The problem with nuclear bros is that they are essentially socialists. Electric demand swings wildly day by day. Running the grid on nukes means you'll need plants that sit idle 90% of the time and markets don't like that sort of thing when your capital investment is $40B with a payback period measured in decades.
Storage at this point seems like a solved problem. We have more batteries rolling around on wheels than sitting still but that is changing. The infamous CA duck curve where electricity goes negative during the day from solar surplus to shooting up in evening is smoothing out.
I suspect geothermal is the next shoe to drop since you can extract energy from the earth essentially forever.
Practical Engineering has a lot of fun videos and they had an interesting one on how the pricing works in the electric markets. The bidding system around the 8:40 mark is really interesting. What I take from it is in such a market anyone with a bank of batteries can simply offer $29 and supply their load for the hypothetical hour.
BUT suggestion is do solar panels with a home battery instead. The arguments for this above a generator are:
1. When there's no blackout you can use it to lower your bill since the battery can offset use at higher rate periods.
2. Your generator will depreciate as it sits around for years waiting for a serious outage.
3. Battery means you can engage in market transactions if the grid gets smarter. For example if your utility offers rebates for lowing demand at peak times you can tap a batter with its app to work with that. A gas generator, aside from being loud and annoying to your neighbors, probably won't be economical to take advantage of that.
Sometimes complicated things like this are best looked at from the macro view.
In real terms electricity prices are low and have been getting low for a generation since the 1990's. (see https://x.com/e_considine/status/1973841325255741775/photo/1).
The problem with nuclear bros is that they are essentially socialists. Electric demand swings wildly day by day. Running the grid on nukes means you'll need plants that sit idle 90% of the time and markets don't like that sort of thing when your capital investment is $40B with a payback period measured in decades.
Storage at this point seems like a solved problem. We have more batteries rolling around on wheels than sitting still but that is changing. The infamous CA duck curve where electricity goes negative during the day from solar surplus to shooting up in evening is smoothing out.
I suspect geothermal is the next shoe to drop since you can extract energy from the earth essentially forever.
Practical Engineering has a lot of fun videos and they had an interesting one on how the pricing works in the electric markets. The bidding system around the 8:40 mark is really interesting. What I take from it is in such a market anyone with a bank of batteries can simply offer $29 and supply their load for the hypothetical hour.
https://youtu.be/sH1PVVJuBtE?si=ousbX0t2O4AOk4Ip&t=510
2- I've read a lot about the SIA, I'm not sure I have anything particularly useful to add.
4- Not really... I used to average around 3500 words with my essays, but I'm trying to be more pithy.
6- I read Tesla's biography and yeah I think he's not a reliable narrator.
"QAnon had me so scared...." Hmmmmmm ok.
BUT suggestion is do solar panels with a home battery instead. The arguments for this above a generator are:
1. When there's no blackout you can use it to lower your bill since the battery can offset use at higher rate periods.
2. Your generator will depreciate as it sits around for years waiting for a serious outage.
3. Battery means you can engage in market transactions if the grid gets smarter. For example if your utility offers rebates for lowing demand at peak times you can tap a batter with its app to work with that. A gas generator, aside from being loud and annoying to your neighbors, probably won't be economical to take advantage of that.
You mean you got solar panels to a battery?