OT The economics of energy

[harry]

Something everyone needs to read.

[Chris Hogg]

I read that as a very long-winded way of saying that fossil fuels will eventually run out and that we shouldn't balk at investing in renewables now just because they're expensive.

What it avoids saying is that the world will never maintain it's current high economic standards based on the totally inadequate ability of renewables to supply at the required level, and in fact the only way to compensate for the decline of fossil fuel availability is to build nuclear, and lots of them. It's extraordinary that it doesn't mention nuclear power at all!

[newshound]

It's a spectacularly bad bit of writing, whatever it is trying to say.

[harry]

What it actually points out is that renewables are free, limitless and unending.

[Chris Hogg]

So is nuclear, if you insist on taking that blinkered view.

[whisky-dave]

The sun will end in about 5 billion years from the POV of being useful to humans, and it might be free but most of us have to pay for solar panels and if we don;t it still means someone has to pay. Geothermal will only last until it runs out.

So renewables are NOT free, limitless and unending.

[Dave Liquorice]

Oh goody when do I get given my renewables system that will provide

100% of all my energy needs where ever I am?

There are only two primary sources of energy, fusion or fission. Both require a "fuel". The fuels are not infinite so there is a limit on the total amount of energy available.

As far as energy from the sun is concerned the earth can only collect what it's area and irradiation levels allow, again a limited.

The sun will eventualy die, all the fissionable elements within the planet will run out.

[Jethro_uk]

Well it's wrong then.

[The Natural Philosopher]

these hand wavey leftycunts never do.

I mean they uisdually work for someone else. A Big company., Like The BBC, Or the state. As Academics. Money to them grows on money trees and its a question orf presenting a plausible case why you should get your mitts on some. So victim/minotroity status/ingvestigating global crisis/ whatever whatever is the modus vivendi...

Only people in te real world of actual production care to know that it will take more energy to build a renewable + battery solution than it will ever produce...and therefore the 'renewable' solution is not actually renewable at all. And is completely unsustainable.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Indeed. God does not charge for wind, nor does he charge for sun, nor does he charge for uranium in the ground.

Only humans charge and the cost of things is related to how much a person consumes and how many man hours it takes to put the *total* solution in place.

On that basis a renewable solution (based on utilising an existing dangerous unshielded fusion reactor in the sky) is between 3 and one hundred times the cost of a nuclear one, even given the massive amounts of wasted man hours in a nuclear build spent in getting bits of paper signed off and building unnecessarily complex safety systems.

(Has anyone read 'slide rule'? The governments R101 had power steering and had to have limit switches built in to prevent it tearing the rudders off, and diesel engines and was massively overweight and over-budget. The R100 - privately built - had no power steering and was geared such that the man at the wheel wouldn't be strong enough to pull the rudders off. It had petrol engines, came in in time, on budget and was way better performance.

It was of course cancelled when the R101 crashed.)

[The Other Mike]

A CfD of £170.03/MWh is not by any measure 'free'

Nor is £158.75/MWh

Nor is £136.08/MWh

Nor is £129.88/MWh

Pages and pages of proof across multiple projects that renewable energy isn't free at all

Circa 70% of current electricity demand is being met by reliable gas and nuclear.

--

[Chris Hogg]

You forgot the additional £45+ paid under the renewable energy obligation

And of course, if renewable energy is free, why is Harry being paid the FIT entitlement for what his solar panels generate, when it's free. He should be prosecuted for defrauding the general public of taxpayers' money.

[T i m]

<snip>

He will be one of the first against the wall when the revolution comes! ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[newshound]

Which is bollocks, for a start.

[tabbypurr]

and demonstrates not a clue about the topic

[Harry Bloomfield]

Its the ongoing cost of 'harvesting' those free renewables, which make them so expensive, plus the hidden cost of having to have none-renewables in place anyway, for the times when the renewables are not available.

[Harry Bloomfield]

The Natural Philosopher laid this down on his screen :

+1

[newshound]

I think the real world tells you that technology improves at an amazing rate, especially when driven by good old capitalist principles.

I completely agree with TNP that renewables + batteries for everyday electricity is way off in the future.

But I do suspect that, as cell and battery life and efficiency improve, we'll get to combinations that produce more energy than they consume in manufacture. Might even be there now, at small scale, with the best cells and supercapacitors.

The point, though, is that the *hardware* cost of a decent sized installation is likely to be much more than the *energy* cost, because they have to carry a lot more infrastructure cost.

And of course windmills are likely to kill far more people per MWh than nuclear power stations.

[The Natural Philosopher]

No, teh real world telly you the exact opposite.

New technology improves rapidly to about 60% of its theoretical maximum laid dwin bt te laws of physics.

Then it simply doesnt get much better at all.

If 60% of theoretical best is simply light years away from viable, the real world teaches you not to even go there in the first place. Renebwable energy has its place, In a museum

I didnt say that. Dont lie. I said that they are simply impossible as a way to generate energy.

Virtue signal? yes. Harvests taxes and subsidies? yes, but sustainable energy? never.

A small scale is useless.

You can get a therkmal chain reaction out of a coule of golf ball lumps of uranium on a =nebch.

That is not et same as making a reactor ...

All costs are labour costs. Thetr is no such thing as a hardware cost.

[newshound]

I think maybe we are in danger of violently agreeing (again).

If, here, you mean an energy solution to run society then you are certainly right in the foreseeable future. If, as I took you to mean, that any renewable + battery solution was *never* net energy positive then I think you may be wrong, if not right now then a little way down the line. I'm suggesting that, say, a square foot of cells plus a phone battery, perhaps to run an electric fencer, might well go energy positive before it "wears out". And, thinking about the amazing technology in cheap drones, perhaps a small windmill and cheap batteries, again to run something like an electric fencer, or emergency lighting, or similar might go energy positive. This mainly because of economies of scale in mass production, and because it would not require the sort of protection systems that, say, a 10 MW supply system attached to the grid would need.

I havn't tried to do the sums, not that they are difficult. Maybe battery life would be the issue at the moment. But seeing as how price and energy density of Li-ion batteries has improved incredibly in the last decade or so, I would not be surprised if they have not still got some way to go in "life" although I agree that they are getting towards the physics limit in energy/weight ratio.

I think it is useful to look at things in terms of energy costs and labour costs, but there are costs that don't come into these categories. For example, the drilling license fees that you might have to pay to the government, or the bank interest on the capital cost of your drilling rig, because you have to pay for it before it starts producing. Or even "proper" carbon taxes, if we started to handle externalities efficiently.