Mildly Interesting

Posting this again because some people don't realize just how expensive nuclear really is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity

This is actually an area that's developing quite quickly. In 2023, California managed to put almost 14mw worth of storage on the grid; if they keep building out at that rate, peaky/transient power sources like wind and solar will have someplace to park until someone needs that energy. Almost 12mw of that was utility storage; it's like the utilities have the chance to get out of the business of producing power themselves and into the role of renting storage (or buying surplus energy then selling it later when it's needed)

Granted, 14mw isn't a lot in the scale of California, but the rate of growth in grid-storage over time is humongous

It's fair pointing out the lack of (sufficient) storage for electric energy, but I'd say the average price of electricity in Finland for the past week indicates both capabilities of renawables and lack of storage.

Compared to fossil fuels I tend to prefer nuclear as well, because even though mining uranium has quite some ecological impact including emitting carbon emissions, running a nuclear power plant doesn't have carbon emissions and that's important.
What worries me is that there are nuclear power plants around the world and despite the first nuclear power plant having been built 70 years ago, not a single ultimate disposal place for the radioactive waste has been found/created.
Having "cheap" electric energy for 3-4 generations and putting a burden on the next 40,000 generations just does sound like a bad deal to me.
Until we have more wind and hydro, keeping nuclear running might be a price we have to pay.
Not being able to dispose of some more (thousands of) tons of radioactive waste is making the problem only quantitatively worse and not qualitatively.

Interesting to hear the differences. I'm on a similar plan in the UK.

For us the prices changes every 30 minutes and there's a maximum unit price. I believe it's £1 per kWh maximum, but I've never seen anything over 65p. There a peak price window every day between 4pm and 7pm where the price has an extra multiplier applied, and that's when you can get the high prices.

Overall I'm saving hundreds of pounds a year over a normal plan, and can change plan within 24hours if I ever feel it's the wrong choice. This last weekend for us with the unit price around zero Saturday night, Sunday daytime (before peak) and Sunday night when it went slightly negative.

Well, in Malaysia, our electricity is provided by TNB, which is state owned company, and power generation so far is mostly coal and natural gas. The pricing is controlled by government, but since the price is at a low side globally, it's heavily subsidised. Though the pricing is tiered, the more you use the more expensive it get per kwh.

I doubt they will be free, just lower the price a bit more for the first tier and everyone will be happy.