Only renewables - not nuclear - could be too cheap to meter

[kristopher]

Posted by
Damian Carrington, Berlin
Tuesday 22 May 2012 01.15 EDT
theguardian.com

Only renewables - not nuclear - could be too cheap to meter
Germany's long support for wind and solar energy is delivering zero-cost electricity at times. In contrast, the UK's new energy policy seeks to underwrite the rising cost of nuclear


"Too cheap to meter": that was the infamous boast of the nuclear power industry in its heyday. It has been catastrophically discredited by history.

Yet the phrase may yet see a new life - not of course for nuclear power - but for renewable energy. As the UK government publishes its draft energy bill on Tuesday, acknowledged by all but ministers themselves as primarily an arcane way of getting new nuclear power stations built, I am in Germany.

Already, on one particularly windy weekend here, the surge of electricity drove the price down to zero. Very soon, due to the 25GW of solar capacity Germany has already installed, hot summer's days will see the same effect: electricity too cheap to meter.

Now hang on, I hear you say, free electricity is actually crazy as it means there's no incentive to invest in new, clean generation capacity, which almost every country needs as the world seeks to cut the carbon emissions driving climate change. Germany's renewable energy policy, which began with a feed-in-tariff in 1990, deals with this by continuing to pay the producer, even when the electricity is sold for nothing.

Crazy again, right? No, says Andreas Kraemer, director of the Ecologic Institute, an energy research policy centre, because ...

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2012/may/22/energy-nuclear-renewables

[phantom power]

1. "too cheap to meter" is a phrase from 1954

It's from a speech where in the same sentence he talks about the usual 1950s Jetsons-style vision of the future that they all dug back then, including literal allusions to flying cars:

"Our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter... It is not too much to expect that our children will know of great periodic regional famines in the world only as matters of history, will travel effortlessly over the seas and under them and through the air with a minimum of danger and at great speeds, and will experience a lifespan far longer than ours, as disease yields and man comes to understand what causes him to age."
--Lewis Strauss

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_cheap_to_meter

It's a bit of a mystery to me why anybody still talks about this toss-off phrase from 60 years ago. Yes, it's kind of amusing in a mock-worthy sort of way, kind of like that fun quote "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

But its not an argument anybody makes. Even the guy who originally tossed it off 3 generations ago wasn't making an argument so much as tossing off some fluff for a bunch of science reporters.

Energy is not going to be "too cheap to meter."

[kristopher]

2. Bullpucky

True on the antecedents but false about the impact. I don't care about the revisionist claims of the propagandist that originally uttered the words, the fact is he made the claim and deliberately planted the idea in the heads of a room FULL of reporters. What did he expect, they were going to ignore it?

[phantom power]

3. I agree that they mostly *did* believe that stuff, in some generic way

The free energy, immortality, world peace, underwater cities, flying-fucking-cars. It was a time of enormous optimism about technology and the future. Most of it looks quaint and/or humorous with 60 years of actual history under the bridge, as it always does.

60 years from now a lot of our conversations will look equally quaint. It's just a matter of which ones.

If I'm lucky enough to be alive, I'm sure I'll just have to chuckle and say "well, it mostly seemed reasonable at the time."

[kristopher]

5. You and I aren't Commissioners at a Brand New Atomic Energy Commission...

...on a rollout tour for a new energy source the Government is promoting.

He knew Exactly what he was saying and he believed it.

[PamW]

4. It wasn't meant to be taken seriously...

I find it hard to believe that anyone took that trite piece of fluff seriously.

The mode of generation can only affect the portion of the cost that is apportioned to generation.

The maintenance of the power lines and grid is a much bigger component of the electric cost than generation.

So even if one could generate the energy for free; the distribution system costs would preclude ever having "free energy".

Besides; nothing is really ever "free". The things you get for "free" like broadcast TV, is paid for by someone else ( the advertisers ).

PamW

[quadrature]

6. tell that to Germany, and their 30c/KWh electricity .nt