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submitted 2 weeks ago by misk@sopuli.xyz to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[-] BrownianMotion@lemmy.world 117 points 2 weeks ago

We are sick of the arseholes that are running the power companies, and we are sick of the outrageous prices they are charging for electricity.

Simple as that.

10 years ago, my gas bill was $80 a month. Today (and nothing has changed) it is almost $300 a month. Same shit has happened with Electricity and water. They are fucking scum.

They can go fuck themselves. If there was a free version of gas like electricity, I would install it in an instant. (I only use gas for kitchen hob, my BBQ outside - both of which get fuck all use, and my hot water which only really gets used when I wash my balls in the morning.) 300% price hike in 10 years.... They can all suck my balls,

[-] Vash63@lemmy.world 82 points 2 weeks ago

Sounds like you should be in the market for an electric boiler and induction cooktop.

[-] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 44 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Seriously... If he's spending ~3k a year on gas and even half of that is cooking, an induction stove would pay for itself within a few years.

Same for the water heater. The fossil fuel industry didn't spend decades promoting gas because it was the most efficient option.

[-] Evil_incarnate@lemm.ee 6 points 2 weeks ago

It's not even all usage, it's all the other fees they slap on to make more profit.

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[-] NoForwardslashS@sopuli.xyz 53 points 2 weeks ago

You could save money on gas by not washing your balls every morning, seeing as you're planning on getting the energy company execs to suck them anyway.

[-] troed@fedia.io 17 points 2 weeks ago

Some countries (like Sweden) don't use gas at all for home heating or cooking. We went fully electric in the 70s when we built up our nuclear reactor fleet (sadly, some of now have been closed due to the "nukes are bad" crowd) and that helps a lot now when it comes to relying on renewables.

[-] Deceptichum@quokk.au 8 points 2 weeks ago

I’d get solar if y’know I could afford a property.

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[-] pdxfed@lemmy.world 90 points 2 weeks ago

Just read the same article about CA last week; too much solar to be used so the excess solar generated, get this, was sold-often at a loss--to Arizona(the fact AZ can't make it's own sufficient solar shows the willful neglect, economic and political nature of energy!) and it lowered AZ bills but not CA. We're back to energy traders and Enron price manipulations in the US after 20 years.

Batteries will fix much of it but until the grid has proper storage consumers getting fucked by businesses per usual.

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 13 points 2 weeks ago

What's also interesting to me is that we here in Utah used to (and maybe still do?) sell dirty electricity to CA (we produce a lot from coal and gas), because they didn't have sufficient base supply.

CA really needs effective base power supply, whether that's batteries or some other clean-ish energy source/storage solution. Meanwhile, electricity here in Utah is quite cheap at $0.12/kWh-ish, which is nice, and something like 1/3 of what CA charges.

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[-] RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 68 points 2 weeks ago

Every smart person told them, "update the grids before adding solar."

But did they listen? No. Because updating the grids was an expensive and difficult endeavour and they just wanted to lower their costs first.

[-] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 22 points 2 weeks ago

Obama tried to push grid upgrades for years, kept getting shot down. His plans would all be done by now. Throw in the fuel economy requirements of 54.5 mpg requirements for cars and light trucks and we would have seen billions of barrels of oil not being needed. (Lower gas prices as well). Granted it wasn't everything, but it was what we needed to start doing. Now 13, 14 years later after Trump rolled back those fuel efficiency policies as much as he could because it cost manufacturers more money in research, we are much closer to a rock we can't live on and haven't advanced nearly enough. So we voted in Drill Baby Drill to finish off the rock.

[-] Maggoty@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago

Oh no they did that research. The manufacturers complained because the US was the last great dumping ground for old inefficient engines. They put those highly efficient engines in European cars and used the US to empty their warehouses of old engines.

[-] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 18 points 2 weeks ago

Sometimes the best way to get things done is to wedge your way in and cause a problem. It sucks, but humans be humaning

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[-] phx@lemmy.ca 38 points 2 weeks ago

I've said it before and I'll say it again, this feels like a good place for Hydrogen power to step in.

One of the oft repeated concerns is that generating hydrogen to power vehicles the takes a lot of energy, which often comes from dirty sources.

One of the oft repeated issues for solar (or wind etc) is that it's available at certain times and not in and of itself storable or transportable, so excess is lost.

So, take the excess solar energy, produce hydrogen and store for off-peak times or to distribute.

Seems like a win to me.

[-] DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world 7 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

And this involves only driving in summer when there is excess energy? Or getting through winter by storing enough hydrogen to make the Beirut explosion look like a firecracker in comparison?

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[-] Nighed@feddit.uk 31 points 2 weeks ago

Good for them! Theoretically that should attract industries that need a lot of electricity and everything balances out cost and demand wise.

[-] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 7 points 2 weeks ago
[-] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 34 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Fuck bitcoin. It should be allocated to desalinisation so less water is pulled from the rivers of the driest continent on Earth. The ecology around waterways is already in the shitter, and global warming is going to 10x that clusterfuck.

[-] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

That is a good option too. How long does it take to spool up or ramp down desalination? I mentioned Bitcoin mining because it's super fast to come online or go offline depending on the energy requirements at the moment.

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[-] GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 weeks ago

Steel, aluminium and battery production can also make good use of lots of cheap renewable energy.

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[-] chaosCruiser@futurology.today 28 points 2 weeks ago

How about investing in grid energy storage, to cope with intermittent production?

[-] frezik@midwest.social 16 points 2 weeks ago

They are. Modeling has shown that getting Australia to 98.8% renewable is highly achievable.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/technology/energy/grid-renewable-electricity-simulation/

[-] Womble@lemmy.world 7 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Austrailia is one of the best places in the world to do that, but it should be pointed out that the article you linked wants 120GWh of batteries (costing ~12 billion USD at current Li-ion prices) as well as building more than 38GW of wind power and 30GW of solar power in order to meet ~25GW of average demand and that still needs pumped hydro on top and more than 9GW of fossil fuel power to make up the gaps.

It's just about feasible in Australia with excess sun and wind, plenty of empy space, low population density and terrain amenable to hydro storage. But it isnt realy generalisable to most other places.

[-] DaBPunkt@lemmy.world 10 points 2 weeks ago

30GW of solar is not much. Germany built 13GW this year.

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[-] auzy@lemmy.world 27 points 2 weeks ago

Not really struggling

All they need to do is subsidise batteries and problem solved

[-] booly@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 weeks ago

Figuring out grid scale storage isn't easy, but the good thing about it is that you can figure out storage at slightly smaller scales to alleviate the problem somewhat, and build on that success to try to get to daily storage to meet nighttime demand, then up to weekly storage to handle fluctuations in weather, and maybe even seasonal storage to deal with seasonal variation in both supply and demand.

But storage doesn't have to just be chemical batteries, either. Some can be demand shifting, like desalination or water pumping based on excess power supply. Maybe even intermittently powering direct air capture of CO2 if there's so much excess energy they don't know what to do with it. Some can be storage of heat, whether really hot like molten salt that can run turbines for dispatchable electricity, or just at the residential scale with a bunch of distributed hot water tanks, or everything in between. There are also some storage technologies relying on gravity (pumped hydro if the geography supports it), compressed air, flywheels (could be important for maintaining grid inertia for stability).

And there's always curtailment, where you just don't generate the power, and turn off some the panels in the middle of the day.

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[-] Pappabosley@lemmy.world 26 points 2 weeks ago

Australia has too many electricity distributors shipping profits overseas instead of upgrading the grid

[-] FuryMaker@lemmy.world 25 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah I'm getting to that point where I'm willing to pay more to install solar, and a battery or two, just so I don't pay electrical providers as much each quarter.

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[-] eleitl@lemm.ee 25 points 2 weeks ago

That's what hydrogen production from water electrolysis is for.

[-] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 18 points 2 weeks ago

Ohh, you gave me an idea! Given that it also happens in CA, maybe we should use the excess for freshwater production from seawater.

[-] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

That still leaves the brine problem. Youve just traded one for another.

Hydrogen wouldn't cause another problem.

[-] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 weeks ago

Brine, eh? Well we do grow lots of cucumbers....

;-)

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 weeks ago

Some could be used in molten salt reactors/batteries, no?

[-] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I imagine so, but were talking about at best case of a 50% water 50% brine solution with reverse osmosis, and worse if it's a thermal desalination plant. It's a fuck ton of liquid, more than we could ever hope to use in a reactor like that.

Some other ideas are evaporate the brine and use the salt for roads in winter, but again, it's more than we could manage at scale, and salting roads isn't ideal either.

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[-] Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 25 points 2 weeks ago

No such thing as too much solar to anyone but an oil man

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[-] Garibaldee@lemm.ee 24 points 2 weeks ago

How else will they be able to continue justify pulling coal out of the ground if they have a robust power grid based on renewables

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-57925798

[-] somedev@aussie.zone 23 points 2 weeks ago

Subsidise home battery systems so that the excess is stored locally instead of going back into the grid.

[-] ArchRecord@lemm.ee 13 points 2 weeks ago

Which also has the additional benefit for homeowners of local backup power in the case of a blackout :)

[-] GiddyGap@lemm.ee 17 points 2 weeks ago
[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 16 points 2 weeks ago

We have so much solar power that we can no longer efficiently profit off of it. We would either need to reduce the margins we make on electricity or destroy our stock of solar capital to reinflate the price of energy.

What to do... what to do...

[-] ButtKiss@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 weeks ago

V2G and V2H is here, so you'll be able to store there and draw down overnight in a suitable ecar.

A large pumped hydro in Qld has been cancelled by the new Lib government, so won't be able to store it there. Snowy Hydro pumped storage is way behind schedule and locally Redflow went backrupt, so huge Zinc Flow storage batteries arent available to rollout to store excess energy and Lithuim is a shitty choice for large grid batteries.

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this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2024
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