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Comment by ZeroGravitas | Hacker News Reader

The post is at least up front that it's got an agenda that it's setting out to prove.

A more standard measure of progress would be carbon intensity (carbon emitted per kWh generated) I have a hunch that it doesn't support this argument as the decision to bucket everything into "clean" or "dirty" is otherwise bizarre.

It's also misses things like greater electrification which might be graded poorly on this, e.g. every car running on gas powered electricity is an improvement but will show up here as a bad thing.

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>carbon emitted per kWh generated

Is it? If an energy source requires natural gas or coal to deal with peaks of increasingly hot days, this doesn't tell the whole story.

If we increase solar or wind to be a primary source, then we need to take into account the carbon cost of storage. Since this doesn't exist, it is an unknown.

Finally, the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. Carbon emitted per kWh generated assumes it will be operating at 100% over its lifetime. So we will need an over capacity of wind and solar generators. The actual carbon emitted per kWh will be much higher.

We will eventually get to a state where solar and wind is all we have/need. The requirement will be gridscale energy storage that contains enough storage for days of operation.

The question is: should we be closing nuclear plants and filling the gap with natural gas and coal before we get there?

>The question is: should we be closing nuclear plants and filling the gap with natural gas and coal before we get there?

We're there now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...

Put solar panels on literally every building. Put wind mills where you will. We know we need to do this. No nat gas or coal, we do pump storage. When we can, we do the next gen batteries at massive grid scale.

We dont need to shutdown anything early. Those are all amortized for their time. When we can, we eliminate those things as they come of age.

New York phased out their last coal plant already, so they've moved onto the nuclear+renewables+gas stage and are only tweaking the mix on their way to 100 zero carbon.

(Also "dual fuel" basically means gas, but with the ability to burn other stuff if they get into shortages, but its basically a last resort, its 99% gas)

Is "days" actually enough? What happens if there is a drought, clouds and no wind for more than "days"?

>we need to take into account the carbon cost of storage. Since this doesn't exist, it is an unknown.

NY appears to have plenty of hydro from that graph. It's not all that hard to close the sluice gates and open them later.

Grid scale batteries are also cost competitive (as of the last 12 months or so), though they wouldn't be as cheap as hydro for dispatchable energy.

Hydro has issues with reliability as well. You could have a long drought.

Is NY hydro largely generated at Niagara Falls?

Theres the croton dam as well.

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