
It can make more sense to build new renewable capacity than run old coal plants - backtobecks
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-11-07/wind-and-solar-power-have-become-amazingly-affordable
======
mikece
"[Wind and solar are] even close to being competitive with the marginal costs
of running the coal and nuclear plants we already have."

Is that still true without incentives, green grants, rebates, and tax credits?
Because without all of that and with mountains of red tape nuclear still
produces energy at the lowest cost, and without emitting any CO2.

~~~
throwaway5752
Are you sure about that? You should look at the fortunes of the engineering
groups McDermott, CB&I, and Shaw and how the cost overruns associated with the
Westinghouse contributed to so much trouble for those EPC companies and
Toshiba. Nuclear has two big problems: difficulty with costs of constructing
new plants and currently completely externalized storage of spent fuel. The
latter is poorly defined and understood, even though some people would like to
give the appearance otherwise.

~~~
tefferon
is there any reason why we can't conceivably jettison nuclear waste out of
orbit?

~~~
imtringued
Because there is no need to. The radioactive material wasn't a problem before
it was dug out of the soil. It's not a problem if it returns to where it came
from. The problem is that most government try to find an idiotic central
storage location instead of simply distributing the spent fuel over many
locations.

~~~
mantoto
Oh yeah sounds easy until someone digs it out again and puts it in a bomb.

Or it leaks and reaches our water...

No risk there never has been.

------
air7
I don't understand the hype around wind and solar. Or rather I don't see how
these technologies can ever be anything more than a minor player in the energy
market:

These technologies are extremely sensitive to weather conditions which means
that other, more stable sources must exist and have "stand by" production cap
to produce all the energy these tech won't under bad conditions. If so, what's
the point? (I mean in the grand, climate crisis, scheme of things) what am I
missing?

Even in "green" countries, most of the green energy comes from bio fuel which
is just burning young "soon to be coal".

~~~
ryan_j_naughton
Energy storage will enable us to use only clean renewables. While the costs
for energy storage aren't falling nearly as fast, they are still decreasing. I
anticipate that rate to accelerate

~~~
tefferon
Why does everyone turn from Nuclear though? It seems like the most viable
option in my opinion. I'd rather have a network of nuke power where energy
reliability is weather-independent than forests of wind and farms of solar. I
feel like its a much greener approach overall. What's the manufacturing
breakeven in carbon costs for a windmill or a solar panel?

~~~
Faark
In my case geopolitical reasons, mostly. I prefer nuclear plants not be in
what the US president lovingly calls shithole countries. Those tend to not yet
have nuclear, but a drastically increasing need for energy. Many of them are
also a lot closer to the equator than western countries with existing nuclear,
making solar much more viable than e.g. in the UK.

> What's the manufacturing breakeven in carbon costs for a windmill or a solar
> panel?

This questions feels like you mostly try to justify your otherwise preexisting
preference. A proper system would have external costs factored into the price,
by the way.

------
0000011111
I learned from Professor Vaclav Smil that while Wind and Solar are practical
energy solutions in the United States population ~340mil. It is not practical
in all regions in more populous countries such as China (population ~1.4
Billion).

There are large regions in the country where Solar is not a good solution due
to fog. And Wind is not a good solution due to lack of wind.

We have a global climate system. As is such if the goal is to reduce carbon
emissions in some areas Nuclear power is the most effective method to achieve
this goal. Furthermore, moving China to non-carbon energy sources would have
the largest impact globally. They use ~ 22 GigaWatts of electricity per year.
Which is 3.6 times as much as the US which is the 2ed largest consumer of
energy by country.

[http://vaclavsmil.com/](http://vaclavsmil.com/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption)

~~~
henryfjordan
This is surprising to hear. Here's some back of the napkin math that seems to
contradict the assertion that there's not enough sunlight to power humanity:
[https://ag.tennessee.edu/solar/Pages/What%20Is%20Solar%20Ene...](https://ag.tennessee.edu/solar/Pages/What%20Is%20Solar%20Energy/Sun's%20Energy.aspx)

They claim texas recieves >300x the amount of power consumed in the form of
sunlight.

Another source claims that the Sun delivers enough power in a single hour to
power the earth for a year: [https://www.businessinsider.com/this-is-the-
potential-of-sol...](https://www.businessinsider.com/this-is-the-potential-of-
solar-power-2015-9)

I can respect the fact that we cannot capture 100% of that power, but even a
fraction should power the earth, no?

~~~
clairity
it's not even that surprising when you consider that basically _all_ of
earth's energy through its lifetime derives from the sun in some form.

the main exceptions--radiative exchange with the rest of the universe and
energy from earth's core--are relatively insignificant sources compared to the
solar influx of energy.

fossil fuels are just solar energy captured and (inefficiently) transformed
over hundreds of millions of years through plant and animal intermediaries.
wind and hydro (weather-based energy) are also intermediated forms of solar
energy.

the sun is effectively unlimited energy for billions of years, mostly being
radiated away right now, so the closer we get to transforming it directly into
useful forms, the better off we are.

------
thisisnico
Oh, can I not wait to ditch Ontario's Power for my own Renewables. The costs
are reaching extremes now. We have some of the most expensive power in the
world.

~~~
tekstar
Ontario power is mostly from renewable sources already, but yes it is highly
mismanaged.

You can see the hourly Ontario energy use by source here:

[http://www.ieso.ca/power-data](http://www.ieso.ca/power-data)

One of the worst inefficiencies of the Ontario grid is that we run an
abundance of energy during parts of the day, during which we dump electricity
to the US at extremely cheap rates. If that electricity were offered at the
same rate to Ontario residents (who are paying for it!) you would see
residents retrofit homes with dual-fire gas/electric heating and other
utilities. Or if we had a means to store that electricity it would cover the
highest-use parts of the day (approximately 3 hours later) where we still fire
natural gas to cover demand.

~~~
VintageCool
Is there a minimum rate at which they produce hydro power? That seems like a
great option to spin down hydro power during those parts of the day, store the
water, and then spin the hydro plants back up at peak load.

~~~
Scoundreller
About a quarter of it is from Niagara Falls, ie: run of the river.

The amount that they divert varies by time: they want to keep the falls nice
during the day, but divert more at night.

And a lot of dams are dual use: controlling water levels while generating
electricity, so it really depends on weather. When it’s dry they can maybe do
this, but when it’s wet, they gotta be careful. Or vice versa depending on
which side it’s raining more on.

------
ericvanular
Love reading this kind of news. As an aside, this is the exact type of content
that is super welcome on the platform we launched in a Show HN on the front
page today
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21472817](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21472817)).
The url is [https://collective.energy](https://collective.energy) if you're
interested in growing your impact further!

------
Causality1
I wish small scale solar was falling as fast, especially very small scale. It
would be nice to be able to purchase a blanket-sized solar panel for twenty
bucks.

------
ctdonath
My experience with utility solar is it’s getting competitive but not reliably
so yet:
[https://twitter.com/ctdonath/status/1184138472988315648?s=20](https://twitter.com/ctdonath/status/1184138472988315648?s=20)

------
zwieback
Sounds great until you read the caveats, I think the general agreement is that
choosing the best of the dirtiest sources is going to be the important
decision facing my kids' generation.

