Technology

Fracking methane should be excluded. It's 80 times worse for the environment than even CO2.

where does it say 20%

They undersell the benefits of renewables significantly overall. This is for UK which they come out with slightly lower costs for omitting solar. They also say 5 years to build a 120mw microgrid. 1 post driller, 1 crane for support posts, with 2 workers guiding post insertion and cleaning up, 1 "wall of panels" crane lifter, with 3 workers aligning connecting panels on the ground, and then connecting wall to posts can get 40kw/hour=320kw/day. Complete in little over a year. But, in solar, 9 crews can really make a baby in 1 month.

Microgrids don't need permits, and utilities will give them an import connection.

Are you trying to trick tech companies into being useful? That'll upset them.

Renewable efficiency is close to the theoretical limit. Solar cell have a limit just over 33% and current models have efficiency of around 25%.

on review this doesn't appear to be entirely true; see my other comment: https://lemmy.world/post/36518843/19617823. still no specification behind the 43.4% stat, tho

The Vogtle scam's end cost was $17/watt. $8B or $4/watt was just financing costs prior to eventual operation that Georgia Power got to charge its customers for its share, over the 20 years before it gave them power from the boondoggle.

Solar costs under $1/watt to deploy, and batteries in a container (can fit under solar) costs $1 per 10 watt-hours of storage. Both last over 30 years.

SMR's can pretend lower capital costs per watt, when excluding design/prototype time, but trade much more expensive enriched (proliferation risk) fuel that is less efficient, needs breeder reactors to provide likely from Russia, and carries higher security costs per watt. SMRs are simply a new scam to defraud investors with because nuclear is worthless as energy, and only ever is for military applications.

That's mostly because the west has become a bad place to build things, bike-shedding and a general loss of nuclear building expertise lost due to successful campaigning against nuclear by the fossil fuel industry.

We could be scaling up nuclear right now to help the goals for 2050 to be reached and then coast for a while as renewables pickup pace and fusion is finally cracked.

But no only thing people care about is immediate cost.

Yes renewables are cheaper per kw at the moment but they are also putting a lot of strain on the grid that's not accounted for that's expensive to upgrade, they are also not scaling up fast enough, which means there will be added cost to climate change.

Vs we could build nuclear reactors at a loss and bring on serious gigawatts of clean energy in a decade that would provide a stable baseline.

Which is why I always laugh when people say to replace a 15 year old fridge to “save” on electricity.

Really depends on how much your electricity costs relative to your efficiency gain on the new fridge.

But refrigerators are also largely a "solved" technology. We aren't radicallu changing how we run a compressor or insulate a unit. I ended up getting a new one recently because my old refrigerator's repair bill was going to be as much as a new unit.

Now, if units were more modular and easier/cheaper to repair? The math changes.

"I'm going to spend $1500 so I can save $8/month."

problem is solar and wind are variable and not feasible everywhere.

Offshore wind is constant.

Hydro energy to the rescue.

the studied location is the UK

if you plan on batteries that requires lots of precious metals we will need elsewhere to aid in the transition to electric power.

Umm, what about sodium-ion that are now getting put into production?

Without having read it myself, perhaps they mean 5% of total usage. So the gas generation is built to be able to handle 2/3rds of the power demand, in case of outage as a backup, but in normal operation will only contribute 5% of the energy demand. That way, in the event of a failure of the renewable energy source for whatever reason, or a failure in the batteries, the gas can kick in and keep the servers online while cutting disposal operations that represent 1/3 of the total.

For a modern scaled up data center, there's no real benefit to nuclear miniturization. That's the sort of technology best employed on shipping frigates and space stations - places where portability is a priority.

You don't need to pick up a date center the size of 70 football fields and send it anywhere.