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Us is pathetic. Nothing is planned.
No direction. Every 4 years fuckers change shit.Centrally planned china can run circles around
Yeah, China is great!
All dictatorships are more efficient than democracies, so just give it a little time. Our dictator will catch up. It’s our first try at fascism. Cut us some slack.
I’ve heard a lot of definitions of fascism, but the one that makes the most sense, that explains the most is this:
Fascism is what they call it when an empire takes the murderous and dehumanizing policies it uses on it’s periphery - it colonies invasions territories “frontiers” - and begins using them on the citizens of the “homeland” or imperial core.
Germany had concentration camps in its African colonies well before they started ghettoizing Jewish people. The United States has had “fascist” policies all my life and all your life. Those dehumanizing and murderous actions have just been turned outward. But your means always become your ends.
If you want to know the future of this country, look at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Look at the black-sites and the special rendition treaties. The water tables poisoned by depleted uranium ammunition. The families lost to drone strikes as so-called “collateral”. We have always been fascist. Those of us who just happen to live here, no different from the German citizens who simply didn’t know and did not ask too many questions.
Whoever downvoted is either in denial or a fascist.
The picture you painted frightens me because I know we’re heading there. I’m trying to remain hopeful that we can still stop this insanity.
Yeah, I’m somewhat paralyzed by it myself. It feels mean to spell it out like this, but fuck… I just cannot just let this rattle around in my head for any longer.
There is some cold comfort to know others see this too, that I’m not just driving myself crazy.
Energy would be so abundant it’d be free, if we’d done Fusion 50 years ago.
Will they really though?
Have you looked at your power bill and seen how much of the bill is not power consumption?
We have also seen multiple times where the wholesale price of electricity is below zero yet consumers are still paying for power during those times.
In the long run, yes. In the short term, the grid upgrades are quite expensive.
It’s almost like utilities are a natural monopoly that do not fit within the economic ideology of “free market” capitalism…
People seem to be forgetting that unless green power or nuclear power are socialized projects they would by default have to find a way to capitalize their products by some means. Whether it would be by capitalization via consumption rates, maintenance fees, or even subscription, a private business would have to be able to make ever increasing profits.
Yep. Even the most liberal of thinkers agree that natural monopolies shouldn’t be for profit.
Have you looked at your power bill and seen how much of the bill is not power consumption?
Not in US, but after our power went private it literally doubled. The nice lady tried to convince me the “extra” charges were always there but not itemized, but while holding the previous bill with the same (within a few points) my usage was the same but the “fees” were as much as my power usage
Did she open the flaps on her shirt and start rubbing her nipples?
Now that you mention it, I think I did hear that velcro ripping noise
One form of government investment is subsidized panels for homes so you rely on utilities less.
When the price goes up it’s because the renewables don’t produce power when there is no wind and sun (which pretty much sums up January here). Building more of something that does not produce power is not going to help with the price shocks.
We need to figure out grid scale storage, fusion or build nuclear power to get rid of fossil fuels. Until then utility bills will be occasionally more shocking than jamming a fork in the outlet.
figure out grid scale storage, fusion or build nuclear power
You don’t necessarily need that, actually. Another option is to invest in a larger, wider grid with more interconnects and more long-range transmission capacity.
Maybe the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing where you are … but the sun is shining somewhere, and the wind is blowing somewhere. If you can transmit the power from those places to where you are (and vice versa) then you really don’t need nearly as much storage capacity or continuous generation. If you can transmit power from farther away, that can really help even out the random variability in renewable power sources by averaging them out over a much wider area.
Another often-overlooked constant source of renewable energy is geothermal. Geothermal power plants can be extremely green and efficient, and their power capacity basically never changes at all. They’re only viable in certain places that have geothermal hot spots, of course … but once again, you can solve that by increasing long-range transmission capacity. Build massive geothermal plants in the few places where they’re viable, and then transmit that power to all the places where geothermal isn’t viable.
I know storage is almost viable and i read articles about improved battery technology monthly, nuclear we know works, fusion has been a decade away for the last 50 years. But what transmission technology do we have coming that makes it a contender?
Transmission doesn’t really require any new technology that’s not already in use. Just need to build more of what we already use every day. More high tension power lines, over longer distances, more interconnects between grids, more capacity in those interconnects.
If you really want to go full power on this (and especially if you want your solar power to be continuous generation 24/7) you’ll need to develop a bit of new tech. Well, not so much new tech as just scaling existing tech to be massive. A truly gargantuan transmission line across the Bering Strait could link the two hemispheres into a single worldwide grid. (Though Australia and other more isolated islands might still have to have separate grids and couldn’t take advantage of this as ‘easily’.) If you build that, then you can have a global power grid that the sun is shining on 24 hours a day, so even if solar power was your only power source and even if you had no grid storage capacity, the power grid could still operate all day every day, with that big hemisphere interconnect transmitting power from the day side to the night side, switching direction of flow twice a day.
i read articles about improved battery technology monthly
For grid-level energy storage, we don’t really need any new battery technology. Yes, it might be nice to have cheaper, greener, higher-capacity, more durable batteries, but we don’t need that to make grid-scale storage work. Even our lunky old lead-acid batteries that have been around for over 100 years would do just fine. We just need to build MORE of them. Like, a lot more. (Plus chargers and inverters to change the AC grid power to storable DC and back again.)
But lead-acid batteries have limited life cycles!
They do. But you don’t throw them away when they reach the end of their life cycle – you recycle them. Even completely worn-out and absolutely useless lead-acid batteries can be recycled, recovering 99% of the materials in them. And you can use those materials to build fresh new batteries, likely on a massive scale, running continuously, always recycling the oldest batteries on the grid and shipping out fresh newly made batteries to replace them. Aside from the energy the recycling (and transportation) processes use, it’s pretty much a closed loop system. Recycling and replacing the batteries just becomes a regular maintenance task.
Nuclear energy
That’s incorrect. Nuclear power is one of the more expensive options when you factor in the costs after operation ends, which you should obviously do.
Remove coal subsidies and factor in newer reactor technology before you calculate nuclear cost.
That’s kind of funny. Nuclear energy is actually getting more expensive:
A few reasons come to mind:
- The newer the technology, the higher the cost.
- Each reactor and its power plant is a huge project. This makes scaling up production difficult. And please don’t start with tiny reactors. We’re not in Fallout.
- Safety standards have risen.
There are probably more reasons. I would of course not compare it to coal but to renewables. They’re the future. Storage will be needed but those options are also getting cheaper by the day.
Why are utilities privatized?
Our energy provider increased our rates, then reported record breaking profits the next year. :(
(US)
That’s so typical.
Source: also US
They should be nonprofits, independent, but strictly non profit
Nah, let’s privatize all the services you need to have a functional home. That way the companies can extract maximum value from the customers.
Brilliant.
better yet, let’s put them on the stock market so they obligated to squeeze their “customers”
Won’t anyone think of the shareholders!?
For real though, I had a job where the management team tried to motivate us by setting “shareholder expectations” or some such nonsense. Obviously this didn’t work. Also the company was small enough that pretty much everyone working there personally knew all the shareholders… Because they also ran the business. They were the managers.
The balls it must take to be a shareholder, and to be known as a shareholder then talk about shareholder expectations like those are for a different set of people that isn’t just you… Gotta be massive…
oof ya, unless they are doing profit sharing they can fuck right off with that
And those who are/want to go off grid:
Straight to jail.
Because as a general rule governments aren’t efficient running services and that’s fine for a while but long term that means infrastructure isn’t properly maintained which leads to service malfunction, which leads to privatization because someone else can do it better and competence appears because someone else things can do it better than the other or to collapse because things don’t work anymore.
Source: I am Spanish, a lot of companies were privatized after the dictatorship because they weren’t efficient and infrastructure was falling apart. Privatizing allowed competence which meant someone had to invest in infrastructure to be better than the other. Problem is now governments are confabulated with some of those companies to create oligopolies. For example my city has it’s own water/trash company (half private half public) so no one is allowed to bid against them; you can imagine how that is going (from paying 35€ every 3 months to paying 65€ in one year), price goes up, no one can’t complain or hire a cheaper one, while with cable and phone companies since Telefonica was privatized other companies popped out and you can have cheaper and better internet/phone/tv.
Same here and I just found out the majority shareholder of my electric company is black rock. And the same year our rates went up the highest is the same year the CEOs made a bunch of bonuses.
So government can spend the investment on schools and hospitals instead. (In the civilised world, obviously not America)
This has little to do with where you’re from. It’s just neoliberal rhetoric. Having a public energy sector would be beneficial in the long run and would reduce what we have to pay for it. Right now the earnings are privatized in most places.
It’s not rhetoric. It’s economics 101. Opportunity cost.
A mixture of private and public is best.
What opportunity?
Opportunity cost. If you spend money on one thing, it means you can’t spend it on something else
Of course. So providing profits to utility “owners” is money stolen from the people that could be more productively used literally anywhere else.
The profits are in return for investment that the government couldn’t otherwise do. What’s the alternative?
Also, the private company employs people, they pay income tax.
Thanks professor. Do you know private debt and state debt are hardly the same? Have you considered the opportunity cost of not having public energy, therefore losing potential “earnings” to private investors? Or are you telling me next that rich people are a necessity as well? Is trickle-down part of this course or do I have to wait for 201?
What a lot of shite you write. Where does the state debt come from genius?
My area privatized the publicly owned electricity provider and since prices started going up they then had to implement rebates to bring bills down a bit. Effectively a roundabout way to move public funds from paying for the actual infrastructure into subsidizing corporate profits instead
Exactly. Privatize the profits and socialize the costs. What a brilliant system. Unfortunately it benefits only a small handful while everyone else picks up the tab.
How’s Venezuela’s infrastructure after two decades of socialism?
Ah, whataboutism. How cunning. I’m done with you.
It’s called evidence lol
Having a public energy sector would be beneficial in the long run and would reduce what we have to pay for it.
A well-run public energy sector, certainly. Idk what we’d end up with given the most recent rotation of people in charge.
The state does have an incentive to keep consumer costs low in a way the private sector does not. But state officials also traditionally do a bad job of maintaining and expanding utilities to match consumer demand.
The end result tends to be low end user prices at the expense of reliable distribution and surplus volume.
Grid should be public and production should be privatised.
So, the government. Where does it come from?
Where does it go?
Usually the middle east
Cotton eyed Joe
Of the quicker way: the government nationalised all power companies, and sold electricity for cheap… Because it’s necessary… For society…
Both. Both is good.
Plug and play solar and wind are the future:
- Solar
https://www.amazon.com/SOLPERK-Maintainer-Waterproof-Controller-Adjustable/dp/B08GX19KT9?
- Wind
https://www.amazon.com/pofluany-Generator-Controller-Turbines-Windmill/dp/B0D1VHSHNH?
- Wind, not plug and play, but you get the idea
https://www.amazon.com/VEVOR-500W-Wind-Turbine-Generator/dp/B0D3T9Q6QC?
- You would need a few of these and also not plug and play
This 500W vertical axis wind turbine utilizes a helical design and a permanent magnet generator to operate effectively in low wind speed environments. Its high power output and low starting wind speed make it ideal for maximizing energy production.
https://www.amazon.com/Vertical-Generator-Permanent-Intelligent-Controller/dp/B0DSC27VD1?
How does this handle grid power outages?
In my area, you’re required to prevent back feeding if the grid goes down (otherwise it can be hazardous for the linemen repairing the issue).
It can also be hazardous for electricians or DIY home repairs if they don’t know about it.
Oh, you think you’re safe because you turned the house’s power off at the main breaker? Forgot about the solar panels backfeeding into the panel – all the circuits are still live!
(Or, even more fun, only half the breakers in the panel are still live, since the solar panels are only feeding into one of the two phases. So maybe you test to make sure the power is off by turning on the lights, and the lights don’t turn on so you think you’re safe. But the power outlets you’re about to work on are on a different circuit, one that’s on the same phase as the solar, so they’re still live. Fun stuff!)
All that’s to say… You should definitely still do home solar if you can. But document it well, and establish ways to disconnect power to ensure safety!
They all have controllers? I’m guessing it’s all done through that. You’ll probably want to be careful when you get one for your specific area that it follows all of the laws.
Solar is so cheap now, that some people can just build their own solar and battery setup themselves.
Yes, but at scale it is significantly cheaper to build larger and distribute it. It also means people don’t have to over invest in their own set up just to cover their peak usage. There is also a large amount of up front capital required to build with usually years before you get back what was invested. Its also almost impossible for renters or apartment buildings to do it themselves.
Yes I know all of that, I’m saying that solar is so much cheaper than coal power that even private individuals can buy it, so we shouldn’t be wasting money on new coal plants or gas plants.
Same for nuclear. U.S.-Americans are brainwashed on this topic.
First, they pay with their tax dollars for the subsidies that the private for-profit companies use to build the nuclear reactors. After that, they pay again, because the private company charges them extra on the electricity bill for the electricity generated by the very same nuclear reactor so that they can make even more profit.
It’s so stupid and they’re brainwashed to defend it to the teeth. They also always try to deflect from the fact that renewables are cheaper than nuclear and can be owned by them instead of a for-profit company, by pretending that everyone who opposes nuclear energy must be in favour of coal and gas. It’s mind boggling to watch.
Nuclear power is really cool, but my biggest problem with building new reactors isn’t even the money issues you pointed out, it’s the fact that I live in the US and I don’t trust any regulatory agency to build a new nuclear power plant correctly/safely.
Solar panels and wind turbines are monumentally cheaper AND they don’t potentially cause ten thousand year contamination problems.
Nuclear power is really cool Why though? It’s insanely inefficient in terms of costs and really, really dangerous if something goes seriously wrong.
If you install a solar panels with a regulator, it’s running in less than 2 weeks and goes for decades with very little maintenance that almost every idiot can do. Plus, you don’t have to pay for a company’s profit while getting that energy. Now THAT is cool in my opinion.
Well, they could be cheaper.
Or the power company – the only one you’re allowed to do business with – could lower their production costs but leave your rates the same, pocketing the difference as profit.
Cheaper utilities was never the goal
Fun Fact: Doesn’t really work in Winter.
Source: EU countries that don’t have a ton of cheap gas, flowing water or nuclear power and unlimited storage.
Unless you live in the Arctic Circle, it does in fact work in Winter.
You provision enough solar so it still works in winter, then sell your excess in summer.
It would be cheaper to just end most of the oil subsidiaries and move some of those subsidies to solar/wind/etc. refineries and processing and distribution, while profits are private, are heavily funded by public tax or tax breaks on profits.
https://www.fractracker.org/2025/03/fossil-fuel-subsidies-free-market-myth/
Unfortunately Trump has no ability to think about a future past tomorrow much less one that benefits anyone other than himself, so there’s no chance this will be fixed until he’s replaced.
