Sun and wind micro generation could provide a robust energy grid for us all if actively managed but we always need clean nuclear to provide reliable background levels.
But if we can find a way to streamline nuclear builds why bother losing all the famland to solar or windfarms? Individuals can still put panels on their rooftops but we could get rid of the unreliable solar and wind entirely.
Dene, you weren't listening to this video. Nuclear works best when running all the time and relies on something else to provide flexibility. It's not a way to provide flexibility.
We need a bottom up focus with energy. Right now, the CEO of our local power company is an oligarch, taking home more than ten million dollars US per year. And to pay for the huge executive salaries, we pay $0.42 per kWh for electricity. Countries need to focus on: 1. Insulation and efficiency and electrifying homes and businesses. Insulation is essential as are heat pumps. 2. Homeowners need access to similar financing and permitting rates given to mega corporations. Right now the US is seeing the fastest transfer of wealth from citizens to oligarchs and monopoly corporations the world has ever seen. At least make sure citizens have similar access to funding as the oligarchs, instead of driving citizens into poverty as the oligarchs are doing in the US. 3. A distributed grid of panels and batteries on homes and small businesses will be more robust. And, it enables efficiencies from producing and storing energy where it is used, and lessening the need for power lines that hugely expensive and disruptive to towns and landscapes. 4. Put solar panels over every appropriate big box store, school, factory, home, car park, reservoir, irrigation canal, etc. before unnecessarily sacrificing essential farmland and what little is left of our rapidly dying natural world. 5. Putting solar and batteries on homes and small businesses will enable families and small business owners to survive in a world where people are increasingly becoming enslaved to monopolies and oligarchs. 6. If a home or business owner generates and stores their own energy, they’ll ditch gas stoves and furnaces and vehicles. 7. EVs will add more energy storage and make the entire energy system more robust.
We would not need renewables if we could streamline nuclear builds (like China is doing). Nuclear takes up far less space, works 24-7-365, is almost as safe as solar (safer than wind and every other form of power). People say nuclear plants take a long time to build. This is only true in certain countries (eg. UK and US) at certain periods in time (in the past even the US built their nuclear plants quickly). The median time to build a nuclear plant in Japan is 52 months (about the same as a fossil fuel plant) vs 91 months in the USA. It's about red tape and the will to actually get it done. I would rather have a modern nuclear plant in my area than an onshore wind farm or a solar array. However I do love my off grid solar panels (bought 2nd hand from solar farms who sell off perfectly good panels because of the way government subsidies work). They let me have power to garden buildings instead of me running armoured cable everywhere. Solar does have a place...and that place is on a garden building rooftop.
Mostly because renewable electricity is less than half the price of nuclear. So you _could_ make a system that was entirely nuclear+storage based but it would be a lot more expensive than one that is nuclear+renewables+storage. Bear in mind that nuclear is not a peaking technology so you can't make a system that works from nothing but nuclear; you have to have a lot of something else to fill in the peaks. That's storage, demand-management, gas-peakers, interconnects, which are all the same things you need to make a primarily-renewables system work. Some diversity in generation is a good thing in itself, because you never know what will happen. e.g. French river-based nuclear has to get turned off in heatwaves because the output cooling water gets too hot. It's useful to have diversity of generation when that sort of thing happens.
@@xxwookey "Mostly because renewable electricity is less than half the price of nuclear.". Not if you include the battery backup that stops solar and wind wrecking the stability of the power grid (like they did in California and Texas). Solar and wind costs are very misleading. But I'll admit - because the USA and UK have basically forgotten how to build nuclear plants over the past 30 years, the costs are higher than they need to be. The hyperscalers like Google, Microsoft, Oracle and Amazon are all investing heavily in nuclear because it's the only option for AI data centers. Those companies have enough money to buy their way out of the problem (and buy enough politicians to make the paperwork easier), and the rest of us will benefit because we'll have access to cheaper, clean, safe nuclear power in about ten years. By then we'll be knee deep in lithium battery, solar panel and wind turbine waste and wondering why the heck we ever thought wind and solar were a good idea.
@@xxwookey Re the peak issue. Remember that today's power grids were designed for base load generation like nuclear (except then it was coal and gas). It's solar and wind that are destabilising the grids. In the UK we have pumped hydro and gas turbine power stations that deal with the variations. But Bill Gates Natrium project is building a massive molten salt battery next to the nuclear plant to act as a variable power source. Way cheaper and less polluting than lithium batteries.
Sun and wind micro generation could provide a robust energy grid for us all if actively managed but we always need clean nuclear to provide reliable background levels.
But if we can find a way to streamline nuclear builds why bother losing all the famland to solar or windfarms? Individuals can still put panels on their rooftops but we could get rid of the unreliable solar and wind entirely.
Dene, you weren't listening to this video. Nuclear works best when running all the time and relies on something else to provide flexibility. It's not a way to provide flexibility.
Very good thanks
Great pod. Keep up the good work
We need a bottom up focus with energy. Right now, the CEO of our local power company is an oligarch, taking home more than ten million dollars US per year. And to pay for the huge executive salaries, we pay $0.42 per kWh for electricity.
Countries need to focus on:
1. Insulation and efficiency and electrifying homes and businesses. Insulation is essential as are heat pumps.
2. Homeowners need access to similar financing and permitting rates given to mega corporations. Right now the US is seeing the fastest transfer of wealth from citizens to oligarchs and monopoly corporations the world has ever seen. At least make sure citizens have similar access to funding as the oligarchs, instead of driving citizens into poverty as the oligarchs are doing in the US.
3. A distributed grid of panels and batteries on homes and small businesses will be more robust. And, it enables efficiencies from producing and storing energy where it is used, and lessening the need for power lines that hugely expensive and disruptive to towns and landscapes.
4. Put solar panels over every appropriate big box store, school, factory, home, car park, reservoir, irrigation canal, etc. before unnecessarily sacrificing essential farmland and what little is left of our rapidly dying natural world.
5. Putting solar and batteries on homes and small businesses will enable families and small business owners to survive in a world where people are increasingly becoming enslaved to monopolies and oligarchs.
6. If a home or business owner generates and stores their own energy, they’ll ditch gas stoves and furnaces and vehicles.
7. EVs will add more energy storage and make the entire energy system more robust.
Fab stuff
if we need nuclear to provide a backup to cover intermittent renewables why do we need renewables?
We would not need renewables if we could streamline nuclear builds (like China is doing). Nuclear takes up far less space, works 24-7-365, is almost as safe as solar (safer than wind and every other form of power). People say nuclear plants take a long time to build. This is only true in certain countries (eg. UK and US) at certain periods in time (in the past even the US built their nuclear plants quickly). The median time to build a nuclear plant in Japan is 52 months (about the same as a fossil fuel plant) vs 91 months in the USA. It's about red tape and the will to actually get it done. I would rather have a modern nuclear plant in my area than an onshore wind farm or a solar array. However I do love my off grid solar panels (bought 2nd hand from solar farms who sell off perfectly good panels because of the way government subsidies work). They let me have power to garden buildings instead of me running armoured cable everywhere. Solar does have a place...and that place is on a garden building rooftop.
@@bbasmdc 🙄 China installed ~80x the solar as N in H1 20x the wind. Nuclear is a bit player in China.
Mostly because renewable electricity is less than half the price of nuclear. So you _could_ make a system that was entirely nuclear+storage based but it would be a lot more expensive than one that is nuclear+renewables+storage. Bear in mind that nuclear is not a peaking technology so you can't make a system that works from nothing but nuclear; you have to have a lot of something else to fill in the peaks. That's storage, demand-management, gas-peakers, interconnects, which are all the same things you need to make a primarily-renewables system work. Some diversity in generation is a good thing in itself, because you never know what will happen. e.g. French river-based nuclear has to get turned off in heatwaves because the output cooling water gets too hot. It's useful to have diversity of generation when that sort of thing happens.
@@xxwookey "Mostly because renewable electricity is less than half the price of nuclear.". Not if you include the battery backup that stops solar and wind wrecking the stability of the power grid (like they did in California and Texas). Solar and wind costs are very misleading. But I'll admit - because the USA and UK have basically forgotten how to build nuclear plants over the past 30 years, the costs are higher than they need to be. The hyperscalers like Google, Microsoft, Oracle and Amazon are all investing heavily in nuclear because it's the only option for AI data centers. Those companies have enough money to buy their way out of the problem (and buy enough politicians to make the paperwork easier), and the rest of us will benefit because we'll have access to cheaper, clean, safe nuclear power in about ten years. By then we'll be knee deep in lithium battery, solar panel and wind turbine waste and wondering why the heck we ever thought wind and solar were a good idea.
@@xxwookey Re the peak issue. Remember that today's power grids were designed for base load generation like nuclear (except then it was coal and gas). It's solar and wind that are destabilising the grids. In the UK we have pumped hydro and gas turbine power stations that deal with the variations. But Bill Gates Natrium project is building a massive molten salt battery next to the nuclear plant to act as a variable power source. Way cheaper and less polluting than lithium batteries.
Octopus is already offering a time-of-use tariff called Agile (unit price changes every 30 mins).