News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Scientist exposes anti-wind groups as oil-funded. Now the... by zekrioca on Thursday August 28, 2025 @03:05AM (#45049308)
(I) Electrification displaces energy demand. Efficiency controls growth of demand. Various limits have been reached with efficiency. (II) Demand response is not about “do not use power because we don’t have enough.”, it is about “here is some money so you shift demand to a later point in time when saturation is lower.” (III) It doesn’t take years to find better ways to manage the grid as is. Do you think there won’t be a need to upgrade large portions of the grid to handle new nuclear plants?

THE UK gets 30% of its electricity from wind and another 5% from solar; Denmark gets 70% from renewables, mostly wind. Iowa gets 65% of its electricity from renewables, mostly wind; California, whose economy is larger than that of most countries, gets 38%, mainly from solar.

But some lobbyists are trying to kill momentum, especially those who see nuclear as a silver bullet. It is not.

Re:Scientist exposes anti-wind groups as oil-funded. Now the... by Moldoteck on Friday August 29, 2025 @04:40PM (#45069148)
Electrification doesn't displace demand. It adds more demand.

what you described with demand response is equivalent of rationing- use power when weather is good because otherwise you'll not afford it

Don't confuse transmission needed for 1GW of nuclear vs 10GW of solar with 10% cf and more redispatching requirements

Re:Scientist exposes anti-wind groups as oil-funded. Now the... by zekrioca on Saturday August 30, 2025 @12:04AM (#45071835)
> Electrification doesn't displace demand. It adds more demand.

Take cars, for instance. When someone buys an EV rather than ICE, do you think the EV consumes the same amount of energy than the ICE car?

> what you described with demand response is equivalent of rationing- use power when weather is good because otherwise you'll not afford it

Sure, what do you think that needs to be done when there is a limited resource such as electricity? Yes, produce more, but until then, what should the grid do?

> Don't confuse transmission needed for 1GW of nuclear vs 10GW of solar with 10% cf and more redispatching requirements

It is two different models, one is centralized (nuclear) and the other is distributed (solar). The planning is essentially different.

Re:Scientist exposes anti-wind groups as oil-funded. Now the... by Moldoteck on Saturday August 30, 2025 @01:50AM (#45072187)
Ice didn't use electricity. It used energy from fossil fuels. Are you comfusing things? Electrification does add electric demand. It reduces total energy consumption due to efficiency but electric demand still grows

Yes, you need vastly more transmission for a distributed ren grid. Both for deployment and for avoiding curtailment

Re:Scientist exposes anti-wind groups as oil-funded. Now the... by zekrioca on Saturday August 30, 2025 @03:44AM (#45072721)
It is very hard to argue when you think electricity != energy, and you cannot even see that EV displaces the use of fossil fuels (I.e., a type of primary energy), even when you yourself wrote that it consumes less energy lol

Solar panels in rooftops can decrease the saturation of the grid, so more transmission is not necessarily needed.