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333 comments on Vinod Khosla - Give Him Your Ideas

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slaphappy on July 30, 2006 - 1:39am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I wouldn't bother to read that tripe. They do an aweful job of cherrypicking the numbers. Here's just one example, from the second page, from the table....

Effective subsidy ($/KWh) Nuclear (1947-1961): 15.3
Effective subsidy ($/KWh) Wind (1975-1989): 0.46

So, as part of my community service, this will be another installment of "lying with numbers" (TM).

First of all, notice that they are over different periods, why not make them over the same time period? Secondly, note that the effective subsidy of $15.30/KWh is about 300 times the wholesale cost of electricity (roughly $0.04/KWh). Is it really true that we are subsidizing energy with a factor of more than 300x its wholesale value? Even for wind this would be a subsidy of at least 10x. Seems fishy already.

More importantly, there wasn't that much nuclear capacity in the US in 1961, the majority was added between 1960 and 1980, so what we are probably seeing here is a few test reactors that produced minimal amounts of power (like the one at INEL that powered Arco for awhile). Take the money for the test reactors, probably add in lots of money spent on nuclear weapons, then divide it by a really insignificant amount of energy produced, and voila, the result is a "subsidy" of 300x the wholesale price of electricity.

Now for the wind period. How much R&D really occurred in the wind realm between 1975 and 1989? Seems to me that most wind has really taken off in the last few years, and thus the research was probably done mostly in the last few years as well. This is probably another case of taking the cost of a few research projects, and dividing it by some insignificant amount of energy produced. Voila, anohter meaningless number, but one that  is slightly "better" than the meaningless number produced for nuclear. In any case, a subsidy of 10x wholesale cost seems a little steep to me.

Also, notice the last column of the table, the installed capacity from a year that is not in any way considered by the rest of the table. A non-sequitur. Even if it does have meaning (the R&D paid for nuclear caused it to have more installed capacity), note that 1999 is 38 years after the end of the development period for nuclear, but only 10 years after for wind. To be fair, this column should include the wind power produced in 2029, but sadly, these numbers are not available, and probably wouldn't show as wild a disparity if they were. Much better to use the contrived situation.

OK, there you have it. Second page, severe problems, numbers manufactured to support the conclusion they desperately want to draw. It's a waste of time.

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apsmith on July 30, 2006 - 1:54am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The purpose of that comparison is to demonstrate the extent of government subsidy in the development of each technology from an initial feasibility stage to GW-scale production. Over 15 years, nuclear power was far more heavily subsidized in its initial phases, relative to production, than wind energy has been. The numbers don't come out of thin air, though the EA document is missing some citations for things like this - but it's not something they came up with, it's from independent studies and comparisons on the issues. Obviously the per-kWh numbers at those early stages don't apply to current production levels.
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AlanfromBigEasy on July 31, 2006 - 1:55pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The wind turbines being installed this year owe VERY VERY little to gov't subsidies.

I have watched the development of wind turbines for a couple of decades and the major forces in development were:

  1. A carbon tax in Denmark

  2. Favorable pricing of wind generated electricity in Denmark

  3. An "in service experience" database on WTs collected and published by the Danish gov't (Better quality WTs got more orders; poorer quality models disappeared).  Market driven evolution.

  4. Danish law and society that allowed for groups of people (a half dozen farmers, some city residents and one farmer) to own one or more WTs as a co-op.

Just a few years ago, Danish companies produced 80% of the world's WTs.  Please note "Massive R&D spending by Denmark" was NOT listed.  (Enron bought last surviving US & German WT makers, merged them, and then GE bought the division from bankruptcy court.  GE put in some major marketing & research $ and is now #1).

Many billions have been spent by gov'ts around the world and only nuclear power can be said to be the "in service" result.  R&D spending by gov't is *NOT* the answer !  They have had a long series of "not in market" results for over 30 years. Geothermal was also developed with minimal gov't R&D.

Thus my preference for mature technolgies that we know can work; especially Urban Rail.

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slaphappy on August 2, 2006 - 1:10am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I'm actually willing to grant your point, but notice that you didn't have to make it using phony numbers and a deceptive chart.

Also, it should be added that the R&D for nuclear is now spent, so there is no reason to not use it just because it was pretty expensive to develop.

Realistically, taking only R&D related to civilian nuclear power (no nuclear navy stuff, no nuclear weapons, none of that), how big was the subsidy compared to today's generating capacity, in $/KWh. Probably pretty small. Even if 40 billion was spent in 1960, that's less than a billion a year for something like 100GW of capacity. A penny per watt of capacity, a tiny fraction of a cent per KWh, hardly seems like the criminal waste that was claimed.

Jack it up to 100 billion or more, it doesn't matter. The electrical infrastructure in this country costs trillions of dollars, a few hundred billion for R&D doesn't fundamentally alter the equation.

I just don't see why the fact that this tech cost a lot to develop (yeah, less than 1% of the cost of installing our current electrical generation, that's apparently a lot...) somehow means that it's bad to use it now. Want subsidies for wind development (which you don't, I see...) fine, but it's no reason why nuclear can't be used.

That's all I'm saying.

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333 comments on Vinod Khosla - Give Him Your Ideas

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