Micro fission and micro fusion are coming and will probably be the baseload of the future.
Solar has made huge strides but is always going to have huge swings, seasonality, and geography issues.
Anything with the ocean is a yyuuuuuuggeee bitch for a million different reasons but primarily bc of the complexity of construction/maintenance and accelerated corrosion. Buoys generating power from vertical movement will be interesting from an automation standpoint similar to how solar has revolutionized geographically isolated applications but I don't see much more than that happening(See next section about ROE).
Wind probably isn't ever going to be super efficient, I've seen too many AHA! moments with it even in my short lifetime and career to believe it will make the leap. It also just has a low ROE from a resources standpoint and incremental change isn't going to change that fact.
Oil will still be plentiful and I'd bet we've already seen what the high price point looks like(relatively). It still has a million uses even if we were to all switch to Teslas tomorrow.
Natural Gas and LNG are going to be replacing A LOT of dirty heat and power around the world in the near future. A lot of coal is going to be on the way out as that happens.
That's all I can think of off the top of my head. Your friendly HH PM in the energy sector.
Good stuff.
I have a tough time seeing small modular reactors taking off. Seems like nimbyism is going to get in the way of mass deployment plus that tech has been on horizon for a while but never seems to be ready for commercialization. Is the levelized cost really going to be that much cheaper than a conventional nuke now? Serious question.
Grid is definitely moving towards decentralization. Batteries are the next big leap needed to handle all the variable generation coming online. Gotta flattten out dat duck curve. Another big reason why gas is pushing out coal and nukes is that it can act like baseload except it actually has some flexibility to load follow. Coal and nukes take a long time to ramp up and down and that's a big deal if you're load balancing in real time.
There already is quite a bit of wind on the grid it's just totally unpredictable. Lots of it gets curtailed during runoff season in the Northwest. It's another resource that would become more useful if there was large scale battery storage.
Storage is the big issue for most so called green energy with the exception of hydro, and hydro isn't green at all if you consider the environmental impacts of a large hydro project.
From where I'm standing it looks like we need to go all in on nuclear power or die.
Storage is the big issue for most so called green energy with the exception of hydro, and hydro isn't green at all if you consider the environmental impacts of a large hydro project.
From where I'm standing it looks like we need to go all in on nuclear power or die.
I like to think if myself as an optimist.
I like nuclear too. One of dumber things that Obama did was shut down Yucca. Didn't do the nuclear industry any favors having to keep the waste on site.
That being said operationally an all nuclear grid wouldn't work. It take days to shut down and bring up nukes from cold start. There ramp really slowly. You can see the output from Washington's 1 nuke plant if you go to BPA's load resource stack: https://transmission.bpa.gov/business/operations/wind/baltwg.aspx . It's totally flat because it's just not a very flexible resource.
Massive sticker shock with new nuke plants too. Most built in US in last 30 years have been a boondoggle. It was before my time but in 70s Washington wanted to build a shit load of nukes. That's why there's that beautiful cooling tower in Longview. Only one of like 6 got finished and we're still paying for that shitty bit of power planning. WPPSS!
Maybe the modular or fusion stuff will pan out eventually.
Storage is the big issue for most so called green energy with the exception of hydro, and hydro isn't green at all if you consider the environmental impacts of a large hydro project.
From where I'm standing it looks like we need to go all in on nuclear power or die.
I like to think if myself as an optimist.
I like nuclear too. One of dumber things that Obama did was shut down Yucca. Didn't do the nuclear industry any favors having to keep the waste on site.
That being said operationally an all nuclear grid wouldn't work. It take days to shut down and bring up nukes from cold start. There ramp really slowly. You can see the output from Washington's 1 nuke plant if you go to BPA's load resource stack: https://transmission.bpa.gov/business/operations/wind/baltwg.aspx . It's totally flat because it's just not a very flexible resource.
Massive sticker shock with new nuke plants too. Most built in US in last 30 years have been a boondoggle. It was before my time but in 70s Washington wanted to build a shit load of nukes. That's why there's that beautiful cooling tower in Longview. Only one of like 6 got finished and we're still paying for that shitty bit of power planning. WPPSS!
Maybe the modular or fusion stuff will pan out eventually.
I was there
The China Syndrome killed the industry
They aren't cheap to build but throw in not in my backyard lawsuits and they no longer scale.
Most people hear nuke and think Three Mile Island and Chernobyl
That's tough to overcome
Dixie Lee Ray, aka Dixie Lee Radiation was behind Woops. She was a scientist at Hanford and a leader in the whole field. But getting the government to build 6 at once as the public was turning away was not going to happen
Green folks hate nukes, dams, oil and anything else that works
They love this though
Nuclear is where we need to go. The technology is getting better to prevent the issues. The biproduct is still shitty and needs to be dealt with. There will come a time where we will start building nuclear plants again. The key is diversification and overall cleaner energy.
Tidal is another thing we need to develop. I'm sure we can find ways to do it without killing a shit ton of fish.
A rare chin for tidal
I like to sit at the beach and think about all the power at our finger tips
Where will I go on walks for perspective once all the beaches are turned into power plants?
Green folks hate nukes, dams, oil and anything else that works
They love this though
Nuclear is where we need to go. The technology is getting better to prevent the issues. The biproduct is still shitty and needs to be dealt with. There will come a time where we will start building nuclear plants again. The key is diversification and overall cleaner energy.
Tidal is another thing we need to develop. I'm sure we can find ways to do it without killing a shit ton of fish.
A rare chin for tidal
I like to sit at the beach and think about all the power at our finger tips
Where will I go on walks for perspective once all the beaches are turned into power plants?
12 years is more of a cutoff than end date but basically.
I was just funning around. My guess is that the day to take action came and went some time ago, and now we're going to have to roll with the punches and see where the chips fall.
12 years is more of a cutoff than end date but basically.
I was just funning around. My guess is that the day to take action came and went some time ago, and now we're going to have to roll with the punches and see where the chips fall.
God wanted us to warm the planet to survive the coming Ice Age
Comments
I have a tough time seeing small modular reactors taking off. Seems like nimbyism is going to get in the way of mass deployment plus that tech has been on horizon for a while but never seems to be ready for commercialization. Is the levelized cost really going to be that much cheaper than a conventional nuke now? Serious question.
Grid is definitely moving towards decentralization. Batteries are the next big leap needed to handle all the variable generation coming online. Gotta flattten out dat duck curve. Another big reason why gas is pushing out coal and nukes is that it can act like baseload except it actually has some flexibility to load follow. Coal and nukes take a long time to ramp up and down and that's a big deal if you're load balancing in real time.
There already is quite a bit of wind on the grid it's just totally unpredictable. Lots of it gets curtailed during runoff season in the Northwest. It's another resource that would become more useful if there was large scale battery storage.
We'll be happy to help while Swaye fires up the looms.
Do Swaye's blankets involve sheep? Maybe goats?
From where I'm standing it looks like we need to go all in on nuclear power or die.
I like to think if myself as an optimist.
The more we know the cleaner it gets
That being said operationally an all nuclear grid wouldn't work. It take days to shut down and bring up nukes from cold start. There ramp really slowly. You can see the output from Washington's 1 nuke plant if you go to BPA's load resource stack: https://transmission.bpa.gov/business/operations/wind/baltwg.aspx . It's totally flat because it's just not a very flexible resource.
Massive sticker shock with new nuke plants too. Most built in US in last 30 years have been a boondoggle. It was before my time but in 70s Washington wanted to build a shit load of nukes. That's why there's that beautiful cooling tower in Longview. Only one of like 6 got finished and we're still paying for that shitty bit of power planning. WPPSS!
Maybe the modular or fusion stuff will pan out eventually.
Sounds great, but also felt too magical to be true. I haven't researched further, are these real?
The China Syndrome killed the industry
They aren't cheap to build but throw in not in my backyard lawsuits and they no longer scale.
Most people hear nuke and think Three Mile Island and Chernobyl
That's tough to overcome
Dixie Lee Ray, aka Dixie Lee Radiation was behind Woops. She was a scientist at Hanford and a leader in the whole field. But getting the government to build 6 at once as the public was turning away was not going to happen
Most folks were happy they stopped
This is fun