PurpleDancer

PurpleDancer t1_jdcs27i wrote

Reply to comment by snowswolfxiii in Maine's Energy future by mainething

Thanks. I recognize that this is tricky territory with lots of ifs ands and buts. I'm not really qualified to wade through it and figure out whether any particular method is properly accounting for interests rates, length of power plant service, etc... It requires experts who study this stuff to draw the conclusions. Unfortunately I don't know how to spot who the experts are who have all the knowledge to pull it all together and make sense of it. (For instance the numbers you just cited seem to be about construction costs and not ongoing generation costs)

So I'm using heuristics, like how often I see solar win in the comparisons by various studies, whether I seem to be looking at a source written by the solar/nuclear industry (and promptly discount them because they will be incintivized to use the metric that makes them look best). Another heuristic I use is how much China and India are investing. They are obviously building a massive power system for a developing population, China especially can do darn near whatever it wants without a democratically driven safety bureaucracy. Yet they seem to be investing in solar more than nuclear by a huge margin and that makes sense to me if solar is indeed cheaper over the long haul (though the lack of a rural power grid might be the reason which complicates comparisons to the US which has a complete grid).

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PurpleDancer t1_jdcldbp wrote

Reply to comment by snowswolfxiii in Maine's Energy future by mainething

This wikipedia page captures numerous methods of measuring it and you can see the variety of results. There's only one study where solar is considered more expensive than nuclear (ipcc 2014 which was before solar panel prices dropped like a stone) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source

Levelized cost of energy seems to be the common metric https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower/nuclear-energy-too-slow-too-expensive-to-save-climate-report-idUSKBN1W909J

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PurpleDancer t1_jdakrqb wrote

The numbers seem to show that solar is cheaper per kwh

Edit: ok downvotes, do you think I'm just making this up?

This wikipedia page captures numerous methods of measuring it and you can see the variety of results. There's only one study where solar is considered more expensive than nuclear (ipcc 2014 which was before solar panel prices dropped like a stone) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source

Levelized cost of energy seems to be the common metric https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-nuclearpower/nuclear-energy-too-slow-too-expensive-to-save-climate-report-idUSKBN1W909J

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PurpleDancer t1_jbgbgfl wrote

No. You have to know people who grow them and get them that way. Some of us are working to make it so that it's legal to grow them and give them away state wide. As of right now there is no push that I'm aware of to make selling legal.

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PurpleDancer t1_j0nd3ut wrote

What seems very likely is automated DJs that keep track of the room look for all the signs of engagement reading the crowd that sort of thing

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PurpleDancer t1_j0g6d9l wrote

You gotta chill out. Being that nervous is your FU. That was a funny mispronunciation nothing more and if English is your second language there will be plenty more. Just relax, speak a bit, listen more, let people absorb your calmness. If you are all weird and nervous that's the energy they'll absorb from you and it will be awkward.

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