Energy Matters

Far from being "a common misconception", it's definitely true that solar power plants closer to the equator have a higher capacity factor than solar power plants further from the equator. It's true that warm solar panels are less efficient than cooler solar panels, but there are two countervailing effects: solar panels (at a given temperature) become more efficient when more brightly illuminated, and the day is longer and there are less clouds in tropical regions. It turns out that these effects are enormously more important than the thermal effect. That's why PV in the UK has a capacity factor of 11%, German PV 10%, Maine PV 12%, California PV 28%, and Arizona PV 29%. There's a lovely bargraph in the US at https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=39832 and an even nicer colorcoded map of the US at http://euanmearns.com/solar-pv-capacity-factors-in-the-us-the-eia-data…

The author wrote followup article in which he estimates costs for a more reasonable system that is sized for winter production rather than annual storage: A Potential Solution to the Problem of Storing Solar Energy – Don’t Store It. http://euanmearns.com/a-potential-solution-to-the-problem-of-storing-s… As commenters here and on the blog suggest, this is a much more cost effective approach (although still prohibitively expensive in extreme latitudes).

I love how interested you are in this and your desire to work this out from first principles. I say the equation is not appropriate for the same reason we're having this discussion on the residence time of CO2, particularly anthropogenic. It doesn't account for multiple processes and time scales. The IPCC uses the Bern Model discussed here: http://euanmearns.com/the-half-life-of-co2-in-earths-atmosphere-part-1… Frankly I don't care about the 97% agreement. I'm sure it is just as high if not higher in terms of biologists agreeing that evolution is occurring. It's a talking point to get people with no scientific training on board. Unfortunately it has the opposite result in many cases since it's a weak argument from authority. Excellent point about water vapor particularly when it precipitates and release energy during the phase change. I'm on mobile so not as good at finding things, here's some information from AR4 with sources, AR5 may go into more detail: https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9s9-5-4-2.html 9.5.4.2.1 Detection of external influence on precipitation Mitchell et al. (1987) argue that global mean precipitation changes should be controlled primarily by the energy budget of the troposphere where the latent heat of condensation is balanced by radiative cooling. Warming the troposphere enhances the cooling rate, thereby increasing precipitation, but this may be partly offset by a decrease in the efficiency of radiative cooling due to an…

The fully-baked lifetime costs of nuclear power are quite vigorously debated; it's hard to get accurate numbers, since in general there are unpriced government insurance policies backing the plants (i.e. the government will step in to pay the $10B cleanup costs in the unlikely event that something goes wrong). One way of attempting to answer this question is to look at France, where 75% of their power is nuclear; their price per KWh for consumers up to 2015 was lower than the average for Europe (12th-cheapest in Europe according to Wikipedia, and 2nd-lowest for commercial), but that almost certainly doesn't price the government insurance mentioned above [2]. Note that due to a lot of electric heating in residential stock, France is very susceptible to increased demand in cold winters; in such situations they have to import from the rest of Europe, sometimes at peak hours. And as of 2016, a bunch of French reactors were shut down over safety concerns, so the prices there are spiking dramatically [3]. Another approach; let's look at cost per installed MW of power for current projects. For solar, that's now beating wind (and half the price of coal) for the newest installs, at $1.65M/MW [4]. According to the World Nuclear Association (who I'm going to assume will give the best possible numbers that can be said with a straight face), nuclear installs are ranging from ~$2.5M/MW to $7M/MW of capacity, with most cases closer to the high end of that range [5]. Now, load factor…

85% of nuclear reactors are built in under 10 years[1]. It also seems to me that if there were sufficient political willpower that improvements could be made here. It’s a bit like how anti-solar folks complain about the massive cost while ignoring that it is possible to improve costs. 1: http://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nuclear-power-p…

Why do you think that can't be right? Solar and wind generation themselves are seasonal and don't match the seasonal patterns of demand. So you need to time shift across seasons if you don't have the instantaneous (base load) capacity available all the time. You might say, well, just build more windmills or solar farms. Doesn't help when it is dark and calm. Your "overbuild" is useless in that situation. So you need storage (or other base load generation, fossil or nuclear). In this study, it is estimated that Germany and California both need about 25TWh of storage to time shift energy supplied by intermittent sources to other parts of the year. The study claims $5 trillion to purchase batteries to store that much energy. http://euanmearns.com/the-cost-of-wind-solar-power-batteries-included/

Absolutely, just have to throw out OSHA, take land from people that own it without due process and ignore everything the EPA says. ... in all seriousness, it would be a lot more useful to compare what a developed country has been able to achieve.. even more useful is the country you're talking about. oh look - here you go: https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/how-much-does-it-cost-to-build-a http://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nuclear-power-p…

The price of petrol is higher in Europe than the US primarily because of taxes. There is an effect from domestic oil production but taxes are a much bigger part of it. Electricity is a bit different. This article from 2018 argues its because of renewables surcharges. Since then, natural gas prices have diverged quite a bit so that's a much bigger factor today. http://euanmearns.com/the-causes-of-the-differences-between-european-a…

1000 years is definately a figure I've seen bandied about by NASA, and the Bern model suggests that some percentage is effectively permanent, so millenia doesn't seem outlandish. Where are you citing your numbers from? A quick Google suggests it's a Climate Change Denial source: http://euanmearns.com/the-half-life-of-co2-in-earths-atmosphere-part-1… And even they cite the climate scientists as saying hundreds of years (before going on to prove them wrong in their blog post of course): > We hear all the time form the climate science community that even if we stop burning fossil fuels (FF) today the CO2 we have already produced will still be in the atmosphere for centuries to come. We have already lit a long slow burning fuse that will lead us to climate Armageddon. How much of this is actually true?

i think the change is too little, too late. Historically, nuclearprojects take in avg 7.5 years to come online. [1] Thats a long time, almost 2 full terms of a presidency (US). Plenty of time for political winds to change. Instead of relabeling a rotten apple as 'edible' to investors, the EU should put something fresh that can be quickly consumed. [1]https://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nuclear-power-…

I don't know about all your arguments, but I just want to respond to the ones I do know about. Nuclear power is about as safe as wind and solar if looked at per TW. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy A nuclear reactor can be built in three years, though admittedly this hasn't happened in Europe. They are mostly (85%) built in under ten years. Figure 3 shows we should expect around 5 years. https://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nuclear-power-…

Might be more, but it's still a minority of their grid. Wikipedia has a graph for 2016: 18.1% nuclear, 47.9% natural gas, and 15.7% coal.[0] "Energy Matters" says that EU energy production was 26% nuclear in 2015, but only 12% for consumption[1], so I'm not sure how to look at that comparison. Either way, that's probably mostly France (~80%[2]). US around 8-9%[1]. TL;DR: Yes, most western countries probably have less nuclear, but it's a low bar. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Russia#Mode_of_pro… [1] http://euanmearns.com/primary-energy-in-the-european-union-and-usa-com… [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_France#Mode_of_pro…

Methane breaks down into CO2 and water in a few years, which is why half life of methane is relevant. My understanding is that for CO2, thinking in terms of half-life is less relevant, the CO2 goes to plants and to the ocean, and if those two sinks are at saturation, then CO2 levels in the atmosphere will keep increasing. But there's a good article I found now which might shed more light : https://euanmearns.com/the-half-life-of-co2-in-earths-atmosphere-part-…

That's definitely an outlier when it comes to build times, avg. construction time is 7.5 years for the 441 reactors in use today. http://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nuclear-power-p…

There is a decent correlation. See the 4th image: https://euanmearns.com/the-causes-of-the-differences-between-european-…

The true mean construction time for nuclear reactors is only 7.5years¹ and this does not take into account the new Small Module Reactors (SMR) that are substantially smaller that are starting to be put into production² ¹ http://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nuclear-power-p… ² https://phys.org/news/2020-10-viability-small-modular-nuclear-reactors…

>How long will it take to build all those nuclear plants? About 7.5 years if you start them all at the same time. http://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nuclear-power-p… How long would it take to deploy that solar energy system, as well as figuring out a storage solution to overcome the problem of the duck curve? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_curve

The median time to build a nuclear reactor is 7.5 years [1]. That is not too bad. [1] http://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nuclear-power-p…

Embedded in a vast ocean of resources that are harder and harder to extract : http://euanmearns.com/eroei-for-beginners/

It's the difference between using and selling to another country. For example, let's say my energy demand for 1 year is 1 GW. I generate that 1 GW using solar. But I sell 50% of it to a neighbor. Inside my house, I use gas for that missing 50%. Overall, I've "generated 100%" of my needs from renewables. I (Scotland) sell clean energy to my neighbor (Europe). I skimmed this article for inspiration: http://euanmearns.com/scotlands-wind-exports-to-england-and-the-myth-o…

There's a similar approach that seems promising - dropping a huge weight down disused mine shafts, and winching it back up at times of low demand. It looks to be a lot simpler than the railway wagon approach. The UK has loads of potential sites, I imagine the US does too. A fairly detailed look: http://euanmearns.com/short-term-energy-storage-with-gravitricity-iron…

Why the 60x output reduction in normal vs. road solar? With say a probably still generous 6x derating, it would mean 2.94/6/11.45 = 4% of electricity production. If you manage to avoid road solar tax (say by putting it above the road), it gets to about 25% of electricity production. Assuming a less pessimistic capacity factor of say 16% [1] gives 32% of electric production. Build a 3x wide solar cover over the interstates and .. use your imagination. [1] http://euanmearns.com/solar-pv-capacity-factors-in-the-us-the-eia-data…

They don't - unless we talk about prospective future designs or small research reactors. There are big downsides to these designs, which is why their development stalled in the 70s and have been on life support since. (Technically an exception is the bn-800 but it was modified rebuild from an 80s aborted reactor construction project, to get rid of weapons grade plutonium, before the the us/russia treaty fell apart... Good story at http://euanmearns.com/the-bn-800-fast-reactor-a-milestone-on-a-long-ro… )

The source seems to be here: http://euanmearns.com/co2-intensity-of-electric-cars/ It's unclear on a first skim whether the (constantly rising) energy costs of fossil fuel extraction are included.

http://euanmearns.com/eroei-for-beginners/ The issue is not so much about the EROEI of an particular process in the small, as about the headline overall availability of energy from all sources to civilisation as a whole. That article discusses the "EROEI cliff" possibility, where as it declines more and more human effort must be put in to replace it, resulting in a civilisational collapse.

24% reduction is something like 2% more than the EU average. about 1,000 people... reaching its 10th anniversary this year, has led to a 24 percent cut in emissions vs. "The EU(27) even with active legal measures have maintained a fairly level CO2 emission rate but have managed to reduce their CO2 emissions/head by ~22% since 2005. " http://euanmearns.com/the-record-of-recent-man-made-co2-emissions-1965… It feels good, but that's about it. Further, per person they are probably doing more damage than the average person in London or other major city.

There's an island in Spain which uses this model to produce most/all of its electricity http://euanmearns.com/el-hierro-another-model-for-a-sustainable-energy… (pump water up with cheap wind energy, use the hydro when needed)

> France is an outlier? OKAAYYYY... The EPR is an outlier. Once again: the average time to construct a nuclear power plant is around 7.5 years. Now you can focus all your attention on plants that take longer than those, and you can falsely believe that those outliers are the norm. But that does not change the fact that they are not. The average was, is, and continues to be 7.5 years. The median is actually a bit lower. https://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nuclear-power-… > Additionally in 2022 up to half of their fleet was down for corrosion inspections... Planned and scheduled corrosion inspections. They have regular inspections, seems like a Good Thing™ to me, which they delayed during COVID. So they scheduled them for the summer of 2022. They always schedule them for the summer because that's when electricity demand in France is lowest. These days, in addition to demand being lowest, supply is large because summer is when all that over-provisioned PV delivers most...just when other demand is lowest. So a good time to schedule such routine maintenance and inspections. Because nuclear power can be scheduled. Unlike wind and solar. Which just happen whenever Mother Nature feels like it. Big difference.

There's an interesting theory that surface warming of the Earth is proceeding in a staircase fashion, due to modulation of fossil-fuel-forced warming by El Nino events: http://euanmearns.com/the-staircase-hypothesis-an-alternative-explanat… The driving mechanism for this phenomena would be release of stored heat from the oceans (which have been steadily absorbing much of the energy being trapped by increased atmospheric IR-absorbing gases like CO2 and CH4) during El Nino events. > "The oceans can at times soak up a lot of heat. Some goes into the deep oceans where it can stay for centuries. But heat absorbed closer to the surface can easily flow back into the air. That happened in 1998, which made it one of the hottest years on record. (Trenberth 2013, see above source)" This forms a prediction of sorts: if there is an another strong ENSO event this year, another stepwise climb of the staircase should play out over the next decade. Note that even if we eliminated fossil fuel use and deforestation in a year, due to the long-term buffering effect of the ocean, it would take at least a century for the Earth's surface temperature to stabilize (assuming we don't trigger some 'natural' effect like massive marine sediment methane destabilization, etc.). This means as much effort will need to be devoted to adaptation to new conditions as to elimination of fossil fuels from the energy mix, assuming that we all agree that civilizational stability…

Your comment is entirely misleading, based on outdated data, and whitewashes the hell out of nuclear power. The fact you're trying to claim the parent post is bad is not cool. 1. Please look at actual data for power plant construction times. [1] provides an overview. Estimates are useless - if we look at how long things actually take to build... "The mean construction time of 441 reactors in use today was 7.5 years." 3. Are you actually serious right now? Radioactive waste sitting in temporary pools that will be an environmental catastrophe for hundreds of years if they leak isn't a problem? No, just because we tolerate other ecological disasters doesn't make this one ok. 4. This is no longer true, and will definitely not be true in another 5 years. Battery costs are decreasing at a reliable rate year over year. Power plants are already being built making use of them. Here's one going up now with 300MWh of storage [2]. 5. No, you look up per capita demand. Here: [3]. It’s been dropping for a decade. 6. Your link does not report solar farm deaths because as far as I can tell there haven't ever been any. Unless you count birds. Rooftop solar is "dangerous" because installers fall off roofs. [1] http://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nuclear-power-p… [2] https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2019/10/08/the-sun-shines-only-at-night/ [3] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=32212