Us Attack on Renewables Will Lead to Power Crunch That Spikes Electricity Prices

Nor do I think the "apolitical" will become any less so. I see no reason why the midterms should give radically different results.

Now, it just so happens that historically things swing a bit back at midterms, and given how close things are that's enough to sway the entire power structure. It's an unfortunate reality of voting: a one-vote margin is no different from unanimity.

Even so I do not expect the overall tone to change any time soon. Those proportions seem fairly durable.

As far as I'm concerned everyone who lives here should vote. Felons, infants, people in jail, anyone who can pull a lever or an unambiguous gesture. I'd even include fetuses if they could. If the law affects you then you should have a say.

This is undoubtedly a stupid idea. But the current system is clearly broken and I'd be willing to at least try taking the principle seriously.

You know we're an exporter of fossil fuels not importer right?

The peak demand depends on a number of factors including what city/town it is, the season, the mix of residential/industrial usage, the time of day and the day of the week [1].

Also, if the peak time includes summer afternoon/evenings from 3pm to 9pm (as it does for several cities), a significant portion of that time is in daylight hours. In January in Sydney, sunset is after 8pm. You have lower (or no) power generation from solar at dusk so say 7pm but that's still 4 of the 6 peak hours where solar is impacting peak usage.

Power companies will tend to point to residential peak demand to justify price increases while often just entirely excluding industrial usage that drops off at about the same time.

Also, residential power usage (in Australia) is changing as building standards change (ie Australian houses are notorious for their energy ineeficiency, historically) and the rollout of residential solar. Smart meters, energy efficiency and batteries can really put a dent in peak electricity usage and this will only continue given how comparatively expensive Australian electricity is.

[1]: https://localelectricianssydney.com.au/electricity-peak-off-...

As AC use increased, industry switched from oil to electricity, coal to electric arc, and as power grid stabilized, peak usage shifted a lot in the last ~20 years. That's why summer/winter time do not make sense anymore and a lot of European countries are talking about not switching anymore.

This is especially true in Australia, a world leader in rooftop solar, here's something from AEMO on the topic:

> Both minimum and maximum operational demand are shifting to later in the day, driven by increasing contribution from rooftop PV. Minimum operational demand is expected to occur in the middle of the day by the mid-2020s. Maximum operational demand is expected to shift later in the day by an hour or two, when PV contribution is falling but temperatures are remain high (depending on the region and POE).

1. The price. It has plummeted in the alst 10-20 years and shows no signs of abating;

2. For many people it can be placed on their roofs so doesn't take up any land or generally require building any new structure. Generally the only planning required is artificial barriers in place to protect electricity providers;

3. It is the only form of direct power generation. Everything else involves turning a turbine. No moving parts is great for reliability. You do need some infrastructure to convert the panel output to the right voltage (eg an inverter) but that's all commodity tech;

4. Batteries are a largely solved problem for energy storage. You can use golf cart batteries if you really want.

There are problems. We need panel standardization, which I think will come with industry maturity.

Another big issue is lack of regulation for solar companies who use predatory financing on consumers and can actually make selling your home much more difficult. This is a big enough problem that any realtor will tend to advise you not to get solar because of the selling issues. This shouldn't be the case. It's a regulatory problem.

Coal is dead and it’s not coming back. Areas in which it served as the pillar of the economy need to figure something else out. I say this as someone hailing from one such area.

Speaking frankly, the way politicians keep selling the fantasy of it making a comeback is cruel.

Wyoming here. Coal country. Everyone thinks this is dumb. Including the folks in Campbell county, our top-producing coal region that has been trying to build a wind farm [1].

Trump’s social media fans in Florida and Texas like this because it feels like owning the libs. (To the extent there may be pecuniary interest, it would be in power producers. Like housing, stopping new power raises prices and profits incumbents.)

Also, that Reddit thread is about coking coal. Not the thermal coal power plants burn. It’s about American steel production shutting down in the face of our trade war. Not this new economic miracle these idiots have spun up.

[1] https://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/wyoming/...

If you see it in light of all the other actions taken across the spectrum, you land at best at "desperate dice roll to re-tool the US into a manufacturing power from the 80s", and at worst at "deliberate dismantling of a first-rate world power into a second tier paradise for oligarchs".

The actual motive is to appeal to people who have made coal part of their identity. These are people who have never been anywhere near a coal mine, but have internalized coal as Important and American, and as a way to stick it to those stupid environmentalists.

But in this timeline, they tried to violently overturn the 2020 election, and they are currently trying to rig the 2026 election by gerrymandering states they control as much as possible.

This isn't about earning the political support of people in coal country who vote GOP. If they ever face negative electoral outcomes in the future, their plan is to overturn the election using either force or legal chicanery.

I heard that before the first Trump administration, there was bipartisan support in Congress for phasing out the use coal in the US, so it seems quite possible that that bipartisan support will reassemble itself after Trump is gone (because the next President is unlikely to be as populist and as uncaring about climate change as Trump).

France did shut down superphenix for completely ideological reasons tho.

Also stopped investing in nuclear but that was not really ideological (the nuclear buildup originated in something of a misprediction, and sadly the country didn’t really capitalise on it).

All we would have had to do was have no allies for the past ~60 years, and we would have never gotten burned. We also would have been entirely irrelavant to international politics, and likely wouldn't have become one of the richest nations on earth.

World politics is like love. It's better to have had a productive alliance that hits a rough patch, than never to have had one at all.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wandel_durch_Handel

A big part of the reason why nuclear power isn’t cost-effective nowadays is because those costs have been at least partially internalized. The US federal government has stopped producing cheap nuclear fuel by disassembling nuclear weapons. Nuclear plants need to pay for the cost of storing their spent fuel on site indefinitely. Plant operators need to pay into a federal disaster insurance pool.

Solar and wind both have significant sovereignty issues. The entire solar supply chain is in China where they're heavily subsidized so the PRC can corner the market -- and substantially all the rare earths in wind turbines come from China. Generally recycling costs aren't considered and at least in the west there's no plan to recycle at least the fiberglass in turbine blades, leaving them to be buried.

I'm all for renewables but the way they're positioned is unrealistic.

Nuclear is only expensive because of the way it's built in the US, relying on the few locations made available (if any) to build basically fully customized installations. If we copy-pasted reactors onto sites that suit them it would be very competitive, don't take my word for it. Jigar Shah who headed the DOE loans program said the exact same thing during his term.

If we're being pedantic, nuclear is renewable too thanks to seawater extraction. There's a practically unlimited amount of uranium in the ocean and the rock underneath it.