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Renewable Energy Shows Strong Gain In U.S. (arstechnica.com)
WheezyJoe writes: According to the US Energy Information Administration, solar, wind, and gas dominate new US generating capacity in 2016. This year is notable because it will see the first new nuclear plant brought online in 20 years, contributing 1.1 GigaWatts to the grid. But that contribution will be dwarfed by renewable power sources, which together account for nearly two-thirds of 2016's new capacity. Part of the boom in renewables came because the tax incentives for their installation were in danger of expiring, so utilities rushed to get projects through the pipeline ahead of the end of the year. 9.5GW of capacity is expected to come online from solar -- more than the past three years combined. Another 6.8GW is expected from planned additions of wind power, largely spread across the Great Plains. Of new fossil fuel plants, the vast majority are going to be burning natural gas; there are no planned additions of coal plants.
TFA tells us that in 2016, 18.1GW (9.5GW of solar and 8.6GW of wind) renewable energy is expected to come online in America
Very good
On the other hand ...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
According to bloomberg's article
China eyes at least 15 gigawatts of solar power additions ...
... in the same year, China gonna have at least35GW of new renewable energy coming online
We could do better
In fact, we should do better
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Aren't you also interested in seeing if the coal industry and the oil industry are able to continue without tax breaks?
http://www.taxpayer.net/librar...
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/...
http://www.investopedia.com/ar...
You are welcome on my lawn.
They are talking about the Watts Bar Unit 2
They started building it back in 1973 then took a short lunch break in 1988 resumed work in 2007 and finished in 2015.
Since it was 80% done in 1988 that means at least 80% of the reactor unit is at least 27 years old now.
http://thebulletin.org/watts-b...
http://www.latimes.com/busines...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Still nice to see another plant online shame took 42 years to finish it especially since it was only given a 40 year operating licence.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
The Republicans have thrived by building a coalition of social conservatives, who tend to be less educated middle class people, and economic conservatives that mostly do not share their interests, but control the political establishment.
There are two types of Republicans: millionaires and suckers.
-- author unknown
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Hillary supports expanding H1-B visas.
Bernie opposes the H1-B visa program.
Pretty obvious difference, which should matter a lot to this audience.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
With nukes those fuel rods are decaying over time no matter what you do so that's another reason to have them run flat out until it's time to shut down for maintainance or refuelling.
Technically, yes they decay, but no it doesn't actually have a significant effect. U235 (the fissile fuel in enriched uranium) has a half life of 700 million years, so even if you waited that long, you'd still have half the fuel left. MOX uses a mix of U235, Pu239, and U233. The shortest (Pu239) has a half life of 24,000 years, so even if you left it standing for 100 years, you'd still have 99.7% of the plutonium left. The other sort-of fuel is U238, which absorbs a neutron turning into Pu239 which is a fuel during the reactor operation. U238 has a half life of 4.5 billion years.
In other words, you can leave the fuel sitting around for human timescales without a problem or significant loss.
eg. worshippers of 1970s nuke tech who say we should build dozens of nukes now instead of incremental improvement then dozens of nukes that may be half-decent
I do wish we had 2010 eara nuke plants.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
We are not so good at World Wars and Empires. Therefore, we decided to have a smaller military and spend the money on social and ecological stuff. After all we have (or had) the image of being good engineers.
> It still isn't, but for the huge subsidies on both production and demand side
Ugh. Another claim utterly devoid of numbers presented as if it's true. This is in spite of the numbers being in the linked article and trivially easy to compute. DO THE FUGGING MATH. Here are the production-adjusted CAPEXs:
Natgas: $1.00 / .45 CF = $2.22 effective .35 CF = $4.30 effective .20 CF = $7.50 effective .95 = $8.40 effective
Wind: $1.50 /
Solar: $1.50 /
Nuclear: $8.00 /
That means wind is about double the expensive of a CC plant to build, yet has zero fuel costs. In comparison, nuclear costs twice as much as wind, and also has fuel costs on top of that (and the highest O&M of all of these).
If you want to consider all-in numbers from CAPEX to power price, that's a little more complex. However, NREL has done all the work for you:
http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/tech_lcoe.html
If you go to the page it is pre-set for the natural gas case, but it has an outdated price for the fuel from 2013. Reducing fuel cost to the current EIA average of 2.5 $//MMbtu produces an LCOE of 5.2 cents/kWh. If you then change the inputs for wind, CF 34%, CAPEX 1500, zero variable, zero heating rate, zero fuel cost) the equivalent cost is 4.1 cents/kWh. For PV it's the same 1500 CAPEX, but the period is 25 years, CF is 25, and O&M is 12. That gives you 4.5 cents/kWh. My 12 panels have a CF of only 15, which gives 7.4 cents.
So basically these technologies are perfectly capable of competing on their own, which is precisely why they are, by far, the fastest growing power sources in the world. Only in the US is that not *overwhelmingly* the case, and that's because of the subsidized price of natgas. Natgas received about 1/2 the subsidies of solar or wind during the last 5 years, and that's only because of the accelerating rate of production tax breaks on the later two:
https://www.eia.gov/analysis/requests/subsidy/
But that's the US centric view. For a real idea of what's going on you'd want to look at the world as a whole, add everything up, and then come up with the averages. Which is precisely what Lazard has been doing once a year for the last nine. Here is everything you need to know, up to date as of last October:
https://www.lazard.com/media/2390/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-analysis-90.pdf
> First it was this is physically impossible.
The idea that renewables cannot supply power 24/7 and that the grid could not handle a fully renewables is trivially easy to find. I assume you simply couldn't be bothered to google it because many examples come up in the first page of hits:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323699704578328581251122150
http://www.businessinsider.com/green-energy-isnt-compatible-with-us-power-grid-2013-12
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/dec/02/nation/la-na-grid-renewables-20131203
And my favourite:
http://www.zdnet.com/article/designing-the-grid-for-renewables/
Which starts with "Americans have been repeatedly told a series of lies about accommodating renewables onto the power grid: That it can't handle large amounts of intermittent power generation. That standby fossil-fueled capacity must be maintained at 100 percent of demand for those times when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing. That brownouts and blackouts will inevitably result from depending on renewables. That nuclear is the only power source that can meet our needs in the future. And so on."
This has, of course, been widely debunked by, literally, hundreds of studies.
> Germany is sunnier than the USA.
This was a widely spread meme from a while back, the argument being made that it is not possible for the US to replicate Germany's policies because Germany is sunnier, which is, of course, very much opposite of the truth:
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/02/08/fox-news-can-you-get-any-more-insane-germany-is-sunnier-than-the-us-video/
If you're not even aware of *this* story, you're clearly not interested in the power industry, which leads me to ask why are you here?
> Clean coal technology is carbon neutral
a) it doesn't exist
b) no it isn't, obviously.
> actually much better for the environment that producing solar panels
No it isn't, as has been widely and repeatedly demonstrated.
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf
> massive amounts of energy and dangerous chemicals
Neither is true. A cleanser used in the factory is a hazardous material, but it is contained within the factory (unless you believe the stories from China) and has no downstream risk.
http://solarindustrymag.com/online/issues/SI1309/FEAT_05_Hazardous_Materials_Used_In_Silicon_PV_Cell_Production_A_Primer.html
> We actually replaced two electric furnaces in our house with a pair of coal stoves
Which isn't clean coal by any means. However, given that heating coal is actually rather hard to get in lots of places these days I'm guessing you're writing from Ireland or the UK. Having been coal heated in the former, and having to suffer through continuous asthma as a result, anyone describing coal as clean is having a serious case of cognitive dissonance, is lying, is a shill, a troll, or some combination thereof.
You know, there's also this thing called "insulation." All you have to do if you want to be adequately warm (or cool, for that matter) without requiring a lot of energy is not build your dwelling with the idea that it's perfectly ok to allow heat to leak between your building's interior and the great outdoors. The tech is fully up to it, and it isn't even expensive. it *does* require actual thinking, so we don't see it much, but to imply that one must shiver or sweat "because wind/solar"... it just isn't true.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.