Energy would be so abundant it’d be free, if we’d done Fusion 50 years ago.
What’s more important? Cheap power for the whole country? Or the pockets of the people in charge?
just in case
/s
Well maybe, but only if they owned the infrastructure themselves.
As it stands, the price paid to renewable energy suppliers tracks the amount paid to fossil fuel suppliers.
There’s a reason every farmer wants to fill their fields with solar panels, and it’s got little to do with making electricity cheaper for the end user.
That said, there’s no reason not to do it anyway, at least if we want more than a few more hundred years of humanity. A tough ask in a time where every decision is made based on an election that happens in the next 4 years by people who won’t live another 20.
And housing would be cheaper if it wasn’t treated as a value-retaining investment.
Just say it’s better for AI and they’re all for it
Finland has done something like this and the few days of winter where it’s very cold and no wind are kinda rough. There was a day recently where I spent 50 euros on electricity alone. And I have somewhat efficient heating tech like a geothermal heat pump.
Nuclear Energy because green energy is really expensive too
Wrong
Brother in christ, i work with energy companies that do renewable energy and trust me, that stuff is really expensive to maintain for the amount of power you get out of it, Even the amount of environmental disturbance those wind turbines cause alone, un healthy for people, unhealthy for animals(Look it up). Nuclear power is very safe these days and there are storage places like Onkalo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository Which make storing the waste super easy and viable as well as secure for even post human civilizations.
The only thing green energy is good for is politics
And i cant remember when was the last time solar panels poisoned the land for 10000 years
https://rewi.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/REWI-Solar-Energy-Wildlife-Interactions-Summary-2023.pdf Interesting read on fatalities in north america though they mention they could not find a root cause yet due to lack of data
https://sistinesolar.com/solar-panels-and-wildlife/
- Depending on the kind of setup, if a central tower is used to concentrate the light to boil water the concentrated light become a death trap to birds and insects
- These plants can appear as lakes due to the reflection and colors(Especially in deserts where these are build confusing wild life
- The floating solar power systems disrupt fish activity and affect water quality
- It also messes up migrations of birds(Wind turbines can do this too)
It is still infidelity better than carbon in the skies but if you put this against nuclear energy and treat the MAN MADE NUCLEAR DISASTERS for what they are MAN MADE then you can see that nuclear power in this day and age is very very safe because we have years of safety development.
People who do not understand this are still stuck in the past or follow a global anti Nuclear rethoric without putting in the time to actually understand the technology.
Meltdowns are a thing of the past when thorium salt reactors become mainstream because those reactions dont run away they halt the moment you remove the fuel, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-salt_reactor
MSRs eliminate the nuclear meltdown scenario present in water-cooled reactors because the fuel mixture is kept in a molten state. The fuel mixture is designed to drain without pumping from the core to a containment vessel in emergency scenarios, where the fuel solidifies, quenching the reaction. In addition, hydrogen evolution does not occur. This eliminates the risk of hydrogen explosions (as in the Fukushima nuclear disaster).[2] They operate at or close to atmospheric pressure, rather than the 75–150 times atmospheric pressure of a typical light-water reactor (LWR).
Nuclear power is really cool and i highly suggest you give it a chance at least in researching it, there are tons of awesome videos on YouTube to help with this which gave me a ton of insight and storage facilities like:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repository
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Power_Generation's_Deep_Geologic_Repository
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Waste_Management_Organization_(Canada)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schacht_Asse_II
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repository_for_radioactive_waste_Morsleben
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_dome_Gorleben
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schacht_Konrad
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolseong_Low_and_Intermediate_Level_Radioactive_waste_Disposal_Center
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_repository_for_short-lived_radioactive_waste
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository to name a few give me hope that this nuclear waste has plenty of places to go to sit out their long half time by the end of it becomes inert
I see 2 problems First - human error and human greed.
Second - we solve problems only after we face a disaster, we never know if the system is flawless right now.
And Id rather live near solar grid that might malfunction sometimes and requires maintenance every decade.
But I respect your anti ff point of view. I also understand everything you talking about. I wasted too many years learning chemistry, engineering
Second - we solve problems only after we face a disaster, we never know if the system is flawless right now. This is why the tech is tested in a controlled matter, This counts for everything including wind turbines, solar panels and the food you eat.
human error and human greed.Funny enough this is the exact thing working against nuclear energy, there is big money in Green Energy because it creates a ton of jobs, Nuclear energy is so efficient the surplus of energy would fuck over most fossil power companies thats human greed for you.I would rather live in a city that has a respected and well maintained nuclear power plant so there is more area for nature than to cut down a forest so we can win some power, Molten Salt reactors are the future and its going to be a whole different world compared to traditional reactors, China is ahead in this because they dont have anything blocking this development.
But with projects like ITER i am convinced its only a matter of time before nuclear is in again, Its going to be a combination of Tidal/Hydro, Solar/Wind and Geothermal plus nuclear to phase out fossil fuel, these cannot do that on their own, even nuclear power.
If we want to rid ourselves of the cancer that is gas/oil/coal then we have to embrace the alternatives not fight against them with a mindset from the 1980’s (Fukushima was engineered against twice the highest recorded tsunami, The sendai earthquake tsunami was a freak show) That said it was TEPCO that fucked up royally by sticking with General Electric design which placed the backup gens below sea level(The engineers of TEPCO warned against this vulnerability but TEPCO sided with GE instead) this is why those gens failed.
That said if they had a Molten Salt reactor(Thorium) the reaction would have halted on its own before triggering a meltdown which would have prevented:
- The need to vent radioactive steam into the atmosphere
- The sacrifice of the 50 who stayed behind to halt the reaction
- Marking Fukushima as dangerous
I agree fully that traditional nuclear power has its dangerous if not handled correctly, The future will eliminate most of this danger and compared to other energy(non fossile) Hydro and Nuclear have to be the most mature oldest ones
Btw since you are an engineer too i highly recommend checking a few videos on Fukushima, their reactor design is super cool and has multiple failsafes which prevented the disaster from being worse such as the cooling ring / pool with steam vents to prevent over pressure or cool down fuel in case a meltdown is about to happen.
The movie Fukushima Daiichi is also super awesome and has some famous japanese actors in it, they sticked very close to the actual events, was a thrill to watch :D
Also thanks for keeping an open mind, i respect that
Well turbines kill birds. Just 10000 times less than cats. Good luck aligning budget for 10 - 20 years with this volatile economy. I can sustain myself and my family with solar easily
Educate yourself on Nuclear power, you already got 50% of the work done, Renewable energy needs nuclear power to kick out fossil fuel.
Its not a this or that its the combination of both that will make us carbon neutral
Why are utilities privatized?
Our energy provider increased our rates, then reported record breaking profits the next year. :(
(US)
Grid should be public and production should be privatised.
They should be nonprofits, independent, but strictly non profit
Nah, let’s privatize all the services you need to have a functional home. That way the companies can extract maximum value from the customers.
Brilliant.
better yet, let’s put them on the stock market so they obligated to squeeze their “customers”
Won’t anyone think of the shareholders!?
For real though, I had a job where the management team tried to motivate us by setting “shareholder expectations” or some such nonsense. Obviously this didn’t work. Also the company was small enough that pretty much everyone working there personally knew all the shareholders… Because they also ran the business. They were the managers.
The balls it must take to be a shareholder, and to be known as a shareholder then talk about shareholder expectations like those are for a different set of people that isn’t just you… Gotta be massive…
oof ya, unless they are doing profit sharing they can fuck right off with that
And those who are/want to go off grid:
Straight to jail.
That’s so typical.
Source: also US
Same here and I just found out the majority shareholder of my electric company is black rock. And the same year our rates went up the highest is the same year the CEOs made a bunch of bonuses.
Because as a general rule governments aren’t efficient running services and that’s fine for a while but long term that means infrastructure isn’t properly maintained which leads to service malfunction, which leads to privatization because someone else can do it better and competence appears because someone else things can do it better than the other or to collapse because things don’t work anymore.
Source: I am Spanish, a lot of companies were privatized after the dictatorship because they weren’t efficient and infrastructure was falling apart. Privatizing allowed competence which meant someone had to invest in infrastructure to be better than the other. Problem is now governments are confabulated with some of those companies to create oligopolies. For example my city has it’s own water/trash company (half private half public) so no one is allowed to bid against them; you can imagine how that is going (from paying 35€ every 3 months to paying 65€ in one year), price goes up, no one can’t complain or hire a cheaper one, while with cable and phone companies since Telefonica was privatized other companies popped out and you can have cheaper and better internet/phone/tv.
Portugal decided to privatize their electricity and outsource it to China.
So government can spend the investment on schools and hospitals instead. (In the civilised world, obviously not America)
This has little to do with where you’re from. It’s just neoliberal rhetoric. Having a public energy sector would be beneficial in the long run and would reduce what we have to pay for it. Right now the earnings are privatized in most places.
My area privatized the publicly owned electricity provider and since prices started going up they then had to implement rebates to bring bills down a bit. Effectively a roundabout way to move public funds from paying for the actual infrastructure into subsidizing corporate profits instead
Exactly. Privatize the profits and socialize the costs. What a brilliant system. Unfortunately it benefits only a small handful while everyone else picks up the tab.
How’s Venezuela’s infrastructure after two decades of socialism?
Ah, whataboutism. How cunning. I’m done with you.
It’s called evidence lol
Having a public energy sector would be beneficial in the long run and would reduce what we have to pay for it.
A well-run public energy sector, certainly. Idk what we’d end up with given the most recent rotation of people in charge.
The state does have an incentive to keep consumer costs low in a way the private sector does not. But state officials also traditionally do a bad job of maintaining and expanding utilities to match consumer demand.
The end result tends to be low end user prices at the expense of reliable distribution and surplus volume.
It’s not rhetoric. It’s economics 101. Opportunity cost.
A mixture of private and public is best. The Nordics show market socialism done well.
Edit. A mixture allows more spend on more things. Govts can’t sell infinite debt
Thanks professor. Do you know private debt and state debt are hardly the same? Have you considered the opportunity cost of not having public energy, therefore losing potential “earnings” to private investors? Or are you telling me next that rich people are a necessity as well? Is trickle-down part of this course or do I have to wait for 201?
What a lot of shite you write. Where does the state debt come from genius?
What opportunity?
Opportunity cost. If you spend money on one thing, it means you can’t spend it on something else
Of course. So providing profits to utility “owners” is money stolen from the people that could be more productively used literally anywhere else.
The profits are in return for investment that the government couldn’t otherwise do. What’s the alternative?
Also, the private company employs people, they pay income tax.
Nah. They would be 50-60% cheaper if;
- They required the choice between two different administrators.
- They were ran as non profit (private equity is ruining utilities currently).
They required the choice between two different administrators.
Most US states have this. They mandate you can choose your energy provider.
Lol my state is one! Except it’s only offered to commercial customers. Both electric and gas offer no choice for residential.
L-o-fucking-l
Edit: seems a lot of states don’t offer electric choice for residential.
Wish mine was one.
National Grid is still cheapest for me. Womp womp.
That’s why republicans hate it.
It sounds evil and simplistic, and it is, but these are evil and simplistic people we’re talking about.
“Oh, new innovations in technology can help consumers pay less to power their homes? We can’t have that! It would affect the profits of my friends Oil Baron and Coal Baron.”
Not really, I live in a country where green energy keeps going up but so does the electricity prices. You have to believe in Santa if you think the savings ever reach the consumer.
That’s called artificially inflated prices
Of course it’s artificial, but knowing that doesn’t change the reality for the people who have to pay the bills.
Competition and choice lowers prices. Government “investment” usually raise prices.
Correct. The system is supposed to encourage investment in efficient energy production so that it can sell energy at the level of the most expensive energy that is brought to market. Resources for the Future explains it like this:
The capacity market auction works as follows: generators set their bid price at an amount equal to the cost of keeping their plant available to operate if needed. Similar to the energy market, these bids are arranged from lowest to highest. Once the bids reach the required quantity that all the retailers collectively must acquire to meet expected peak demand plus a reserve margin, the market “clears”, or supply meets demand. At this point, generators that “cleared” the market, or were chosen to provide capacity, all receive the same clearing price which is determined by the bid price of the last generator used to meet demand.
Merit order used to be a perfectly good and fair system. But renewable tech throws a monkey wrench into that system. Also shifts cost to be less demand dependent.
I live in Minnesota and the majority of the power produced in my area is Wind Turbines that are all pushing 5-10 years of use. The company operating them is well past the break even point and pure profit for every watt they get now but the price of energy is higher than ever.
Public companies or private?
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.
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?
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.
It’s almost like utilities are a natural monopoly that do not fit within the economic ideology of “free market” capitalism…
People seem to be forgetting that unless green power or nuclear power are socialized projects they would by default have to find a way to capitalize their products by some means. Whether it would be by capitalization via consumption rates, maintenance fees, or even subscription, a private business would have to be able to make ever increasing profits.
Yep. Even the most liberal of thinkers agree that natural monopolies shouldn’t be for profit.
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.
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.
