> Fun fact, people in California are paying nearly twice the price for energy than the rest of the US.
People in California are paying massive amounts for power distribution. The utilities themselves are paying very little for power generation -- for example, they pay 4c/kWh for a solar+batteries plant build in 2022.
> but doesn't put out anywhere near the power of nuclear.
We have > 250GW of solar and 97 GW of nuclear. Nuclear produced 779TWh and solar 303TWh in 2024. They are quite comparable.
> If California wants to do solar, it can! Though it will likely go the way of the rail project, the firefighting org etc
California already has a lot of solar and batteries.
Distribution is a separate line item on your PG&E bill. They have to bill you separately for the cost of electricity and the cost of delivery (maintenance of the grid)
Your energy prices are extremely high for reasons apart from the grid.
There is no “best way.” There are multiple good ways but there is no single “best way.” If someone has told you there is a ”best way” and no other path forward stands a chance then they are selling you something.
No. Texas has more renewables and uses way more total electricity. The fraction of grid electricity in Texas that comes from renewables is less than half of what it is in California.
Your comment reflects energy policy from somewhere around like 1975?
How can I tell someone on hackernews knows absolutely nothing about power generation economics? They say we have to go all in on nuclear. And that's assuming that the poster isn't being completely disingenuous.
Nuclear is expensive, and there are no technologies that will reduce the price in the near term. Solar wind and battery storage is still on a economies of scale price reduction curve that no other form of electricity generation can match.
Not coal, not natural gas, and certainly not nuclear.
If you start building nuclear plants which best case come online in 10 to 12 years, with nuclear technology that already is not economical, by the time they come online that is another 10 or 12 years of battery, solar panel, and wind technology improvement and further economies of scale.
Wind and solar have the ability to be organically grown and expanded. Solar can be placed practically anywhere there's a roof.
Now do I think we should be researching nuclear, researching lftrs, and perhaps funding nuclear power plants to perform peaking in the grid? Sure.
Do I think we should be shutting down existing nuclear power plants not particularly. I'd rather use those than natural gas and coal fired plants for grid balancing.
Right now rooftop solar or residential solar is probably about the price of nuclear. In 10 years it will probably be half the price of nuclear.
Anyway, the overall good news with this typically unhinged Trump announcement is it the economic reality is on the side of alternative energy proponents.
Of course the government can screw things up, boy howdy. Do we know that now. But then Americans will just learn the brutal truth that other economies are going to drop the price of their electricity, which is one of the basic drivers of economic growth and competition.
And the US will be left behind.
Because it's not like we're entering a multipolar highly competitive world right? oh.
To back up your point, here is the plummeting price of renewable energy [1].
The real reason for all this is because people get extremely rich off of fossil fuels and people don't relaly get rich off of renewables. Resource extraction (mining, drilling for oil and gas, etc) is a wealth concentrator.
Oh and it's worth adding that the recent bill reduced royalty payments paid by oil companies [2].
The whole thing is simply yet another form of wealth transfer from ordinary citizens to the mega-wealthy.
