this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2024
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[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 58 points 5 months ago (6 children)

In Spain we are starting to get negative prices every weekend for electricity thanks to renewables. France is not even close to those prices with their bet for nuclear.

Don't get me wrong, I love nuclear power. And I'm not a big fan ok what thousands of windmills made to our landscapes. But efficiency wise renewable is unbeatable nowadays.

[–] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 27 points 5 months ago

I'm not a big fan

...

thousands of windmills

I see what you did there.

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 20 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Meanwhile in Georgia (USA) they completed a new nuclear power plant and they have to raise rates because it went 100% over its $14 billion budget.

[–] kaffiene@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Like every other nuclear power plant ever built

[–] Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca 2 points 5 months ago

Like every other US government project ever built.

•cough cough• SLS •cough•

[–] Katana314@lemmy.world 14 points 5 months ago (4 children)

The Spanish government is now petitioning its public for ideas on how to waste power.

[–] ASeriesOfPoorChoices@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago

time to start mining for crypto and running LLM AI servers.

[–] i_ben_fine@lemmy.one 2 points 5 months ago

They should build the Matrix.

[–] Sanctus@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

They should have public fridges that are left open to help cool the planet.

[–] uis@lemm.ee 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Mine bitcoins. Or ditch capitalism. Wait, last one is opposite of wasting. Feed capitalism.

[–] SuddenDownpour@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 months ago

Look. Bitcoins might be useless at a societal level. But if we're going to use excess renewable energy to drive out of business the crypto-miners who get their power from coal...

[–] menemen@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

They don't need to be exclusive. Power generation should be diverse. Otherwise prices will go through the roof on times without wind (happens in Germany). This can lead to higher energy prices in combination with high energy exports.

[–] ShortN0te@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Nuclear power does not solve the issue here. Nuclear reactors take hours or even days to ramp up or down. They are not quick enough to react to such occasions.

[–] menemen@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

True, it wouldn't be enough, This is why Germany still has a lot of coal-fired power station and natural gas power stations, despite huge investments into renewables, and is also investing a lot into wood-fired power stations (imo a really terrible idea). The nuclear plants could still ease the situation by giving a stable basic load that has some planable variability (wind models are getting also better every year and aren't that bad as it is). For now renewables cannot really provide a very stable basic load (at least not here, might be different for other areas).

There are great concepts to improve all of this with stuff like pumped-storage hydroelectricity, but those cannot be build everywhere and take up a lot of space. It is going forward and I think nuclear power will come to an end eventually. For now, I think they still have their place (and imo Germany acted irrationally by shutting them all down).

I mean, we've been lucky that France completly fucked their energy sector up (hints towards that nuclear plants probably also won't be the ultimate solution), otherwise we'd have lost a loooot of money and would have had energy prices even worse.

Here an imo interesting read: https://gemenergyanalytics.substack.com/p/capture-price-of-importsexports-in

[–] fellowmortal@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 months ago

Negative energy prices are a bad thing! That means that someone is dumping energy into the grid (you should be paying the grid if you have solar panels!!) In the UK all renewable energy had to be called 'experimental' so that the pricing was fixed and the government picks up the tab - that's not good. Check this map - right now the wind isn't blowing and solar hasn't got out of bed - so most of the countries using renewables are looking shit - later today solar will kick in, but tonight it will be bad again. That isn't a solution.

[–] Mubelotix@jlai.lu 1 points 5 months ago

Energy is expensive in France because we are legally forced by european regulation to sell at those prices. Our energy is the least expensive to produce