generated by the very same nuclear reactor so that they can make even more profit.
It’s so stupid and they’re brainwashed to defend it to the teeth. They also always try to deflect from the fact that renewables are cheaper than nuclear and can be owned by them instead of a for-profit company, by pretending that everyone who opposes nuclear energy must be in favour of coal and gas. It’s mind boggling to watch.
Nuclear power is really cool, but my biggest problem with building new reactors isn’t even the money issues you pointed out, it’s the fact that I live in the US and I don’t trust any regulatory agency to build a new nuclear power plant correctly/safely.
Solar panels and wind turbines are monumentally cheaper AND they don’t potentially cause ten thousand year contamination problems.
Nuclear power is really cool Why though? It’s insanely inefficient in terms of costs and really, really dangerous if something goes seriously wrong.
If you install a solar panels with a regulator, it’s running in less than 2 weeks and goes for decades with very little maintenance that almost every idiot can do. Plus, you don’t have to pay for a company’s profit while getting that energy. Now THAT is cool in my opinion.
Clearly this sub haven’t seen this video from Technology Connections. It breaks it all down for you step by step why the statement is true.
Its still crazy how great solar can be when doing the maths based off his states solar farms. Imagine how great the numbers would be if the sunny parts of the world did solar too
I’m not gonna watch the full hour and a half, but I skimmed through to make sure his message was at least mostly consistent. This guy is talking about renewable energy for cars and vaguely extrapolates that to all energy requirements.
Doing a quick Google search came up with 2.2-5.2 trillion watt-hours as the amount of energy needed if all US vehicles were electric. Currently the US generates ~11 trillion watt-hours per day so this would increase that amount ~20-50%. In this video the guy mentioned a 27 megawatt solar farm (~130-150 MWh/day), but a large coal plant generates 15-24k MWh/day (500-1000 MW instantaneous).
The US currently has ~12.5k utility scale electric power plants, to replace those with solar and switch all cars to electric you would need ~2-2.5 million solar farms the size represented in the video.
The industry standard is that each megawatt a solar farm is rated takes 5-10 acres. For nuclear that value is ~0.8 acres/megawatt and for coal it’s ~0.64 acres/megawatt. While large power plants generate ~500-1000 MW they vary in size dramatically so the actual average is closer to 50 MW per plant. By that math, the current total land for existing plants should be ~400,000 acres but the equivalent if we switched to 100% solar power would be 270-675 million acres of land.
I’m not saying that renewables are bad or that we shouldn’t pursue them, I’m also not arguing that we should all hold on to gas burning cars, but there is not compelling enough evidence that switching to 100% renewable energy would be cheaper.
EDIT: The estimates here don’t include things like the coal mines included in them but it also doesn’t take into account the production of panels, batteries, or the component materials in either of them such as lithium mines. I think solar probably wins out when comparing just that side, but their land usage alone likely tips things.
This conversation chain is hilarious. The guy in the video does a great job, but you don’t want to watch 90 minutes - then watch the first 30 minutes at the very least without skimming. Okay, but then I see you go do long replies - how long did all of that take you in total? an hour? 90 minutes? for what? But it appears that you prefer it presented as a Coles notes version so maybe you learn differently.
To put it in simpler terms for those that still haven’t gotten it, if you were min-maxing for the long game, which one would ultimately come out on top? You must consider the cost of not only capital, but also environmental impacts and how this will affect the general economy as as a whole (agriculture for example rely on stable weather patterns). I am sure the long view is to go for the one that is long term sustainable with minimal drawbacks.
The only common ground that we can agree on is that the best we can do right now is to have a hybridized system. But we need to start transitioning where possible - and fast. The solar tech mentioned in the video has vastly improved since its inception. This isn’t going to happen overnight, nor in 5 years or 10 years. This is an ongoing project for humanity as a whole. Producing usable and store-able energy without killing ourselves in the long term is one of the biggest hurdles we have to face as humans.
Or …. The extra electricity needed for EVs is zero or maybe even negative. Except for batteries, power is not dispatchable. Power plants can’t react to the amount of power needed at any time and they get inefficient trying. If we had a way to charge when supply is greater than demand, we can not only make use of previously wasted power but even make power plants more efficient by giving them steadier demand
The extra electricity needed for EVs is zero or maybe even negative
That’s unlikely to be the case, the US already does use batteries in power production and the amount more we would need to switch all US power to solar would be astonishingly high.
Power plants can’t react to the amount of power needed at any time and they get inefficient trying
They can’t react in the minute by minute basis, but they do react to usage. Most coal fired plants only operate at about 50% capacity most of the time and bring on reactors to match the predicted power usage curve. When building a power curve profile the power company typically takes into account constant power as a baseline (solar and hydro being always on during the hours it is active and the power output of a given number of reactors is relatively set). Power is then supplemented with smaller generation sites which might use natural gas or even petroleum products. The smaller sites are far less efficient and make less power, but the name of the game when making power is making sure you always have enough for demand.
Let’s say it’s peak day, 25 solar farms are making 675 MW right now, each coal plant reactor can make 500 MW and the demand right now is 1250 MW. You start up your natural gas turbine plant to make up the difference during peak day, but as the sun goes down you start up reactor 2 and 3. As reactor 2 and 3 get going the power usage goes up to 1600 as people come home and the solar farms stop generating power so you continue using your turbine plant but also start drawing from your batteries. Once reactor 2 and 3 are up and running you might stop using your turbine and keep drawing from your batteries, but when people go to sleep the power usage drops to 700 MW. Now power usage has dropped but you keep the reactors going for a while or begin to shut them down (they will still make some power as they shutdown) to recharge the batteries.
All these numbers are hypothetical, but it’s a description of how the process works.
New data centers should have to pay on a sliding scale based on energy availability in the local grid. And if they want to build out generation it should be solar and wind only.
Energy is cheaper where the government has a public alternative. That goes for all utilities and services.
Spain invested in green energy and I am paying a shit ton on utility bills.
It’s kind of hard to judge considering the whiplash from Europe moving away from Russia.
Checkout the cost over time here (and set it to the 10 years view): https://tradingeconomics.com/spain/electricity-price
It’s cheaper now than 10 years ago, but the Russian invasion made everything way more volatile.
As I understand it, Spanish generation is cheap but its grid is outdated, so it’ll continue like that until more of the grid is switched out.
Cheaper utilities was never the goal
When the price goes up it’s because the renewables don’t produce power when there is no wind and sun (which pretty much sums up January here). Building more of something that does not produce power is not going to help with the price shocks.
We need to figure out grid scale storage, fusion or build nuclear power to get rid of fossil fuels. Until then utility bills will be occasionally more shocking than jamming a fork in the outlet.
At this point we should call it embezzlement instead of investment
Anything cheaper for the consumer means less profit, which means less money for bribes, which means conservative governments are against it
Maybe Nuclear, given it can actually support the base load power, except they need to fully deregulate it first so Nimbys and lawsuits balloon the cost. It shouldnt cost more nowadays in inflation adjusted terms than France building them in the 70s.
Your talking points are ten years out of date. The cheapest form of baseload power now is batteries plus solar. For seasonal variations? Nuclear is so expensive that it’s far cheaper to just build enough to meet your winter electricity demand and have abundant power the rest of the year.
Fission is a dead end technology that people mostly support now so they can feel a sense of contrarian intellectual superiority. It’s all just vibes at this point.
Do you have an example of a city that runs on renewables with battery storage with no duplicate backup base load generator?
As far as I was aware there were none, as it is non-feasible outside of areas with hydro dams for power storage.
Do you have an example of a city that runs on renewables with battery storage with no duplicate backup base load generator?
Thankfully cities don’t build isolated power grids.
