Yeah, Germany is really regretting the early retirement of their nuclear power stations. Like, I know the German people really wanted all the nuclear gone due to fear of accidents (completely blown out of proportion, western nuclear plants and modern designs are the safest in the world), but the responsible thing is to build up the replacement infrastructure first, then start decommissioning. But even then, their neighbor France is full of reactors, so they should still be just as fearful of nuclear accidents as before, yet they arent. Like I always like to say, obviously Irrational fears have no rational logic to them lol.
Intel should've known about this, when they decided to expand their fabs in Ireland. It's a little late to complain about it now.
Germany grew fat on cheap energy from Russia. They were in denial about it, for quite a while. Now, they're having to face the reckoning.
I can sympathize a little bit, due to having a nuclear Sword of Damocles hanging over them in the Cold War. There was lots of public outcry over this, which probably formed unpleasant associations with nuclear power in the minds of many.
BTW, France is actually dependent on Russia for its nuclear fuel. The fuel rods are mechanically incompatible with those used in other Western countries, and converting your reactors isn't simple or easy, because it requires changes to all of the fuel-handling infrastructure.
In France’s case, it has its own fuel enriching company Orano in southern France and makes it’s own fuel rods for its standard reactors by France’s Framatome or U.S.’s Westinghouse. The bulk of uranium used by France is purchased from Niger, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Australia.
Household consumers in Ireland already subsidize the lower rates that Intel pays for it's power here. On top of that, they have sweetheart tax incentives (Ireland is basically a tax haven). It's not up to Ireland to subsidise Intel's business failures too.
It is true that AZ is more reliable than TX. Arizona is #7 and Texas is #28.
Yes, 2 weeks of no power in February of 2021 really skews that report. I haven’t had a single power outage in 3 years since.
Does that include delivery fees? In Huntington Beach California where I live my electricity bill is split between a delivery fee per kWh and the generation fee per kWh. If I adjust my costs per kWh to include the variation in cost per kWh depending on when the energy is used it costs me 38.9 cents per kWh in October. I would need to find a newer bill, but it has certainly gone up since then. My bill is split nearly 50/50 between a 19 cent per kWh for the "delivery" of the power and the cost to generate it for 19.9 cents per kWh.
The hole in that plan is that treaty signatories needed to agree to impose tariffs on any countries who aren't signatories to the treaty, in order to eliminate the competitive imbalance created by the treaty.
Wasn't there a private equity firm that used leveraged buyouts to monopolize California's electric grid, like 20 years ago? And then they proceeded to jack up everyone's rates, while under-investing in the grid?
It is overall cost, tax, tax credit, land, water. sewege, regulations, etc.
I've never in my life had a power loss of more than 1.5 days. That includes major winter blizzards in Michigan and New York with feet of snow, or record temperature # of back to back days over 110F heat straining the AZ grid in summer. The event in 2021 in Texas is totally unacceptable & shouldn't be easily talked away. It's a major infrastructure failure.
I don't know all of the finer details, however, you cannot find a Californian who likes Southern California Edison (SCE) that don't work for them or profit off their business. I have lived in California all my life using their "services" against my will because they are the only option I am aware of. Here is a SS of my SCE bill for context if you are curious.
Personal experience can vary quite a bit. In states that are heavily-wooded, it's going to be a much bigger function of where in the state you live than which state you live in. The big cities almost never have extended outages, but show me one state where some people in heavily-wooded outer-lying suburbs or rural areas don't sometimes go days or a week without power!
Come to think of it, I have never had a blackout of longer than a couple hours in my life, but know that some had extended rotating blackouts during Feb 2021 so that everyone had an hour of heating every 4 hours. I agree that it was an act of gross negligence on the power companies who failed to winterize key infrastructure for the winter season, but my point was that the government is now on those power companies like “white on rice on a paper plate with a glass of milk in a snow storm” to make sure they cross their T’s and dot their I’s.
Didn’t Enron play games with electrical supply in the early 2000’s by purchasing power at capped rates from California and then rerouting the power to inland states to be sold at high uncapped rates, thus causing artificial power scarcity in California?
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