Nuclear power was sold to the world as a safe, clean, and economically viable source of electricity. We were told that it would be "too cheap to meter"1. Even the most ardent proponent of nuclear power will have to admit that hasn't come to pass. Construction costs for nuclear power stations are dwarfed only by their decommissioning costs. Yes, politics and regulation conspire to increase the price - but nuclear hasn't made electricity particularly cheap. Indeed, we mostly seem to be paying more than ever for our power.
Well, not quite.
On Christmas Eve, my electricity company emailed me to say that I would have several hours of free electricity. They would charge me £0.00 per kWh. More than that, at a few specific times they would pay me for my electricity use!
Most factories and heavy industrial plants weren't running the day before Christmas. UK power usage spikes when everyone boils a kettle at the end of a football match or other similar event - but there was nothing so momentous happening at 3AM. So supply outstripped demand.
Anyone with a smart-meter could have been paid to charge their car, run their tumble dryer, or stay up until the wee hours playing on their console.
It wasn't mined uranium which gave us power which literally had to be given away; about 62% of the electricity came from wind.
At this point, the nuclear lobby will start whinging about subsidies (both nukes and renewables are generously subsidised) and how wind can't provide a base load (which is fair). But although sticking a bunch of turbines in costal waters is an engineering marvel - it's pretty cheap compared to building and maintaining a nuclear power station.
Wind - and other renewables - have done what nuclear couldn't. They have provided such an abundance of electricity that consumers are paid to use it.
Because home appliances are increasingly efficient, domestic energy use is falling - it's down 19% since 2010. Electricity use by domestic properties was about 96.2 TWh in 2022 and 135 TWh was generated by renewables.
Yes, electricity is fungible, but you can convincingly make the case that every home in the UK was powered by renewables.
Solar panels don't work at night, and wind-turbines don't work when there's no wind. We'll always need something to be able to provide a base-load of electricity. That might be nuclear, or fossil fuels, or it might be storage from the excess power from renewables.
Sadly, the world is still filled with war, famine, and disease. But, for a few moments on a winter's evening, wind power genuinely became too cheap to meter.
If you want to move to a time-of-day electricity tariff, you can join Octopus Energy - if you use that link, we both get £50 bill credit.
There is a lot of contention about that phrase. It was (probably) about the future prospects of nuclear fusion - but it became attached to nuclear fission. You can read more at the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission↩
I’m on an energy saving kick.
So far this month between the hours of midnight and 8am we are averaging 1.2kWh per hour of use.
I can only account for a max of 400Wh/hr and even that is a high estimate.
No ac on. All computers shutdown.
The only thing running is about 200w of network gear, refrigerator and freezer. And some phone chargers.
🆕 blog! “Why are there no viable nuclear power plants for the home?”
Whenever you talk about renewable energy, it's impossible to avoid a very particular strain of reply-guy. The "Nuclear is really good actually" dude is convinced that you have critically misunderstood Our-Lord-And-Saviour Uranium. Nukes are clean! They are cheap! They are s…
Hold on a sec, weren't we all told that privatisation would lead to cheaper electricity prices?
Weren't we told that repealing the carbon tax would lead to cheaper electricity prices?
Weren't we told that sticking with (more expensive) coal and gas power over (cheaper) renewables and storage would lead to cheaper electricity prices?
From the ABC:
"At the heart of the price gouging inquiry, initiated by the ACTU and led by Allan Fels, is determining in a high inflation environment what's general inflation and what else might be influencing pricing behaviour, the main offending price gouging industries, how they do it and how it impacts everyday Australians.
"Part of the problem is Australia is awash with oligopolies, which means there isn't as much price competition as there might otherwise be, which helps explain why real wage growth has been low and why the real prices of so many goods are so high.
"And while most of the media attention has been on Coles and Woolworths, the report will include other sectors accused of customer gouging and breaching trust such as energy, airlines and banks.
"Sydney University professor Lynne Chester, from the school of social and political sciences, supplied the inquiry with a detailed submission ... [which] said electricity prices have been escalating since 2005, largely due to increases in the charges paid for the generation of electricity. She said the charge for electricity makes up a significant component of the electricity price paid for by consumers.
"A key issue was that the regulation was designed for a competitive market, assuming competition would deliver lower prices, but the market was never competitive due to the presence of big powerful generator companies that have been merging with retail companies to create giants such as AGL, Origin and Energy Australia."
No, you can't save £30 per year by switching off your "standby" devices
Every few years, a dodgy stat does the rounds claiming you can save £££ if you switch off all your gadgets at the wall. The standby mode of your TV is bleeding you dry!!!
Wasting all this #electricity and resources on the server infrastructure to stream hundreds of GB of 1080p+ video all in the name of playing games that clock in on average at less than 1 mb is a #galaxybrain#internet-of-shit idea so stupid it could only be #capitalism.
Albania, Bhutan, Nepal, Paraguay, Iceland, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo produced more than 99.7 per cent of the electricity they consumed using #geothermal, #hydro, #solar or #wind power.
Was just out for a night walk. I can't tell if my eyes are playing tricks, but I felt like I could see short flickers in the city light haze reflected off the air; kept walking, it seemed like it was happening in the streetlights too. Could there be something happening with the power grid?
Standard single-gang duplex receptacle on a 15A circuit. Upgraded to code circa 25 years ago by pros known to do good work in general. (To be clear: not me.) It's in a metal box with wiring in metal conduit back to the panel.
Stops working. No drama, just stops. Everything upstream to the box is fine; the breaker doesn't trip. All looks well, just... no power.
Remove the cover. It is immediately obvious that there is loose plastic hanging around in the box.
Pull out the fixture, discover chunks of plastic have come off the side of the receptacle. It's broken away in multiple pieces with sharp edges, not melted. No burns near the damage, no external damage.
2/2: Three things are on my mind right now. 1. how fast #linux is evolving. 🥳🤯 2. how bad the #power quality seems to be here in Thailand. 3. that I have to figure out how to deal with the #challenge (s) around #electricity. Have to look up "extreme voltage" for the #furman next. The #ups also keeps beeping seemingly at random, which I need to look up in the manual as well. 🤔 Slightly underwhelming, but I guess I need to do my homework on Thailand and electricity first. 🙃
A brief update on my #battery driven #studio. It looks like I'm going to have to invest in #solar cells right now after all, as the #electricity here on this beautiful island is not only exceptionally bad or #unstable in terms of #voltage but also in terms of #frequency, which makes it difficult for the #inverter to recognize a #powergrid as present at all. 😵💫️ Recently, the #volts have dropped at times below 140 while the frequency has hovered beween 40 to 55 #hertz.
My 6-yr old asked one of the BIG questions the other day.
"Daddy, why do we live?"
Knowing that he's being influenced by the ubiquitous #god botherers, I responded:
"Because of #electricity, little buddy. Kind of like the lightbulbs in our house, we all have a #spark in us that runs through our #bodies and #brains. When that spark goes out, we die."
He thought a bit about that, and then came the next BIG question:
"We become a part of the electricity that runs through the entire #planet that let's everything live. Which is super important, because without that electricity, nothing would live."