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It’s getting very messy – politicalbetting.com

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  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,083
    edited July 19
    nico679 said:

    How can the Labour government just ignore the Rwanda legislation . Don’t they need a vote in parliament to get rid of that?

    If they are not enforcing the law wouldn't it require a legal challenge of some kind to force them to do so?

    Less seriously, there are surely laws on the books which are simply not actually enforced in reality anymore.
  • boulayboulay Posts: 5,486
    HYUFD said:
    How many signatures needed for a recall petition? How many of the people who voted for her a few weeks ago voted for conservative v her personal vote? I think her hubris will end as it always does.
  • nico679nico679 Posts: 6,275
    kle4 said:

    nico679 said:

    How can the Labour government just ignore the Rwanda legislation . Don’t they need a vote in parliament to get rid of that?

    If they are not enforcing the law wouldn't it require a legal challenge of some kind to force them to do so?
    Yes I’d have thought so . And wouldn’t it cause problems for those asylum seekers if their status was in question .
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,083
    edited July 19
    boulay said:

    HYUFD said:
    How many signatures needed for a recall petition? How many of the people who voted for her a few weeks ago voted for conservative v her personal vote? I think her hubris will end as it always does.
    Recall petitions require a trigger event in order to instigate that petition. eg conviction or suspension.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 23,148
    AnthonyT said:

    Helen Pitcher, whose monumental and damaging uselessness as CCRC Chair was laid bare in the Henley Report yesterday is refusing to resign because she thinks she's the best person for the job.

    What the fuck is it with these people? She fucked up. Her organisation fucked up. An innocent man spent years in prison as a result. She has to go.

    Well, if sacked one probably does not get the same compensation package and notice pay etc, so less expensive for the taxpayer?

    What will happen is perhaps that they will say " you're getting the sack", then there will be "a conversation"?

    Just don't make the Ed Balls mistake ...
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,011
    A few more defections to ReFuk, coupled with the inevitable resignations for various forms of mischief, and the Tories will be down to double figures.
  • numbertwelvenumbertwelve Posts: 6,813
    Might be nothing, but NYT is reporting Harris is meeting with major Democratic donors on short notice this afternoon.
  • boulayboulay Posts: 5,486
    kle4 said:

    boulay said:

    HYUFD said:
    How many signatures needed for a recall petition? How many of the people who voted for her a few weeks ago voted for conservative v her personal vote? I think her hubris will end as it always does.
    Recall petitions require a trigger event in order to instigate that petition. eg conviction or suspension.
    So not triggered by “the person who we voted for a few weeks ago on the basis of being a conservative lied about being a conservative and wouldn’t have won if she had stood for reform. So she got elected under false pretences.”
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,553
    HYUFD said:
    The evidence for this claim seems very thin to me.
  • RattersRatters Posts: 1,076
    nico679 said:

    How can the Labour government just ignore the Rwanda legislation . Don’t they need a vote in parliament to get rid of that?

    The legislation gives them the power to report to Rwanda, subject to appeals etc that meant no one was deported before the election except where they were paid to go willingly.

    The legislation doesn't require them to use said power. And they are choosing not to. And Rwanda won't wait around for 5 years so the scheme will need to be negotiated all over again if a new government wants it back.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 28,421
    kle4 said:

    HYUFD said:

    She may even face the ignominy of failing to secure the numbers to get on the ballot paper as support within the parliamentary party leeches away to other right-wing candidates.


    That would be embarrassing, and would blunt the impact of her defection, though it would still be significant.

    I still believe had the Tories done just a little bit worse then the candidates for leader would have had one who was explicitly pro-merger/alliance with Reform.

    As it is it seems to be a fight over how much to pitch for Reform votes (they do need them after all).
    There's really not much to this is there? Interesting how it's not even a senior MP, just a 'senior Tory' - perhaps understandable given that there are far fewer MPs than there once were.

    The knives are very much out for Suella in what I assume is the wet hierarchy - they're usually the incontinent leakers with a prolific line in hissy snake bitchiness. You had Badenoch's 'public nervous breakdown' comment, and now this, which I note she's denied.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,083
    Andy_JS said:

    HYUFD said:
    The evidence for this claim seems very thin to me.
    It is possibly shit stirring from both pro and anti Reform people, seeking to make her think she has no chance among the Tories, and little to lose by going to Reform.
    boulay said:

    kle4 said:

    boulay said:

    HYUFD said:
    How many signatures needed for a recall petition? How many of the people who voted for her a few weeks ago voted for conservative v her personal vote? I think her hubris will end as it always does.
    Recall petitions require a trigger event in order to instigate that petition. eg conviction or suspension.
    So not triggered by “the person who we voted for a few weeks ago on the basis of being a conservative lied about being a conservative and wouldn’t have won if she had stood for reform. So she got elected under false pretences.”
    Deliberately not.
  • eekeek Posts: 28,368

    Helps the Tories immeasurably if Suella jumps ship.

    Not if she takes 15 or so friends with her over the next few months...
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,083

    kle4 said:

    HYUFD said:

    She may even face the ignominy of failing to secure the numbers to get on the ballot paper as support within the parliamentary party leeches away to other right-wing candidates.


    That would be embarrassing, and would blunt the impact of her defection, though it would still be significant.

    I still believe had the Tories done just a little bit worse then the candidates for leader would have had one who was explicitly pro-merger/alliance with Reform.

    As it is it seems to be a fight over how much to pitch for Reform votes (they do need them after all).
    There's really not much to this is there? Interesting how it's not even a senior MP, just a 'senior Tory' - perhaps understandable given that there are far fewer MPs than there once were.

    The knives are very much out for Suella in what I assume is the wet hierarchy - they're usually the incontinent leakers with a prolific line in hissy snake bitchiness. You had Badenoch's 'public nervous breakdown' comment, and now this, which I note she's denied.
    I think there is a good probability it is made up. It's not even a lie if whoever said it believes her defection is expected, even if it was totally wrong.
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 60,416
    Love the way the market refuses to believe he's not fucking off
  • numbertwelvenumbertwelve Posts: 6,813
    edited July 19
    eek said:

    Helps the Tories immeasurably if Suella jumps ship.

    Not if she takes 15 or so friends with her over the next few months...
    If she’s got 15 friends then she’s probably got enough nominations to run for the Tory leadership and wouldn’t need to defect.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,250

    Nigelb said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Also FPT

    Cannot speak for the accuracy of the figures, but this is a worrying thread about Labour's green plans:

    https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1814239901094654095

    It doesn't really make sense. For example:

    "Supply exceeds demand 64% of the time, so, lacking any suitable storage technology, we'd be throwing out 120 TWh of power, worth well over £10 billion, every year. That's perhaps £500 per household chucked down the drain."

    How can power produced in excess of what can be used have a value? It is, by definition, worth nothing. Also the assumption that we'd have no suitable storage technology is a bit of a biggie, especially given the possibility of using car batteries for storage.

    Edit: The obvious way to go is to improve connectivity with other countries. After all, the wind is always blowing somewhere.
    Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick, through payments to windfarms when the power is not required:

    "This means that the government is having to pay huge sums in curtailment fees to wind farm owners to switch off turbines when they are generating more power than is needed.
    Some £210m ($267m) of curtailment payments were made to renewable energy generators to curtail output in 2022, said the report
    With the UK planning to grow its offshore wind capacity from 14GW today to 50GW by 2030, the report says that curtailment costs are expected to rise to £3.5bn annually by the end of the decade."

    https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/turn-wasted-wind-power-into-green-hydrogen-and-save-uk-billions-study/2-1-1583623

    or:

    "Wasted wind power adds £40 to household energy costs, says think tank"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67494082
    It's not quite as simple as that.

    The wind farms have guaranteed prices for the power they produce from contracts signed with the government, but they still participate in the spot market.

    During periods of overproduction, instantaneous prices go negative (ie the grid offers to pay producers to reduce production and/or customers to use power). If their guaranteed strike price is higher than the negative market price, it still pays the wind farm to carry on producing; a negative price which exceeds what they earn pays them to stun off production.

    Similarly with solar (though not all solar connections are 'throttleable' in the same manner.)

    With the rapid increase in renewables production, total hours with negative pricing will also grown over then next few years.
    But the very strong market incentive is going to see the storage market grow in response.

    The game changer is the drop in battery prices over the last year. They're now just about at the point it pays to deploy grid scale storage - it just needs the factories to build them.
    Battery prices have dropped 55% since the beginning of last year.

    Lots of things that weren't economic are now economic.
    They won't stay low in the long term unless someone finds an awful lot more copper etc that can be mined cheaply. Raw materials of copper cobalt, lithium etc are a big elephant in the room

    New "battery" techology is needed. Keep seeing breakthrough announcements but few make it to production as the announcements are normally about a lab concept to try and attract (high risk) investment money to turn that into something sellable.
    More fortunes have been lost betting on commodities not being found than any other way.

    As prices rise, more deposits become economic.
    And there's a huge amount of known, unexploited lithium reserves.
    As an example, the US probably one of the world's largest known extractable deposit, and they haven't yet even started mining it.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker_Pass_Lithium_Mine

    Interestingly, ARPA-E, the US energy technology equivalent of DARPA is funding a few projects for innovative mining technology, in the hope of reviving US mining which has been undercut in recent years by low cost producers like China.
    What happens when the lithium runs out?
    Lithium isn't going to run out, there's loads. There was a price spike when batteries were selling much faster than people had expected and lithium production couldn't ramp up fast enough, but then it caught up and the price came back down.

    Social media has a bias to bad news, doomers and Russian propaganda so lots of people saw the graph of the price going up a lot, but hardly anyone saw the graph of it going back down. So this survives as a zombie talking point.
    https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=kg&d=240
    Once again

    1) Rare earths aren’t rare
    2) They aren’t earths
    3) Lithium isn’t a rare earth
    4) Lithium a very, very common element
  • nico679nico679 Posts: 6,275
    If major donors pull the plug on Biden it could help him see sense . Have the Dems who remain deluded factored in the next debate ?

  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 12,541
    nico679 said:

    How can the Labour government just ignore the Rwanda legislation . Don’t they need a vote in parliament to get rid of that?

    The legislation enables the government to operate the Rwanda scheme. It doesn't compel it to do so,
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,250
    HYUFD said:

    FF43 said:

    Forgive me, I haven’t been following US politics particularly closely - can someone summarise for me, please, why is everyone so down on Harris’s chances in the general?

    Like, I can read the polls, but is she like, hopeless on stage? Or a whack job, policy wise?

    None of those things. Her previous experience is as largely as a somewhat effective prosecutor.

    I think there's a degree of misogyny with Harris. A black woman who is also liberal is someone who doesn't know their place. We can say this is all very bad, but if she does become presidential candidate she will have to find a way to overcome the prejudice against her. Not certain she will.
    Not entirely true, Michelle Obama polls way better than Harris and is a liberal black woman too.

    The difference is she has charisma, Harris makes Hillary Clinton look like a woman with the common touch
    To those on the left, she was a hard charging DA who railroaded large numbers of minority defendants. Many for long prison terms. As a result her support in the black community is soft.

    To the right, she’s signed up to all the wokery.

    She has a bit of a tin ear on politics in general.

    Which is why she doesn’t poll much better than Biden.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,625
    https://x.com/business/status/1814295327035347389

    Mark Zuckerberg said that Donald Trump’s immediate reaction after being shot was “badass” and inspiring
  • Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 60,416
    nico679 said:

    If major donors pull the plug on Biden it could help him see sense . Have the Dems who remain deluded factored in the next debate ?

    Inda panic, dey tryta pull da plug.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 28,421
    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    HYUFD said:

    She may even face the ignominy of failing to secure the numbers to get on the ballot paper as support within the parliamentary party leeches away to other right-wing candidates.


    That would be embarrassing, and would blunt the impact of her defection, though it would still be significant.

    I still believe had the Tories done just a little bit worse then the candidates for leader would have had one who was explicitly pro-merger/alliance with Reform.

    As it is it seems to be a fight over how much to pitch for Reform votes (they do need them after all).
    There's really not much to this is there? Interesting how it's not even a senior MP, just a 'senior Tory' - perhaps understandable given that there are far fewer MPs than there once were.

    The knives are very much out for Suella in what I assume is the wet hierarchy - they're usually the incontinent leakers with a prolific line in hissy snake bitchiness. You had Badenoch's 'public nervous breakdown' comment, and now this, which I note she's denied.
    I think there is a good probability it is made up. It's not even a lie if whoever said it believes her defection is expected, even if it was totally wrong.
    I think it's clear the wish is father to the thought.

    What's odd about all the backstabbing is that clearly Braverman is seen as the main threat - I suppose they know that if she ever got through to the members that would be it.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,378
    edited July 19
    HYUFD said:
    Best news the Tories have had in months.

    Even better than Mogg and Truss getting the boot.

    All other considerations aside, can you imagine the infighting of a parliamentary group that consists of her, Anderson, Tice and Farage? Reform will be fucking themselves not Refucking the UK.
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 5,398
    kle4 said:

    kle4 said:

    HYUFD said:

    She may even face the ignominy of failing to secure the numbers to get on the ballot paper as support within the parliamentary party leeches away to other right-wing candidates.


    That would be embarrassing, and would blunt the impact of her defection, though it would still be significant.

    I still believe had the Tories done just a little bit worse then the candidates for leader would have had one who was explicitly pro-merger/alliance with Reform.

    As it is it seems to be a fight over how much to pitch for Reform votes (they do need them after all).
    There's really not much to this is there? Interesting how it's not even a senior MP, just a 'senior Tory' - perhaps understandable given that there are far fewer MPs than there once were.

    The knives are very much out for Suella in what I assume is the wet hierarchy - they're usually the incontinent leakers with a prolific line in hissy snake bitchiness. You had Badenoch's 'public nervous breakdown' comment, and now this, which I note she's denied.
    I think there is a good probability it is made up. It's not even a lie if whoever said it believes her defection is expected, even if it was totally wrong.
    It is an article based on no evidence. 'sources' 'expect' her to defect...
  • DriverDriver Posts: 4,963
    boulay said:

    kle4 said:

    boulay said:

    HYUFD said:
    How many signatures needed for a recall petition? How many of the people who voted for her a few weeks ago voted for conservative v her personal vote? I think her hubris will end as it always does.
    Recall petitions require a trigger event in order to instigate that petition. eg conviction or suspension.
    So not triggered by “the person who we voted for a few weeks ago on the basis of being a conservative lied about being a conservative and wouldn’t have won if she had stood for reform. So she got elected under false pretences.”
    Nope. Crossing the floor has never required a by election, mostly because all major parties benefit enough from the status quo that there's no drive to change it.
  • edmundintokyoedmundintokyo Posts: 17,708
    edited July 19

    HYUFD said:

    FF43 said:

    Forgive me, I haven’t been following US politics particularly closely - can someone summarise for me, please, why is everyone so down on Harris’s chances in the general?

    Like, I can read the polls, but is she like, hopeless on stage? Or a whack job, policy wise?

    None of those things. Her previous experience is as largely as a somewhat effective prosecutor.

    I think there's a degree of misogyny with Harris. A black woman who is also liberal is someone who doesn't know their place. We can say this is all very bad, but if she does become presidential candidate she will have to find a way to overcome the prejudice against her. Not certain she will.
    Not entirely true, Michelle Obama polls way better than Harris and is a liberal black woman too.

    The difference is she has charisma, Harris makes Hillary Clinton look like a woman with the common touch
    To those on the left, she was a hard charging DA who railroaded large numbers of minority defendants. Many for long prison terms. As a result her support in the black community is soft.

    To the right, she’s signed up to all the wokery.

    She has a bit of a tin ear on politics in general.

    Which is why she doesn’t poll much better than Biden.
    The problem was that early in the primaries the conventional wisdom was that you had to run left to win. Kamala tried to do that, but she didn't get the Bernie people because they were all about Bernie, and also kind of messed up what could have been a good moderate tough-on-crime prosecutor image in the process.
  • DecrepiterJohnLDecrepiterJohnL Posts: 27,892

    kle4 said:

    HYUFD said:

    She may even face the ignominy of failing to secure the numbers to get on the ballot paper as support within the parliamentary party leeches away to other right-wing candidates.


    That would be embarrassing, and would blunt the impact of her defection, though it would still be significant.

    I still believe had the Tories done just a little bit worse then the candidates for leader would have had one who was explicitly pro-merger/alliance with Reform.

    As it is it seems to be a fight over how much to pitch for Reform votes (they do need them after all).
    There's really not much to this is there? Interesting how it's not even a senior MP, just a 'senior Tory' - perhaps understandable given that there are far fewer MPs than there once were.

    The knives are very much out for Suella in what I assume is the wet hierarchy - they're usually the incontinent leakers with a prolific line in hissy snake bitchiness. You had Badenoch's 'public nervous breakdown' comment, and now this, which I note she's denied.
    Dunno. Michael Gove has long been a Kemi supporter.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 28,421
    ...

    kle4 said:

    HYUFD said:

    She may even face the ignominy of failing to secure the numbers to get on the ballot paper as support within the parliamentary party leeches away to other right-wing candidates.


    That would be embarrassing, and would blunt the impact of her defection, though it would still be significant.

    I still believe had the Tories done just a little bit worse then the candidates for leader would have had one who was explicitly pro-merger/alliance with Reform.

    As it is it seems to be a fight over how much to pitch for Reform votes (they do need them after all).
    There's really not much to this is there? Interesting how it's not even a senior MP, just a 'senior Tory' - perhaps understandable given that there are far fewer MPs than there once were.

    The knives are very much out for Suella in what I assume is the wet hierarchy - they're usually the incontinent leakers with a prolific line in hissy snake bitchiness. You had Badenoch's 'public nervous breakdown' comment, and now this, which I note she's denied.
    Dunno. Michael Gove has long been a Kemi supporter.
    Yes, it's probably Gove or someone associated.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 8,376

    https://x.com/business/status/1814295327035347389

    Mark Zuckerberg said that Donald Trump’s immediate reaction after being shot was “badass” and inspiring

    "Badear" rather than "badass", surely?
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 96,083
    Driver said:

    boulay said:

    kle4 said:

    boulay said:

    HYUFD said:
    How many signatures needed for a recall petition? How many of the people who voted for her a few weeks ago voted for conservative v her personal vote? I think her hubris will end as it always does.
    Recall petitions require a trigger event in order to instigate that petition. eg conviction or suspension.
    So not triggered by “the person who we voted for a few weeks ago on the basis of being a conservative lied about being a conservative and wouldn’t have won if she had stood for reform. So she got elected under false pretences.”
    Nope. Crossing the floor has never required a by election, mostly because all major parties benefit enough from the status quo that there's no drive to change it.
    Our system also gives a pretence of the possibility someone might have been mostly elected due to a personal vote (usually untrue, though we have had enough independents this time it is true for some), therefore crossing the floor is politically a big deal but not resignation worthy.

    Though UKIP did do so, bravely so, back in the day.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,921
    nico679 said:

    If major donors pull the plug on Biden it could help him see sense . Have the Dems who remain deluded factored in the next debate ?

    There is only one debate left and even the last one didn't move polls much. Major donors won't elect the next President, Hillary outraised Trump in 2016, rustbelt swing state voters who voted for Biden in 2020 after voting for Trump in 2016 will
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 21,971
    eek said:

    Helps the Tories immeasurably if Suella jumps ship.

    Not if she takes 15 or so friends with her over the next few months...
    Suella jumping ship helps the Tories immeasurably.

    If everyone the likes of Suella jumps ship too, it helps the Tories even more.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 51,625

    https://x.com/business/status/1814295327035347389

    Mark Zuckerberg said that Donald Trump’s immediate reaction after being shot was “badass” and inspiring

    "Badear" rather than "badass", surely?
    I wouldn't be surprised if there's an extreme ear piercing trend among some of his followers.
  • CleitophonCleitophon Posts: 480

    Nigelb said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Also FPT

    Cannot speak for the accuracy of the figures, but this is a worrying thread about Labour's green plans:

    https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1814239901094654095

    It doesn't really make sense. For example:

    "Supply exceeds demand 64% of the time, so, lacking any suitable storage technology, we'd be throwing out 120 TWh of power, worth well over £10 billion, every year. That's perhaps £500 per household chucked down the drain."

    How can power produced in excess of what can be used have a value? It is, by definition, worth nothing. Also the assumption that we'd have no suitable storage technology is a bit of a biggie, especially given the possibility of using car batteries for storage.

    Edit: The obvious way to go is to improve connectivity with other countries. After all, the wind is always blowing somewhere.
    Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick, through payments to windfarms when the power is not required:

    "This means that the government is having to pay huge sums in curtailment fees to wind farm owners to switch off turbines when they are generating more power than is needed.
    Some £210m ($267m) of curtailment payments were made to renewable energy generators to curtail output in 2022, said the report
    With the UK planning to grow its offshore wind capacity from 14GW today to 50GW by 2030, the report says that curtailment costs are expected to rise to £3.5bn annually by the end of the decade."

    https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/turn-wasted-wind-power-into-green-hydrogen-and-save-uk-billions-study/2-1-1583623

    or:

    "Wasted wind power adds £40 to household energy costs, says think tank"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67494082
    It's not quite as simple as that.

    The wind farms have guaranteed prices for the power they produce from contracts signed with the government, but they still participate in the spot market.

    During periods of overproduction, instantaneous prices go negative (ie the grid offers to pay producers to reduce production and/or customers to use power). If their guaranteed strike price is higher than the negative market price, it still pays the wind farm to carry on producing; a negative price which exceeds what they earn pays them to stun off production.

    Similarly with solar (though not all solar connections are 'throttleable' in the same manner.)

    With the rapid increase in renewables production, total hours with negative pricing will also grown over then next few years.
    But the very strong market incentive is going to see the storage market grow in response.

    The game changer is the drop in battery prices over the last year. They're now just about at the point it pays to deploy grid scale storage - it just needs the factories to build them.
    Battery prices have dropped 55% since the beginning of last year.

    Lots of things that weren't economic are now economic.
    They won't stay low in the long term unless someone finds an awful lot more copper etc that can be mined cheaply. Raw materials of copper cobalt, lithium etc are a big elephant in the room

    New "battery" techology is needed. Keep seeing breakthrough announcements but few make it to production as the announcements are normally about a lab concept to try and attract (high risk) investment money to turn that into something sellable.
    More fortunes have been lost betting on commodities not being found than any other way.

    As prices rise, more deposits become economic.
    And there's a huge amount of known, unexploited lithium reserves.
    As an example, the US probably one of the world's largest known extractable deposit, and they haven't yet even started mining it.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker_Pass_Lithium_Mine

    Interestingly, ARPA-E, the US energy technology equivalent of DARPA is funding a few projects for innovative mining technology, in the hope of reviving US mining which has been undercut in recent years by low cost producers like China.
    What happens when the lithium runs out?
    Lithium isn't going to run out, there's loads. There was a price spike when batteries were selling much faster than people had expected and lithium production couldn't ramp up fast enough, but then it caught up and the price came back down.

    Social media has a bias to bad news, doomers and Russian propaganda so lots of people saw the graph of the price going up a lot, but hardly anyone saw the graph of it going back down. So this survives as a zombie talking point.
    https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=kg&d=240
    Once again

    1) Rare earths aren’t rare
    2) They aren’t earths
    3) Lithium isn’t a rare earth
    4) Lithium a very, very common element
    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/29/a-worldwide-lithium-shortage-could-come-as-soon-as-2025.html
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,011

    https://x.com/business/status/1814295327035347389

    Mark Zuckerberg said that Donald Trump’s immediate reaction after being shot was “badass” and inspiring

    "Badear" rather than "badass", surely?
    I think my ass* would be misbehaving if I'd just had a bullet take off part of my ear!

    *arse
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 32,553
    Did anyone use cash today who wouldn't normally use it?
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,717
     
    Andy_JS said:

    Did anyone use cash today who wouldn't normally use it?

    Hmm - what do you think?

  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,921
    Pro_Rata said:

    RCP approval averages:

    Harris -11.8
    Trump -12.4
    Biden -17.7

    Michigan PPP
    Biden 44% Trump 45%
    Harris 41% Trump 46%
    https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/michigan/
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 8,243
    FF43 said:

    Forgive me, I haven’t been following US politics particularly closely - can someone summarise for me, please, why is everyone so down on Harris’s chances in the general?

    Like, I can read the polls, but is she like, hopeless on stage? Or a whack job, policy wise?

    None of those things. Her previous experience is as largely as a somewhat effective prosecutor.

    I think there's a degree of misogyny with Harris. A black woman who is also liberal is someone who doesn't know their place. We can say this is all very bad, but if she does become presidential candidate she will have to find a way to overcome the prejudice against her. Not certain she will.
    She is very unpopular in California
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,821
    Carnyx said:

    Have we had a PBservice of thoughts and prayers for Anabob today? Esp. if s/he is travelling.

    And, to be fair, to everyone else affected.

    C

    A

    S

    H
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 122,921

    FF43 said:

    Forgive me, I haven’t been following US politics particularly closely - can someone summarise for me, please, why is everyone so down on Harris’s chances in the general?

    Like, I can read the polls, but is she like, hopeless on stage? Or a whack job, policy wise?

    None of those things. Her previous experience is as largely as a somewhat effective prosecutor.

    I think there's a degree of misogyny with Harris. A black woman who is also liberal is someone who doesn't know their place. We can say this is all very bad, but if she does become presidential candidate she will have to find a way to overcome the prejudice against her. Not certain she will.
    She is very unpopular in California
    And California is a safe Democratic state not even a swing state
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 4,587
    edited July 19
    Ratters said:

    nico679 said:

    How can the Labour government just ignore the Rwanda legislation . Don’t they need a vote in parliament to get rid of that?

    The legislation gives them the power to report to Rwanda, subject to appeals etc that meant no one was deported before the election except where they were paid to go willingly.

    The legislation doesn't require them to use said power. And they are choosing not to. And Rwanda won't wait around for 5 years so the scheme will need to be negotiated all over again if a new government wants it back.
    It's also possible the bill contains sundry provisions only tangentially related to Rwanda which the Home Office would like to keep on the books.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 29,401
    Andy_JS said:

    Did anyone use cash today who wouldn't normally use it?

    Yeah me.
    But only because I found a handful of change in the bottom of my washing basket.
    I paid £2 for the bus.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,011
    Andy_JS said:

    Did anyone use cash today who wouldn't normally use it?

    I attempted two contactless transactions.

    Both worked fine.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,821
    If Biden withdraws, would that be a case of POTUS Interruptus?
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 28,421

    Carnyx said:

    Have we had a PBservice of thoughts and prayers for Anabob today? Esp. if s/he is travelling.

    And, to be fair, to everyone else affected.

    C

    A

    S

    H
    Let's hope has hasn't had to sully his hands with filthy currency.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 13,793

    https://x.com/business/status/1814295327035347389

    Mark Zuckerberg said that Donald Trump’s immediate reaction after being shot was “badass” and inspiring

    "Badear" rather than "badass", surely?
    The photos make him look better than the film coverage does. In which he looks like a confused and angry old man.
    I mean, I'm sure I'd be pretty incoherent if I'd just been shot in the ear. But still. Badass it wasn't.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 54,585
    .
    HYUFD said:

    FF43 said:

    Forgive me, I haven’t been following US politics particularly closely - can someone summarise for me, please, why is everyone so down on Harris’s chances in the general?

    Like, I can read the polls, but is she like, hopeless on stage? Or a whack job, policy wise?

    None of those things. Her previous experience is as largely as a somewhat effective prosecutor.

    I think there's a degree of misogyny with Harris. A black woman who is also liberal is someone who doesn't know their place. We can say this is all very bad, but if she does become presidential candidate she will have to find a way to overcome the prejudice against her. Not certain she will.
    She is very unpopular in California
    And California is a safe Democratic state not even a swing state
    The point is that, even in her own safe state, she’s massively unpopular.
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,717
    It's eerie what Robert Jenkins, Vincent van Gogh and Donald J Trump have in common
  • TazTaz Posts: 14,385
    IanB2 said:

    Nearly every flight across the US has been grounded. Remarkable.

    I read that and I heard it in the voice of David Coleman.
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 21,971

    Nigelb said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Also FPT

    Cannot speak for the accuracy of the figures, but this is a worrying thread about Labour's green plans:

    https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1814239901094654095

    It doesn't really make sense. For example:

    "Supply exceeds demand 64% of the time, so, lacking any suitable storage technology, we'd be throwing out 120 TWh of power, worth well over £10 billion, every year. That's perhaps £500 per household chucked down the drain."

    How can power produced in excess of what can be used have a value? It is, by definition, worth nothing. Also the assumption that we'd have no suitable storage technology is a bit of a biggie, especially given the possibility of using car batteries for storage.

    Edit: The obvious way to go is to improve connectivity with other countries. After all, the wind is always blowing somewhere.
    Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick, through payments to windfarms when the power is not required:

    "This means that the government is having to pay huge sums in curtailment fees to wind farm owners to switch off turbines when they are generating more power than is needed.
    Some £210m ($267m) of curtailment payments were made to renewable energy generators to curtail output in 2022, said the report
    With the UK planning to grow its offshore wind capacity from 14GW today to 50GW by 2030, the report says that curtailment costs are expected to rise to £3.5bn annually by the end of the decade."

    https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/turn-wasted-wind-power-into-green-hydrogen-and-save-uk-billions-study/2-1-1583623

    or:

    "Wasted wind power adds £40 to household energy costs, says think tank"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67494082
    It's not quite as simple as that.

    The wind farms have guaranteed prices for the power they produce from contracts signed with the government, but they still participate in the spot market.

    During periods of overproduction, instantaneous prices go negative (ie the grid offers to pay producers to reduce production and/or customers to use power). If their guaranteed strike price is higher than the negative market price, it still pays the wind farm to carry on producing; a negative price which exceeds what they earn pays them to stun off production.

    Similarly with solar (though not all solar connections are 'throttleable' in the same manner.)

    With the rapid increase in renewables production, total hours with negative pricing will also grown over then next few years.
    But the very strong market incentive is going to see the storage market grow in response.

    The game changer is the drop in battery prices over the last year. They're now just about at the point it pays to deploy grid scale storage - it just needs the factories to build them.
    Battery prices have dropped 55% since the beginning of last year.

    Lots of things that weren't economic are now economic.
    They won't stay low in the long term unless someone finds an awful lot more copper etc that can be mined cheaply. Raw materials of copper cobalt, lithium etc are a big elephant in the room

    New "battery" techology is needed. Keep seeing breakthrough announcements but few make it to production as the announcements are normally about a lab concept to try and attract (high risk) investment money to turn that into something sellable.
    More fortunes have been lost betting on commodities not being found than any other way.

    As prices rise, more deposits become economic.
    And there's a huge amount of known, unexploited lithium reserves.
    As an example, the US probably one of the world's largest known extractable deposit, and they haven't yet even started mining it.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker_Pass_Lithium_Mine

    Interestingly, ARPA-E, the US energy technology equivalent of DARPA is funding a few projects for innovative mining technology, in the hope of reviving US mining which has been undercut in recent years by low cost producers like China.
    What happens when the lithium runs out?
    Lithium isn't going to run out, there's loads. There was a price spike when batteries were selling much faster than people had expected and lithium production couldn't ramp up fast enough, but then it caught up and the price came back down.

    Social media has a bias to bad news, doomers and Russian propaganda so lots of people saw the graph of the price going up a lot, but hardly anyone saw the graph of it going back down. So this survives as a zombie talking point.
    https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=kg&d=240
    Once again

    1) Rare earths aren’t rare
    2) They aren’t earths
    3) Lithium isn’t a rare earth
    4) Lithium a very, very common element
    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/29/a-worldwide-lithium-shortage-could-come-as-soon-as-2025.html
    "could"

    Weasel word.

    Though even then the issue isn't a shortage of lithium due to it running out, its that it takes time between initiating projects and getting to full scale production.
  • FF43FF43 Posts: 17,208
    HYUFD said:

    FF43 said:

    Forgive me, I haven’t been following US politics particularly closely - can someone summarise for me, please, why is everyone so down on Harris’s chances in the general?

    Like, I can read the polls, but is she like, hopeless on stage? Or a whack job, policy wise?

    None of those things. Her previous experience is as largely as a somewhat effective prosecutor.

    I think there's a degree of misogyny with Harris. A black woman who is also liberal is someone who doesn't know their place. We can say this is all very bad, but if she does become presidential candidate she will have to find a way to overcome the prejudice against her. Not certain she will.
    Not entirely true, Michelle Obama polls way better than Harris and is a liberal black woman too.

    The difference is she has charisma, Harris makes Hillary Clinton look like a woman with the common touch
    Michelle Obama has never stood for high office and always felt she has been held back. Her biggest political role has been First Lady of the United States, where the word "decorum" was used a lot to describe her, thereby confirming the stereotype of a black woman knowing her place.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 71,378

    Carnyx said:

    Have we had a PBservice of thoughts and prayers for Anabob today? Esp. if s/he is travelling.

    And, to be fair, to everyone else affected.

    C

    A

    S

    H
    Let's hope has hasn't had to sully his hands with filthy currency.
    Father Ted, on being asked what the tithe was for Craggy Island:

    'About Ir£250.'
    American priest (shocked): 'That's about $400 isn't it? Do you know what I'd do with $400? I'd wipe my ass with $400!'
    Ted (puzzled): 'would it still be legal tender?'
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,011
    Harris might well lose. But at this point she has a better chance of winning than Biden.

    Generic Democrat also has a better chance.

    If he cares about his country and his party, he has to step aside.
  • boulayboulay Posts: 5,486
    geoffw said:

    It's eerie what Robert Jenkins, Vincent van Gogh and Donald J Trump have in common

    The connection is eerie.
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 12,541
    Over the last 32 years western politics has been dominated by 3 men born within 3 months of each other in 1946.
  • edmundintokyoedmundintokyo Posts: 17,708

    Nigelb said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Also FPT

    Cannot speak for the accuracy of the figures, but this is a worrying thread about Labour's green plans:

    https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1814239901094654095

    It doesn't really make sense. For example:

    "Supply exceeds demand 64% of the time, so, lacking any suitable storage technology, we'd be throwing out 120 TWh of power, worth well over £10 billion, every year. That's perhaps £500 per household chucked down the drain."

    How can power produced in excess of what can be used have a value? It is, by definition, worth nothing. Also the assumption that we'd have no suitable storage technology is a bit of a biggie, especially given the possibility of using car batteries for storage.

    Edit: The obvious way to go is to improve connectivity with other countries. After all, the wind is always blowing somewhere.
    Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick, through payments to windfarms when the power is not required:

    "This means that the government is having to pay huge sums in curtailment fees to wind farm owners to switch off turbines when they are generating more power than is needed.
    Some £210m ($267m) of curtailment payments were made to renewable energy generators to curtail output in 2022, said the report
    With the UK planning to grow its offshore wind capacity from 14GW today to 50GW by 2030, the report says that curtailment costs are expected to rise to £3.5bn annually by the end of the decade."

    https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/turn-wasted-wind-power-into-green-hydrogen-and-save-uk-billions-study/2-1-1583623

    or:

    "Wasted wind power adds £40 to household energy costs, says think tank"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67494082
    It's not quite as simple as that.

    The wind farms have guaranteed prices for the power they produce from contracts signed with the government, but they still participate in the spot market.

    During periods of overproduction, instantaneous prices go negative (ie the grid offers to pay producers to reduce production and/or customers to use power). If their guaranteed strike price is higher than the negative market price, it still pays the wind farm to carry on producing; a negative price which exceeds what they earn pays them to stun off production.

    Similarly with solar (though not all solar connections are 'throttleable' in the same manner.)

    With the rapid increase in renewables production, total hours with negative pricing will also grown over then next few years.
    But the very strong market incentive is going to see the storage market grow in response.

    The game changer is the drop in battery prices over the last year. They're now just about at the point it pays to deploy grid scale storage - it just needs the factories to build them.
    Battery prices have dropped 55% since the beginning of last year.

    Lots of things that weren't economic are now economic.
    They won't stay low in the long term unless someone finds an awful lot more copper etc that can be mined cheaply. Raw materials of copper cobalt, lithium etc are a big elephant in the room

    New "battery" techology is needed. Keep seeing breakthrough announcements but few make it to production as the announcements are normally about a lab concept to try and attract (high risk) investment money to turn that into something sellable.
    More fortunes have been lost betting on commodities not being found than any other way.

    As prices rise, more deposits become economic.
    And there's a huge amount of known, unexploited lithium reserves.
    As an example, the US probably one of the world's largest known extractable deposit, and they haven't yet even started mining it.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker_Pass_Lithium_Mine

    Interestingly, ARPA-E, the US energy technology equivalent of DARPA is funding a few projects for innovative mining technology, in the hope of reviving US mining which has been undercut in recent years by low cost producers like China.
    What happens when the lithium runs out?
    Lithium isn't going to run out, there's loads. There was a price spike when batteries were selling much faster than people had expected and lithium production couldn't ramp up fast enough, but then it caught up and the price came back down.

    Social media has a bias to bad news, doomers and Russian propaganda so lots of people saw the graph of the price going up a lot, but hardly anyone saw the graph of it going back down. So this survives as a zombie talking point.
    https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=kg&d=240
    Once again

    1) Rare earths aren’t rare
    2) They aren’t earths
    3) Lithium isn’t a rare earth
    4) Lithium a very, very common element
    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/29/a-worldwide-lithium-shortage-could-come-as-soon-as-2025.html
    Like we're saying, Lithium isn't going to run out. Last year the analyst they quote thought production would be too low around 2030. They may or may not still believe that now. But they say "We believe there will eventually be enough lithium to support the demands of electrification"
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,643

    HYUFD said:

    FF43 said:

    Forgive me, I haven’t been following US politics particularly closely - can someone summarise for me, please, why is everyone so down on Harris’s chances in the general?

    Like, I can read the polls, but is she like, hopeless on stage? Or a whack job, policy wise?

    None of those things. Her previous experience is as largely as a somewhat effective prosecutor.

    I think there's a degree of misogyny with Harris. A black woman who is also liberal is someone who doesn't know their place. We can say this is all very bad, but if she does become presidential candidate she will have to find a way to overcome the prejudice against her. Not certain she will.
    Not entirely true, Michelle Obama polls way better than Harris and is a liberal black woman too.

    The difference is she has charisma, Harris makes Hillary Clinton look like a woman with the common touch
    To those on the left, she was a hard charging DA who railroaded large numbers of minority defendants. Many for long prison terms. As a result her support in the black community is soft.

    To the right, she’s signed up to all the wokery.

    She has a bit of a tin ear on politics in general.

    Which is why she doesn’t poll much better than Biden.
    The polling on her with Black voters is better than Biden, but not as good as Obama.

    https://x.com/USA_Polling/status/1813667374631190594?t=qEz7jRXgVmMvGNgH29TSxw&s=19
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,643
    boulay said:

    geoffw said:

    It's eerie what Robert Jenkins, Vincent van Gogh and Donald J Trump have in common

    The connection is eerie.
    That's not what I am hearing.
  • ohnotnowohnotnow Posts: 3,783
    edited July 19
    dixiedean said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Did anyone use cash today who wouldn't normally use it?

    Yeah me.
    But only because I found a handful of change in the bottom of my washing basket.
    I paid £2 for the bus.
    Were you only going one stop?

    Asking as a FirstBus customer.
  • ydoethur said:

    Carnyx said:

    Have we had a PBservice of thoughts and prayers for Anabob today? Esp. if s/he is travelling.

    And, to be fair, to everyone else affected.

    C

    A

    S

    H
    Let's hope has hasn't had to sully his hands with filthy currency.
    Father Ted, on being asked what the tithe was for Craggy Island:

    'About Ir£250.'
    American priest (shocked): 'That's about $400 isn't it? Do you know what I'd do with $400? I'd wipe my ass with $400!'
    Ted (puzzled): 'would it still be legal tender?'
    This is why, IMHO, polymer notes were a big mistake.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,643
    edited July 19

    FF43 said:

    Forgive me, I haven’t been following US politics particularly closely - can someone summarise for me, please, why is everyone so down on Harris’s chances in the general?

    Like, I can read the polls, but is she like, hopeless on stage? Or a whack job, policy wise?

    None of those things. Her previous experience is as largely as a somewhat effective prosecutor.

    I think there's a degree of misogyny with Harris. A black woman who is also liberal is someone who doesn't know their place. We can say this is all very bad, but if she does become presidential candidate she will have to find a way to overcome the prejudice against her. Not certain she will.
    She is very unpopular in California
    If she is not so popular in California, then she must be more popular elsewhere as her overall polling is similar to Biden. It could be an efficient vote.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,821

    Nigelb said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Also FPT

    Cannot speak for the accuracy of the figures, but this is a worrying thread about Labour's green plans:

    https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1814239901094654095

    It doesn't really make sense. For example:

    "Supply exceeds demand 64% of the time, so, lacking any suitable storage technology, we'd be throwing out 120 TWh of power, worth well over £10 billion, every year. That's perhaps £500 per household chucked down the drain."

    How can power produced in excess of what can be used have a value? It is, by definition, worth nothing. Also the assumption that we'd have no suitable storage technology is a bit of a biggie, especially given the possibility of using car batteries for storage.

    Edit: The obvious way to go is to improve connectivity with other countries. After all, the wind is always blowing somewhere.
    Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick, through payments to windfarms when the power is not required:

    "This means that the government is having to pay huge sums in curtailment fees to wind farm owners to switch off turbines when they are generating more power than is needed.
    Some £210m ($267m) of curtailment payments were made to renewable energy generators to curtail output in 2022, said the report
    With the UK planning to grow its offshore wind capacity from 14GW today to 50GW by 2030, the report says that curtailment costs are expected to rise to £3.5bn annually by the end of the decade."

    https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/turn-wasted-wind-power-into-green-hydrogen-and-save-uk-billions-study/2-1-1583623

    or:

    "Wasted wind power adds £40 to household energy costs, says think tank"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67494082
    It's not quite as simple as that.

    The wind farms have guaranteed prices for the power they produce from contracts signed with the government, but they still participate in the spot market.

    During periods of overproduction, instantaneous prices go negative (ie the grid offers to pay producers to reduce production and/or customers to use power). If their guaranteed strike price is higher than the negative market price, it still pays the wind farm to carry on producing; a negative price which exceeds what they earn pays them to stun off production.

    Similarly with solar (though not all solar connections are 'throttleable' in the same manner.)

    With the rapid increase in renewables production, total hours with negative pricing will also grown over then next few years.
    But the very strong market incentive is going to see the storage market grow in response.

    The game changer is the drop in battery prices over the last year. They're now just about at the point it pays to deploy grid scale storage - it just needs the factories to build them.
    Battery prices have dropped 55% since the beginning of last year.

    Lots of things that weren't economic are now economic.
    They won't stay low in the long term unless someone finds an awful lot more copper etc that can be mined cheaply. Raw materials of copper cobalt, lithium etc are a big elephant in the room

    New "battery" techology is needed. Keep seeing breakthrough announcements but few make it to production as the announcements are normally about a lab concept to try and attract (high risk) investment money to turn that into something sellable.
    More fortunes have been lost betting on commodities not being found than any other way.

    As prices rise, more deposits become economic.
    And there's a huge amount of known, unexploited lithium reserves.
    As an example, the US probably one of the world's largest known extractable deposit, and they haven't yet even started mining it.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker_Pass_Lithium_Mine

    Interestingly, ARPA-E, the US energy technology equivalent of DARPA is funding a few projects for innovative mining technology, in the hope of reviving US mining which has been undercut in recent years by low cost producers like China.
    What happens when the lithium runs out?
    Lithium isn't going to run out, there's loads. There was a price spike when batteries were selling much faster than people had expected and lithium production couldn't ramp up fast enough, but then it caught up and the price came back down.

    Social media has a bias to bad news, doomers and Russian propaganda so lots of people saw the graph of the price going up a lot, but hardly anyone saw the graph of it going back down. So this survives as a zombie talking point.
    https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=kg&d=240
    Once again

    1) Rare earths aren’t rare
    2) They aren’t earths
    3) Lithium isn’t a rare earth
    4) Lithium a very, very common element
    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/29/a-worldwide-lithium-shortage-could-come-as-soon-as-2025.html
    Like we're saying, Lithium isn't going to run out. Last year the analyst they quote thought production would be too low around 2030. They may or may not still believe that now. But they say "We believe there will eventually be enough lithium to support the demands of electrification"
    It's a finite resource!
  • TweedledeeTweedledee Posts: 1,405

    Love the way the market refuses to believe he's not fucking off

    Believe it
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,405

    Nigelb said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Also FPT

    Cannot speak for the accuracy of the figures, but this is a worrying thread about Labour's green plans:

    https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1814239901094654095

    It doesn't really make sense. For example:

    "Supply exceeds demand 64% of the time, so, lacking any suitable storage technology, we'd be throwing out 120 TWh of power, worth well over £10 billion, every year. That's perhaps £500 per household chucked down the drain."

    How can power produced in excess of what can be used have a value? It is, by definition, worth nothing. Also the assumption that we'd have no suitable storage technology is a bit of a biggie, especially given the possibility of using car batteries for storage.

    Edit: The obvious way to go is to improve connectivity with other countries. After all, the wind is always blowing somewhere.
    Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick, through payments to windfarms when the power is not required:

    "This means that the government is having to pay huge sums in curtailment fees to wind farm owners to switch off turbines when they are generating more power than is needed.
    Some £210m ($267m) of curtailment payments were made to renewable energy generators to curtail output in 2022, said the report
    With the UK planning to grow its offshore wind capacity from 14GW today to 50GW by 2030, the report says that curtailment costs are expected to rise to £3.5bn annually by the end of the decade."

    https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/turn-wasted-wind-power-into-green-hydrogen-and-save-uk-billions-study/2-1-1583623

    or:

    "Wasted wind power adds £40 to household energy costs, says think tank"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67494082
    It's not quite as simple as that.

    The wind farms have guaranteed prices for the power they produce from contracts signed with the government, but they still participate in the spot market.

    During periods of overproduction, instantaneous prices go negative (ie the grid offers to pay producers to reduce production and/or customers to use power). If their guaranteed strike price is higher than the negative market price, it still pays the wind farm to carry on producing; a negative price which exceeds what they earn pays them to stun off production.

    Similarly with solar (though not all solar connections are 'throttleable' in the same manner.)

    With the rapid increase in renewables production, total hours with negative pricing will also grown over then next few years.
    But the very strong market incentive is going to see the storage market grow in response.

    The game changer is the drop in battery prices over the last year. They're now just about at the point it pays to deploy grid scale storage - it just needs the factories to build them.
    Battery prices have dropped 55% since the beginning of last year.

    Lots of things that weren't economic are now economic.
    They won't stay low in the long term unless someone finds an awful lot more copper etc that can be mined cheaply. Raw materials of copper cobalt, lithium etc are a big elephant in the room

    New "battery" techology is needed. Keep seeing breakthrough announcements but few make it to production as the announcements are normally about a lab concept to try and attract (high risk) investment money to turn that into something sellable.
    More fortunes have been lost betting on commodities not being found than any other way.

    As prices rise, more deposits become economic.
    And there's a huge amount of known, unexploited lithium reserves.
    As an example, the US probably one of the world's largest known extractable deposit, and they haven't yet even started mining it.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker_Pass_Lithium_Mine

    Interestingly, ARPA-E, the US energy technology equivalent of DARPA is funding a few projects for innovative mining technology, in the hope of reviving US mining which has been undercut in recent years by low cost producers like China.
    What happens when the lithium runs out?
    Lithium isn't going to run out, there's loads. There was a price spike when batteries were selling much faster than people had expected and lithium production couldn't ramp up fast enough, but then it caught up and the price came back down.

    Social media has a bias to bad news, doomers and Russian propaganda so lots of people saw the graph of the price going up a lot, but hardly anyone saw the graph of it going back down. So this survives as a zombie talking point.
    https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=kg&d=240
    Once again

    1) Rare earths aren’t rare
    2) They aren’t earths
    3) Lithium isn’t a rare earth
    4) Lithium a very, very common element
    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/29/a-worldwide-lithium-shortage-could-come-as-soon-as-2025.html
    Like we're saying, Lithium isn't going to run out. Last year the analyst they quote thought production would be too low around 2030. They may or may not still believe that now. But they say "We believe there will eventually be enough lithium to support the demands of electrification"
    It's a finite resource!
    So is oxygen, but we’d struggle to get through it all.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,250

    Nigelb said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Also FPT

    Cannot speak for the accuracy of the figures, but this is a worrying thread about Labour's green plans:

    https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1814239901094654095

    It doesn't really make sense. For example:

    "Supply exceeds demand 64% of the time, so, lacking any suitable storage technology, we'd be throwing out 120 TWh of power, worth well over £10 billion, every year. That's perhaps £500 per household chucked down the drain."

    How can power produced in excess of what can be used have a value? It is, by definition, worth nothing. Also the assumption that we'd have no suitable storage technology is a bit of a biggie, especially given the possibility of using car batteries for storage.

    Edit: The obvious way to go is to improve connectivity with other countries. After all, the wind is always blowing somewhere.
    Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick, through payments to windfarms when the power is not required:

    "This means that the government is having to pay huge sums in curtailment fees to wind farm owners to switch off turbines when they are generating more power than is needed.
    Some £210m ($267m) of curtailment payments were made to renewable energy generators to curtail output in 2022, said the report
    With the UK planning to grow its offshore wind capacity from 14GW today to 50GW by 2030, the report says that curtailment costs are expected to rise to £3.5bn annually by the end of the decade."

    https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/turn-wasted-wind-power-into-green-hydrogen-and-save-uk-billions-study/2-1-1583623

    or:

    "Wasted wind power adds £40 to household energy costs, says think tank"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67494082
    It's not quite as simple as that.

    The wind farms have guaranteed prices for the power they produce from contracts signed with the government, but they still participate in the spot market.

    During periods of overproduction, instantaneous prices go negative (ie the grid offers to pay producers to reduce production and/or customers to use power). If their guaranteed strike price is higher than the negative market price, it still pays the wind farm to carry on producing; a negative price which exceeds what they earn pays them to stun off production.

    Similarly with solar (though not all solar connections are 'throttleable' in the same manner.)

    With the rapid increase in renewables production, total hours with negative pricing will also grown over then next few years.
    But the very strong market incentive is going to see the storage market grow in response.

    The game changer is the drop in battery prices over the last year. They're now just about at the point it pays to deploy grid scale storage - it just needs the factories to build them.
    Battery prices have dropped 55% since the beginning of last year.

    Lots of things that weren't economic are now economic.
    They won't stay low in the long term unless someone finds an awful lot more copper etc that can be mined cheaply. Raw materials of copper cobalt, lithium etc are a big elephant in the room

    New "battery" techology is needed. Keep seeing breakthrough announcements but few make it to production as the announcements are normally about a lab concept to try and attract (high risk) investment money to turn that into something sellable.
    More fortunes have been lost betting on commodities not being found than any other way.

    As prices rise, more deposits become economic.
    And there's a huge amount of known, unexploited lithium reserves.
    As an example, the US probably one of the world's largest known extractable deposit, and they haven't yet even started mining it.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker_Pass_Lithium_Mine

    Interestingly, ARPA-E, the US energy technology equivalent of DARPA is funding a few projects for innovative mining technology, in the hope of reviving US mining which has been undercut in recent years by low cost producers like China.
    What happens when the lithium runs out?
    Lithium isn't going to run out, there's loads. There was a price spike when batteries were selling much faster than people had expected and lithium production couldn't ramp up fast enough, but then it caught up and the price came back down.

    Social media has a bias to bad news, doomers and Russian propaganda so lots of people saw the graph of the price going up a lot, but hardly anyone saw the graph of it going back down. So this survives as a zombie talking point.
    https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=kg&d=240
    Once again

    1) Rare earths aren’t rare
    2) They aren’t earths
    3) Lithium isn’t a rare earth
    4) Lithium a very, very common element
    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/29/a-worldwide-lithium-shortage-could-come-as-soon-as-2025.html
    "could"

    Weasel word.

    Though even then the issue isn't a shortage of lithium due to it running out, its that it takes time between initiating projects and getting to full scale production.
    Yup, it’s a possible, temporary, supply kink. Note it is being ramped by owners of lithium mines. To get the stocks to go up….
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,250

    Nigelb said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Also FPT

    Cannot speak for the accuracy of the figures, but this is a worrying thread about Labour's green plans:

    https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1814239901094654095

    It doesn't really make sense. For example:

    "Supply exceeds demand 64% of the time, so, lacking any suitable storage technology, we'd be throwing out 120 TWh of power, worth well over £10 billion, every year. That's perhaps £500 per household chucked down the drain."

    How can power produced in excess of what can be used have a value? It is, by definition, worth nothing. Also the assumption that we'd have no suitable storage technology is a bit of a biggie, especially given the possibility of using car batteries for storage.

    Edit: The obvious way to go is to improve connectivity with other countries. After all, the wind is always blowing somewhere.
    Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick, through payments to windfarms when the power is not required:

    "This means that the government is having to pay huge sums in curtailment fees to wind farm owners to switch off turbines when they are generating more power than is needed.
    Some £210m ($267m) of curtailment payments were made to renewable energy generators to curtail output in 2022, said the report
    With the UK planning to grow its offshore wind capacity from 14GW today to 50GW by 2030, the report says that curtailment costs are expected to rise to £3.5bn annually by the end of the decade."

    https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/turn-wasted-wind-power-into-green-hydrogen-and-save-uk-billions-study/2-1-1583623

    or:

    "Wasted wind power adds £40 to household energy costs, says think tank"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67494082
    It's not quite as simple as that.

    The wind farms have guaranteed prices for the power they produce from contracts signed with the government, but they still participate in the spot market.

    During periods of overproduction, instantaneous prices go negative (ie the grid offers to pay producers to reduce production and/or customers to use power). If their guaranteed strike price is higher than the negative market price, it still pays the wind farm to carry on producing; a negative price which exceeds what they earn pays them to stun off production.

    Similarly with solar (though not all solar connections are 'throttleable' in the same manner.)

    With the rapid increase in renewables production, total hours with negative pricing will also grown over then next few years.
    But the very strong market incentive is going to see the storage market grow in response.

    The game changer is the drop in battery prices over the last year. They're now just about at the point it pays to deploy grid scale storage - it just needs the factories to build them.
    Battery prices have dropped 55% since the beginning of last year.

    Lots of things that weren't economic are now economic.
    They won't stay low in the long term unless someone finds an awful lot more copper etc that can be mined cheaply. Raw materials of copper cobalt, lithium etc are a big elephant in the room

    New "battery" techology is needed. Keep seeing breakthrough announcements but few make it to production as the announcements are normally about a lab concept to try and attract (high risk) investment money to turn that into something sellable.
    More fortunes have been lost betting on commodities not being found than any other way.

    As prices rise, more deposits become economic.
    And there's a huge amount of known, unexploited lithium reserves.
    As an example, the US probably one of the world's largest known extractable deposit, and they haven't yet even started mining it.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker_Pass_Lithium_Mine

    Interestingly, ARPA-E, the US energy technology equivalent of DARPA is funding a few projects for innovative mining technology, in the hope of reviving US mining which has been undercut in recent years by low cost producers like China.
    What happens when the lithium runs out?
    Lithium isn't going to run out, there's loads. There was a price spike when batteries were selling much faster than people had expected and lithium production couldn't ramp up fast enough, but then it caught up and the price came back down.

    Social media has a bias to bad news, doomers and Russian propaganda so lots of people saw the graph of the price going up a lot, but hardly anyone saw the graph of it going back down. So this survives as a zombie talking point.
    https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=kg&d=240
    Once again

    1) Rare earths aren’t rare
    2) They aren’t earths
    3) Lithium isn’t a rare earth
    4) Lithium a very, very common element
    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/29/a-worldwide-lithium-shortage-could-come-as-soon-as-2025.html
    Like we're saying, Lithium isn't going to run out. Last year the analyst they quote thought production would be too low around 2030. They may or may not still believe that now. But they say "We believe there will eventually be enough lithium to support the demands of electrification"
    It's a finite resource!
    Which is not, ultimately, used up. Within a fairly short time, one of the best sources of lithium ore will be old batteries….
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,821

    Nigelb said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Also FPT

    Cannot speak for the accuracy of the figures, but this is a worrying thread about Labour's green plans:

    https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1814239901094654095

    It doesn't really make sense. For example:

    "Supply exceeds demand 64% of the time, so, lacking any suitable storage technology, we'd be throwing out 120 TWh of power, worth well over £10 billion, every year. That's perhaps £500 per household chucked down the drain."

    How can power produced in excess of what can be used have a value? It is, by definition, worth nothing. Also the assumption that we'd have no suitable storage technology is a bit of a biggie, especially given the possibility of using car batteries for storage.

    Edit: The obvious way to go is to improve connectivity with other countries. After all, the wind is always blowing somewhere.
    Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick, through payments to windfarms when the power is not required:

    "This means that the government is having to pay huge sums in curtailment fees to wind farm owners to switch off turbines when they are generating more power than is needed.
    Some £210m ($267m) of curtailment payments were made to renewable energy generators to curtail output in 2022, said the report
    With the UK planning to grow its offshore wind capacity from 14GW today to 50GW by 2030, the report says that curtailment costs are expected to rise to £3.5bn annually by the end of the decade."

    https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/turn-wasted-wind-power-into-green-hydrogen-and-save-uk-billions-study/2-1-1583623

    or:

    "Wasted wind power adds £40 to household energy costs, says think tank"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67494082
    It's not quite as simple as that.

    The wind farms have guaranteed prices for the power they produce from contracts signed with the government, but they still participate in the spot market.

    During periods of overproduction, instantaneous prices go negative (ie the grid offers to pay producers to reduce production and/or customers to use power). If their guaranteed strike price is higher than the negative market price, it still pays the wind farm to carry on producing; a negative price which exceeds what they earn pays them to stun off production.

    Similarly with solar (though not all solar connections are 'throttleable' in the same manner.)

    With the rapid increase in renewables production, total hours with negative pricing will also grown over then next few years.
    But the very strong market incentive is going to see the storage market grow in response.

    The game changer is the drop in battery prices over the last year. They're now just about at the point it pays to deploy grid scale storage - it just needs the factories to build them.
    Battery prices have dropped 55% since the beginning of last year.

    Lots of things that weren't economic are now economic.
    They won't stay low in the long term unless someone finds an awful lot more copper etc that can be mined cheaply. Raw materials of copper cobalt, lithium etc are a big elephant in the room

    New "battery" techology is needed. Keep seeing breakthrough announcements but few make it to production as the announcements are normally about a lab concept to try and attract (high risk) investment money to turn that into something sellable.
    More fortunes have been lost betting on commodities not being found than any other way.

    As prices rise, more deposits become economic.
    And there's a huge amount of known, unexploited lithium reserves.
    As an example, the US probably one of the world's largest known extractable deposit, and they haven't yet even started mining it.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker_Pass_Lithium_Mine

    Interestingly, ARPA-E, the US energy technology equivalent of DARPA is funding a few projects for innovative mining technology, in the hope of reviving US mining which has been undercut in recent years by low cost producers like China.
    What happens when the lithium runs out?
    Lithium isn't going to run out, there's loads. There was a price spike when batteries were selling much faster than people had expected and lithium production couldn't ramp up fast enough, but then it caught up and the price came back down.

    Social media has a bias to bad news, doomers and Russian propaganda so lots of people saw the graph of the price going up a lot, but hardly anyone saw the graph of it going back down. So this survives as a zombie talking point.
    https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=kg&d=240
    Once again

    1) Rare earths aren’t rare
    2) They aren’t earths
    3) Lithium isn’t a rare earth
    4) Lithium a very, very common element
    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/29/a-worldwide-lithium-shortage-could-come-as-soon-as-2025.html
    Like we're saying, Lithium isn't going to run out. Last year the analyst they quote thought production would be too low around 2030. They may or may not still believe that now. But they say "We believe there will eventually be enough lithium to support the demands of electrification"
    It's a finite resource!
    So is oxygen, but we’d struggle to get through it all.
    Oxygen is continuously produced during photosynthesis. Lithium isn't...
  • edmundintokyoedmundintokyo Posts: 17,708

    Nigelb said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Also FPT

    Cannot speak for the accuracy of the figures, but this is a worrying thread about Labour's green plans:

    https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1814239901094654095

    It doesn't really make sense. For example:

    "Supply exceeds demand 64% of the time, so, lacking any suitable storage technology, we'd be throwing out 120 TWh of power, worth well over £10 billion, every year. That's perhaps £500 per household chucked down the drain."

    How can power produced in excess of what can be used have a value? It is, by definition, worth nothing. Also the assumption that we'd have no suitable storage technology is a bit of a biggie, especially given the possibility of using car batteries for storage.

    Edit: The obvious way to go is to improve connectivity with other countries. After all, the wind is always blowing somewhere.
    Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick, through payments to windfarms when the power is not required:

    "This means that the government is having to pay huge sums in curtailment fees to wind farm owners to switch off turbines when they are generating more power than is needed.
    Some £210m ($267m) of curtailment payments were made to renewable energy generators to curtail output in 2022, said the report
    With the UK planning to grow its offshore wind capacity from 14GW today to 50GW by 2030, the report says that curtailment costs are expected to rise to £3.5bn annually by the end of the decade."

    https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/turn-wasted-wind-power-into-green-hydrogen-and-save-uk-billions-study/2-1-1583623

    or:

    "Wasted wind power adds £40 to household energy costs, says think tank"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67494082
    It's not quite as simple as that.

    The wind farms have guaranteed prices for the power they produce from contracts signed with the government, but they still participate in the spot market.

    During periods of overproduction, instantaneous prices go negative (ie the grid offers to pay producers to reduce production and/or customers to use power). If their guaranteed strike price is higher than the negative market price, it still pays the wind farm to carry on producing; a negative price which exceeds what they earn pays them to stun off production.

    Similarly with solar (though not all solar connections are 'throttleable' in the same manner.)

    With the rapid increase in renewables production, total hours with negative pricing will also grown over then next few years.
    But the very strong market incentive is going to see the storage market grow in response.

    The game changer is the drop in battery prices over the last year. They're now just about at the point it pays to deploy grid scale storage - it just needs the factories to build them.
    Battery prices have dropped 55% since the beginning of last year.

    Lots of things that weren't economic are now economic.
    They won't stay low in the long term unless someone finds an awful lot more copper etc that can be mined cheaply. Raw materials of copper cobalt, lithium etc are a big elephant in the room

    New "battery" techology is needed. Keep seeing breakthrough announcements but few make it to production as the announcements are normally about a lab concept to try and attract (high risk) investment money to turn that into something sellable.
    More fortunes have been lost betting on commodities not being found than any other way.

    As prices rise, more deposits become economic.
    And there's a huge amount of known, unexploited lithium reserves.
    As an example, the US probably one of the world's largest known extractable deposit, and they haven't yet even started mining it.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker_Pass_Lithium_Mine

    Interestingly, ARPA-E, the US energy technology equivalent of DARPA is funding a few projects for innovative mining technology, in the hope of reviving US mining which has been undercut in recent years by low cost producers like China.
    What happens when the lithium runs out?
    Lithium isn't going to run out, there's loads. There was a price spike when batteries were selling much faster than people had expected and lithium production couldn't ramp up fast enough, but then it caught up and the price came back down.

    Social media has a bias to bad news, doomers and Russian propaganda so lots of people saw the graph of the price going up a lot, but hardly anyone saw the graph of it going back down. So this survives as a zombie talking point.
    https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=kg&d=240
    Once again

    1) Rare earths aren’t rare
    2) They aren’t earths
    3) Lithium isn’t a rare earth
    4) Lithium a very, very common element
    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/29/a-worldwide-lithium-shortage-could-come-as-soon-as-2025.html
    Like we're saying, Lithium isn't going to run out. Last year the analyst they quote thought production would be too low around 2030. They may or may not still believe that now. But they say "We believe there will eventually be enough lithium to support the demands of electrification"
    It's a finite resource!
    It's a finite resource but
    1. There's absolutely fuckloads of it
    2. Demand for it is also finite
    3. It can be recycled
  • TweedledeeTweedledee Posts: 1,405
    geoffw said:

    It's eerie what Robert Jenkins, Vincent van Gogh and Donald J Trump have in common

    And an insolent farmer (for advanced students)
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,250
    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    FF43 said:

    Forgive me, I haven’t been following US politics particularly closely - can someone summarise for me, please, why is everyone so down on Harris’s chances in the general?

    Like, I can read the polls, but is she like, hopeless on stage? Or a whack job, policy wise?

    None of those things. Her previous experience is as largely as a somewhat effective prosecutor.

    I think there's a degree of misogyny with Harris. A black woman who is also liberal is someone who doesn't know their place. We can say this is all very bad, but if she does become presidential candidate she will have to find a way to overcome the prejudice against her. Not certain she will.
    Not entirely true, Michelle Obama polls way better than Harris and is a liberal black woman too.

    The difference is she has charisma, Harris makes Hillary Clinton look like a woman with the common touch
    To those on the left, she was a hard charging DA who railroaded large numbers of minority defendants. Many for long prison terms. As a result her support in the black community is soft.

    To the right, she’s signed up to all the wokery.

    She has a bit of a tin ear on politics in general.

    Which is why she doesn’t poll much better than Biden.
    The polling on her with Black voters is better than Biden, but not as good as Obama.

    https://x.com/USA_Polling/status/1813667374631190594?t=qEz7jRXgVmMvGNgH29TSxw&s=19
    Exactly - she is only a bit better than Biden with black voters, not walking away with all the votes, like Obama.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,405

    Nigelb said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Also FPT

    Cannot speak for the accuracy of the figures, but this is a worrying thread about Labour's green plans:

    https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1814239901094654095

    It doesn't really make sense. For example:

    "Supply exceeds demand 64% of the time, so, lacking any suitable storage technology, we'd be throwing out 120 TWh of power, worth well over £10 billion, every year. That's perhaps £500 per household chucked down the drain."

    How can power produced in excess of what can be used have a value? It is, by definition, worth nothing. Also the assumption that we'd have no suitable storage technology is a bit of a biggie, especially given the possibility of using car batteries for storage.

    Edit: The obvious way to go is to improve connectivity with other countries. After all, the wind is always blowing somewhere.
    Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick, through payments to windfarms when the power is not required:

    "This means that the government is having to pay huge sums in curtailment fees to wind farm owners to switch off turbines when they are generating more power than is needed.
    Some £210m ($267m) of curtailment payments were made to renewable energy generators to curtail output in 2022, said the report
    With the UK planning to grow its offshore wind capacity from 14GW today to 50GW by 2030, the report says that curtailment costs are expected to rise to £3.5bn annually by the end of the decade."

    https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/turn-wasted-wind-power-into-green-hydrogen-and-save-uk-billions-study/2-1-1583623

    or:

    "Wasted wind power adds £40 to household energy costs, says think tank"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67494082
    It's not quite as simple as that.

    The wind farms have guaranteed prices for the power they produce from contracts signed with the government, but they still participate in the spot market.

    During periods of overproduction, instantaneous prices go negative (ie the grid offers to pay producers to reduce production and/or customers to use power). If their guaranteed strike price is higher than the negative market price, it still pays the wind farm to carry on producing; a negative price which exceeds what they earn pays them to stun off production.

    Similarly with solar (though not all solar connections are 'throttleable' in the same manner.)

    With the rapid increase in renewables production, total hours with negative pricing will also grown over then next few years.
    But the very strong market incentive is going to see the storage market grow in response.

    The game changer is the drop in battery prices over the last year. They're now just about at the point it pays to deploy grid scale storage - it just needs the factories to build them.
    Battery prices have dropped 55% since the beginning of last year.

    Lots of things that weren't economic are now economic.
    They won't stay low in the long term unless someone finds an awful lot more copper etc that can be mined cheaply. Raw materials of copper cobalt, lithium etc are a big elephant in the room

    New "battery" techology is needed. Keep seeing breakthrough announcements but few make it to production as the announcements are normally about a lab concept to try and attract (high risk) investment money to turn that into something sellable.
    More fortunes have been lost betting on commodities not being found than any other way.

    As prices rise, more deposits become economic.
    And there's a huge amount of known, unexploited lithium reserves.
    As an example, the US probably one of the world's largest known extractable deposit, and they haven't yet even started mining it.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker_Pass_Lithium_Mine

    Interestingly, ARPA-E, the US energy technology equivalent of DARPA is funding a few projects for innovative mining technology, in the hope of reviving US mining which has been undercut in recent years by low cost producers like China.
    What happens when the lithium runs out?
    Lithium isn't going to run out, there's loads. There was a price spike when batteries were selling much faster than people had expected and lithium production couldn't ramp up fast enough, but then it caught up and the price came back down.

    Social media has a bias to bad news, doomers and Russian propaganda so lots of people saw the graph of the price going up a lot, but hardly anyone saw the graph of it going back down. So this survives as a zombie talking point.
    https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=kg&d=240
    Once again

    1) Rare earths aren’t rare
    2) They aren’t earths
    3) Lithium isn’t a rare earth
    4) Lithium a very, very common element
    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/29/a-worldwide-lithium-shortage-could-come-as-soon-as-2025.html
    Like we're saying, Lithium isn't going to run out. Last year the analyst they quote thought production would be too low around 2030. They may or may not still believe that now. But they say "We believe there will eventually be enough lithium to support the demands of electrification"
    It's a finite resource!
    So is oxygen, but we’d struggle to get through it all.
    Oxygen is continuously produced during photosynthesis. Lithium isn't...
    That’s O2. I said oxygen.
  • SandraMcSandraMc Posts: 694
    Leon said:

    boulay said:

    Leon said:

    My daily photo is of Aries, last night

    Eat crow, Vincent


    Is that looking towards the bank of the Rhône?
    Yes. Rue Genive a few yards from the Rhone

    The sinister “Don’t Look Now” dwarf is actually my daughter. For some reason she came out all blurred and scary. She isn’t that in real life


    Have you visited Aigues Mortes yet? It's worth a trip.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,250

    Nigelb said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Also FPT

    Cannot speak for the accuracy of the figures, but this is a worrying thread about Labour's green plans:

    https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1814239901094654095

    It doesn't really make sense. For example:

    "Supply exceeds demand 64% of the time, so, lacking any suitable storage technology, we'd be throwing out 120 TWh of power, worth well over £10 billion, every year. That's perhaps £500 per household chucked down the drain."

    How can power produced in excess of what can be used have a value? It is, by definition, worth nothing. Also the assumption that we'd have no suitable storage technology is a bit of a biggie, especially given the possibility of using car batteries for storage.

    Edit: The obvious way to go is to improve connectivity with other countries. After all, the wind is always blowing somewhere.
    Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick, through payments to windfarms when the power is not required:

    "This means that the government is having to pay huge sums in curtailment fees to wind farm owners to switch off turbines when they are generating more power than is needed.
    Some £210m ($267m) of curtailment payments were made to renewable energy generators to curtail output in 2022, said the report
    With the UK planning to grow its offshore wind capacity from 14GW today to 50GW by 2030, the report says that curtailment costs are expected to rise to £3.5bn annually by the end of the decade."

    https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/turn-wasted-wind-power-into-green-hydrogen-and-save-uk-billions-study/2-1-1583623

    or:

    "Wasted wind power adds £40 to household energy costs, says think tank"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67494082
    It's not quite as simple as that.

    The wind farms have guaranteed prices for the power they produce from contracts signed with the government, but they still participate in the spot market.

    During periods of overproduction, instantaneous prices go negative (ie the grid offers to pay producers to reduce production and/or customers to use power). If their guaranteed strike price is higher than the negative market price, it still pays the wind farm to carry on producing; a negative price which exceeds what they earn pays them to stun off production.

    Similarly with solar (though not all solar connections are 'throttleable' in the same manner.)

    With the rapid increase in renewables production, total hours with negative pricing will also grown over then next few years.
    But the very strong market incentive is going to see the storage market grow in response.

    The game changer is the drop in battery prices over the last year. They're now just about at the point it pays to deploy grid scale storage - it just needs the factories to build them.
    Battery prices have dropped 55% since the beginning of last year.

    Lots of things that weren't economic are now economic.
    They won't stay low in the long term unless someone finds an awful lot more copper etc that can be mined cheaply. Raw materials of copper cobalt, lithium etc are a big elephant in the room

    New "battery" techology is needed. Keep seeing breakthrough announcements but few make it to production as the announcements are normally about a lab concept to try and attract (high risk) investment money to turn that into something sellable.
    More fortunes have been lost betting on commodities not being found than any other way.

    As prices rise, more deposits become economic.
    And there's a huge amount of known, unexploited lithium reserves.
    As an example, the US probably one of the world's largest known extractable deposit, and they haven't yet even started mining it.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker_Pass_Lithium_Mine

    Interestingly, ARPA-E, the US energy technology equivalent of DARPA is funding a few projects for innovative mining technology, in the hope of reviving US mining which has been undercut in recent years by low cost producers like China.
    What happens when the lithium runs out?
    Lithium isn't going to run out, there's loads. There was a price spike when batteries were selling much faster than people had expected and lithium production couldn't ramp up fast enough, but then it caught up and the price came back down.

    Social media has a bias to bad news, doomers and Russian propaganda so lots of people saw the graph of the price going up a lot, but hardly anyone saw the graph of it going back down. So this survives as a zombie talking point.
    https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=kg&d=240
    Once again

    1) Rare earths aren’t rare
    2) They aren’t earths
    3) Lithium isn’t a rare earth
    4) Lithium a very, very common element
    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/29/a-worldwide-lithium-shortage-could-come-as-soon-as-2025.html
    Like we're saying, Lithium isn't going to run out. Last year the analyst they quote thought production would be too low around 2030. They may or may not still believe that now. But they say "We believe there will eventually be enough lithium to support the demands of electrification"
    It's a finite resource!
    So is oxygen, but we’d struggle to get through it all.
    Oxygen is continuously produced during photosynthesis. Lithium isn't...
    Oxygen isn’t continuously produced. It is recycled. That is why the amount of it in the air is quite stable.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,405

    Nigelb said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Also FPT

    Cannot speak for the accuracy of the figures, but this is a worrying thread about Labour's green plans:

    https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1814239901094654095

    It doesn't really make sense. For example:

    "Supply exceeds demand 64% of the time, so, lacking any suitable storage technology, we'd be throwing out 120 TWh of power, worth well over £10 billion, every year. That's perhaps £500 per household chucked down the drain."

    How can power produced in excess of what can be used have a value? It is, by definition, worth nothing. Also the assumption that we'd have no suitable storage technology is a bit of a biggie, especially given the possibility of using car batteries for storage.

    Edit: The obvious way to go is to improve connectivity with other countries. After all, the wind is always blowing somewhere.
    Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick, through payments to windfarms when the power is not required:

    "This means that the government is having to pay huge sums in curtailment fees to wind farm owners to switch off turbines when they are generating more power than is needed.
    Some £210m ($267m) of curtailment payments were made to renewable energy generators to curtail output in 2022, said the report
    With the UK planning to grow its offshore wind capacity from 14GW today to 50GW by 2030, the report says that curtailment costs are expected to rise to £3.5bn annually by the end of the decade."

    https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/turn-wasted-wind-power-into-green-hydrogen-and-save-uk-billions-study/2-1-1583623

    or:

    "Wasted wind power adds £40 to household energy costs, says think tank"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67494082
    It's not quite as simple as that.

    The wind farms have guaranteed prices for the power they produce from contracts signed with the government, but they still participate in the spot market.

    During periods of overproduction, instantaneous prices go negative (ie the grid offers to pay producers to reduce production and/or customers to use power). If their guaranteed strike price is higher than the negative market price, it still pays the wind farm to carry on producing; a negative price which exceeds what they earn pays them to stun off production.

    Similarly with solar (though not all solar connections are 'throttleable' in the same manner.)

    With the rapid increase in renewables production, total hours with negative pricing will also grown over then next few years.
    But the very strong market incentive is going to see the storage market grow in response.

    The game changer is the drop in battery prices over the last year. They're now just about at the point it pays to deploy grid scale storage - it just needs the factories to build them.
    Battery prices have dropped 55% since the beginning of last year.

    Lots of things that weren't economic are now economic.
    They won't stay low in the long term unless someone finds an awful lot more copper etc that can be mined cheaply. Raw materials of copper cobalt, lithium etc are a big elephant in the room

    New "battery" techology is needed. Keep seeing breakthrough announcements but few make it to production as the announcements are normally about a lab concept to try and attract (high risk) investment money to turn that into something sellable.
    More fortunes have been lost betting on commodities not being found than any other way.

    As prices rise, more deposits become economic.
    And there's a huge amount of known, unexploited lithium reserves.
    As an example, the US probably one of the world's largest known extractable deposit, and they haven't yet even started mining it.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker_Pass_Lithium_Mine

    Interestingly, ARPA-E, the US energy technology equivalent of DARPA is funding a few projects for innovative mining technology, in the hope of reviving US mining which has been undercut in recent years by low cost producers like China.
    What happens when the lithium runs out?
    Lithium isn't going to run out, there's loads. There was a price spike when batteries were selling much faster than people had expected and lithium production couldn't ramp up fast enough, but then it caught up and the price came back down.

    Social media has a bias to bad news, doomers and Russian propaganda so lots of people saw the graph of the price going up a lot, but hardly anyone saw the graph of it going back down. So this survives as a zombie talking point.
    https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=kg&d=240
    Once again

    1) Rare earths aren’t rare
    2) They aren’t earths
    3) Lithium isn’t a rare earth
    4) Lithium a very, very common element
    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/29/a-worldwide-lithium-shortage-could-come-as-soon-as-2025.html
    Like we're saying, Lithium isn't going to run out. Last year the analyst they quote thought production would be too low around 2030. They may or may not still believe that now. But they say "We believe there will eventually be enough lithium to support the demands of electrification"
    It's a finite resource!
    Which is not, ultimately, used up. Within a fairly short time, one of the best sources of lithium ore will be old batteries….
    I remain convinced that we are not many years from seeing old rubbish dumps as new ‘mines’ for exploitation.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,643

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    FF43 said:

    Forgive me, I haven’t been following US politics particularly closely - can someone summarise for me, please, why is everyone so down on Harris’s chances in the general?

    Like, I can read the polls, but is she like, hopeless on stage? Or a whack job, policy wise?

    None of those things. Her previous experience is as largely as a somewhat effective prosecutor.

    I think there's a degree of misogyny with Harris. A black woman who is also liberal is someone who doesn't know their place. We can say this is all very bad, but if she does become presidential candidate she will have to find a way to overcome the prejudice against her. Not certain she will.
    Not entirely true, Michelle Obama polls way better than Harris and is a liberal black woman too.

    The difference is she has charisma, Harris makes Hillary Clinton look like a woman with the common touch
    To those on the left, she was a hard charging DA who railroaded large numbers of minority defendants. Many for long prison terms. As a result her support in the black community is soft.

    To the right, she’s signed up to all the wokery.

    She has a bit of a tin ear on politics in general.

    Which is why she doesn’t poll much better than Biden.
    The polling on her with Black voters is better than Biden, but not as good as Obama.

    https://x.com/USA_Polling/status/1813667374631190594?t=qEz7jRXgVmMvGNgH29TSxw&s=19
    Exactly - she is only a bit better than Biden with black voters, not walking away with all the votes, like Obama.
    Yeah but not unpopular.
  • TweedledeeTweedledee Posts: 1,405

    Nigelb said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Also FPT

    Cannot speak for the accuracy of the figures, but this is a worrying thread about Labour's green plans:

    https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1814239901094654095

    It doesn't really make sense. For example:

    "Supply exceeds demand 64% of the time, so, lacking any suitable storage technology, we'd be throwing out 120 TWh of power, worth well over £10 billion, every year. That's perhaps £500 per household chucked down the drain."

    How can power produced in excess of what can be used have a value? It is, by definition, worth nothing. Also the assumption that we'd have no suitable storage technology is a bit of a biggie, especially given the possibility of using car batteries for storage.

    Edit: The obvious way to go is to improve connectivity with other countries. After all, the wind is always blowing somewhere.
    Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick, through payments to windfarms when the power is not required:

    "This means that the government is having to pay huge sums in curtailment fees to wind farm owners to switch off turbines when they are generating more power than is needed.
    Some £210m ($267m) of curtailment payments were made to renewable energy generators to curtail output in 2022, said the report
    With the UK planning to grow its offshore wind capacity from 14GW today to 50GW by 2030, the report says that curtailment costs are expected to rise to £3.5bn annually by the end of the decade."

    https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/turn-wasted-wind-power-into-green-hydrogen-and-save-uk-billions-study/2-1-1583623

    or:

    "Wasted wind power adds £40 to household energy costs, says think tank"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67494082
    It's not quite as simple as that.

    The wind farms have guaranteed prices for the power they produce from contracts signed with the government, but they still participate in the spot market.

    During periods of overproduction, instantaneous prices go negative (ie the grid offers to pay producers to reduce production and/or customers to use power). If their guaranteed strike price is higher than the negative market price, it still pays the wind farm to carry on producing; a negative price which exceeds what they earn pays them to stun off production.

    Similarly with solar (though not all solar connections are 'throttleable' in the same manner.)

    With the rapid increase in renewables production, total hours with negative pricing will also grown over then next few years.
    But the very strong market incentive is going to see the storage market grow in response.

    The game changer is the drop in battery prices over the last year. They're now just about at the point it pays to deploy grid scale storage - it just needs the factories to build them.
    Battery prices have dropped 55% since the beginning of last year.

    Lots of things that weren't economic are now economic.
    They won't stay low in the long term unless someone finds an awful lot more copper etc that can be mined cheaply. Raw materials of copper cobalt, lithium etc are a big elephant in the room

    New "battery" techology is needed. Keep seeing breakthrough announcements but few make it to production as the announcements are normally about a lab concept to try and attract (high risk) investment money to turn that into something sellable.
    More fortunes have been lost betting on commodities not being found than any other way.

    As prices rise, more deposits become economic.
    And there's a huge amount of known, unexploited lithium reserves.
    As an example, the US probably one of the world's largest known extractable deposit, and they haven't yet even started mining it.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker_Pass_Lithium_Mine

    Interestingly, ARPA-E, the US energy technology equivalent of DARPA is funding a few projects for innovative mining technology, in the hope of reviving US mining which has been undercut in recent years by low cost producers like China.
    What happens when the lithium runs out?
    Lithium isn't going to run out, there's loads. There was a price spike when batteries were selling much faster than people had expected and lithium production couldn't ramp up fast enough, but then it caught up and the price came back down.

    Social media has a bias to bad news, doomers and Russian propaganda so lots of people saw the graph of the price going up a lot, but hardly anyone saw the graph of it going back down. So this survives as a zombie talking point.
    https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=kg&d=240
    Once again

    1) Rare earths aren’t rare
    2) They aren’t earths
    3) Lithium isn’t a rare earth
    4) Lithium a very, very common element
    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/29/a-worldwide-lithium-shortage-could-come-as-soon-as-2025.html
    Like we're saying, Lithium isn't going to run out. Last year the analyst they quote thought production would be too low around 2030. They may or may not still believe that now. But they say "We believe there will eventually be enough lithium to support the demands of electrification"
    It's a finite resource!
    So is sunlight.
  • FF43FF43 Posts: 17,208
    edited July 19
    darkage said:

    HYUFD said:

    FF43 said:

    Forgive me, I haven’t been following US politics particularly closely - can someone summarise for me, please, why is everyone so down on Harris’s chances in the general?

    Like, I can read the polls, but is she like, hopeless on stage? Or a whack job, policy wise?

    None of those things. Her previous experience is as largely as a somewhat effective prosecutor.

    I think there's a degree of misogyny with Harris. A black woman who is also liberal is someone who doesn't know their place. We can say this is all very bad, but if she does become presidential candidate she will have to find a way to overcome the prejudice against her. Not certain she will.
    Not entirely true, Michelle Obama polls way better than Harris and is a liberal black woman too.

    The difference is she has charisma, Harris makes Hillary Clinton look like a woman with the common touch
    Isn't the problem just that Harris doesn't poll very well. The main complaint seems to be that she was put in charge of the border issue and hasn't done very well on that. She has also supported a lot of quite divisive 'woke' stuff that Biden and Obama would avoid.
    Harris is vulnerable on border control. She actually had a relatively limited role on immigration and mostly did what she was tasked with but as immigration has massively increased for other reasons, no-one will give Harris a pass on that.

    The "woke stuff" is mostly abortion rights, which are popular. I don't think she will have a problem with those.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,821

    Nigelb said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Also FPT

    Cannot speak for the accuracy of the figures, but this is a worrying thread about Labour's green plans:

    https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1814239901094654095

    It doesn't really make sense. For example:

    "Supply exceeds demand 64% of the time, so, lacking any suitable storage technology, we'd be throwing out 120 TWh of power, worth well over £10 billion, every year. That's perhaps £500 per household chucked down the drain."

    How can power produced in excess of what can be used have a value? It is, by definition, worth nothing. Also the assumption that we'd have no suitable storage technology is a bit of a biggie, especially given the possibility of using car batteries for storage.

    Edit: The obvious way to go is to improve connectivity with other countries. After all, the wind is always blowing somewhere.
    Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick, through payments to windfarms when the power is not required:

    "This means that the government is having to pay huge sums in curtailment fees to wind farm owners to switch off turbines when they are generating more power than is needed.
    Some £210m ($267m) of curtailment payments were made to renewable energy generators to curtail output in 2022, said the report
    With the UK planning to grow its offshore wind capacity from 14GW today to 50GW by 2030, the report says that curtailment costs are expected to rise to £3.5bn annually by the end of the decade."

    https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/turn-wasted-wind-power-into-green-hydrogen-and-save-uk-billions-study/2-1-1583623

    or:

    "Wasted wind power adds £40 to household energy costs, says think tank"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67494082
    It's not quite as simple as that.

    The wind farms have guaranteed prices for the power they produce from contracts signed with the government, but they still participate in the spot market.

    During periods of overproduction, instantaneous prices go negative (ie the grid offers to pay producers to reduce production and/or customers to use power). If their guaranteed strike price is higher than the negative market price, it still pays the wind farm to carry on producing; a negative price which exceeds what they earn pays them to stun off production.

    Similarly with solar (though not all solar connections are 'throttleable' in the same manner.)

    With the rapid increase in renewables production, total hours with negative pricing will also grown over then next few years.
    But the very strong market incentive is going to see the storage market grow in response.

    The game changer is the drop in battery prices over the last year. They're now just about at the point it pays to deploy grid scale storage - it just needs the factories to build them.
    Battery prices have dropped 55% since the beginning of last year.

    Lots of things that weren't economic are now economic.
    They won't stay low in the long term unless someone finds an awful lot more copper etc that can be mined cheaply. Raw materials of copper cobalt, lithium etc are a big elephant in the room

    New "battery" techology is needed. Keep seeing breakthrough announcements but few make it to production as the announcements are normally about a lab concept to try and attract (high risk) investment money to turn that into something sellable.
    More fortunes have been lost betting on commodities not being found than any other way.

    As prices rise, more deposits become economic.
    And there's a huge amount of known, unexploited lithium reserves.
    As an example, the US probably one of the world's largest known extractable deposit, and they haven't yet even started mining it.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker_Pass_Lithium_Mine

    Interestingly, ARPA-E, the US energy technology equivalent of DARPA is funding a few projects for innovative mining technology, in the hope of reviving US mining which has been undercut in recent years by low cost producers like China.
    What happens when the lithium runs out?
    Lithium isn't going to run out, there's loads. There was a price spike when batteries were selling much faster than people had expected and lithium production couldn't ramp up fast enough, but then it caught up and the price came back down.

    Social media has a bias to bad news, doomers and Russian propaganda so lots of people saw the graph of the price going up a lot, but hardly anyone saw the graph of it going back down. So this survives as a zombie talking point.
    https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=kg&d=240
    Once again

    1) Rare earths aren’t rare
    2) They aren’t earths
    3) Lithium isn’t a rare earth
    4) Lithium a very, very common element
    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/29/a-worldwide-lithium-shortage-could-come-as-soon-as-2025.html
    Like we're saying, Lithium isn't going to run out. Last year the analyst they quote thought production would be too low around 2030. They may or may not still believe that now. But they say "We believe there will eventually be enough lithium to support the demands of electrification"
    It's a finite resource!
    So is oxygen, but we’d struggle to get through it all.
    Oxygen is continuously produced during photosynthesis. Lithium isn't...
    Oxygen isn’t continuously produced. It is recycled. That is why the amount of it in the air is quite stable.
    But Lithium is finite, like coal...
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 51,821

    Nigelb said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Also FPT

    Cannot speak for the accuracy of the figures, but this is a worrying thread about Labour's green plans:

    https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1814239901094654095

    It doesn't really make sense. For example:

    "Supply exceeds demand 64% of the time, so, lacking any suitable storage technology, we'd be throwing out 120 TWh of power, worth well over £10 billion, every year. That's perhaps £500 per household chucked down the drain."

    How can power produced in excess of what can be used have a value? It is, by definition, worth nothing. Also the assumption that we'd have no suitable storage technology is a bit of a biggie, especially given the possibility of using car batteries for storage.

    Edit: The obvious way to go is to improve connectivity with other countries. After all, the wind is always blowing somewhere.
    Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick, through payments to windfarms when the power is not required:

    "This means that the government is having to pay huge sums in curtailment fees to wind farm owners to switch off turbines when they are generating more power than is needed.
    Some £210m ($267m) of curtailment payments were made to renewable energy generators to curtail output in 2022, said the report
    With the UK planning to grow its offshore wind capacity from 14GW today to 50GW by 2030, the report says that curtailment costs are expected to rise to £3.5bn annually by the end of the decade."

    https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/turn-wasted-wind-power-into-green-hydrogen-and-save-uk-billions-study/2-1-1583623

    or:

    "Wasted wind power adds £40 to household energy costs, says think tank"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67494082
    It's not quite as simple as that.

    The wind farms have guaranteed prices for the power they produce from contracts signed with the government, but they still participate in the spot market.

    During periods of overproduction, instantaneous prices go negative (ie the grid offers to pay producers to reduce production and/or customers to use power). If their guaranteed strike price is higher than the negative market price, it still pays the wind farm to carry on producing; a negative price which exceeds what they earn pays them to stun off production.

    Similarly with solar (though not all solar connections are 'throttleable' in the same manner.)

    With the rapid increase in renewables production, total hours with negative pricing will also grown over then next few years.
    But the very strong market incentive is going to see the storage market grow in response.

    The game changer is the drop in battery prices over the last year. They're now just about at the point it pays to deploy grid scale storage - it just needs the factories to build them.
    Battery prices have dropped 55% since the beginning of last year.

    Lots of things that weren't economic are now economic.
    They won't stay low in the long term unless someone finds an awful lot more copper etc that can be mined cheaply. Raw materials of copper cobalt, lithium etc are a big elephant in the room

    New "battery" techology is needed. Keep seeing breakthrough announcements but few make it to production as the announcements are normally about a lab concept to try and attract (high risk) investment money to turn that into something sellable.
    More fortunes have been lost betting on commodities not being found than any other way.

    As prices rise, more deposits become economic.
    And there's a huge amount of known, unexploited lithium reserves.
    As an example, the US probably one of the world's largest known extractable deposit, and they haven't yet even started mining it.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker_Pass_Lithium_Mine

    Interestingly, ARPA-E, the US energy technology equivalent of DARPA is funding a few projects for innovative mining technology, in the hope of reviving US mining which has been undercut in recent years by low cost producers like China.
    What happens when the lithium runs out?
    Lithium isn't going to run out, there's loads. There was a price spike when batteries were selling much faster than people had expected and lithium production couldn't ramp up fast enough, but then it caught up and the price came back down.

    Social media has a bias to bad news, doomers and Russian propaganda so lots of people saw the graph of the price going up a lot, but hardly anyone saw the graph of it going back down. So this survives as a zombie talking point.
    https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=kg&d=240
    Once again

    1) Rare earths aren’t rare
    2) They aren’t earths
    3) Lithium isn’t a rare earth
    4) Lithium a very, very common element
    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/29/a-worldwide-lithium-shortage-could-come-as-soon-as-2025.html
    Like we're saying, Lithium isn't going to run out. Last year the analyst they quote thought production would be too low around 2030. They may or may not still believe that now. But they say "We believe there will eventually be enough lithium to support the demands of electrification"
    It's a finite resource!
    So is oxygen, but we’d struggle to get through it all.
    Oxygen is continuously produced during photosynthesis. Lithium isn't...
    That’s O2. I said oxygen.
    Same thing...
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,250
    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    FF43 said:

    Forgive me, I haven’t been following US politics particularly closely - can someone summarise for me, please, why is everyone so down on Harris’s chances in the general?

    Like, I can read the polls, but is she like, hopeless on stage? Or a whack job, policy wise?

    None of those things. Her previous experience is as largely as a somewhat effective prosecutor.

    I think there's a degree of misogyny with Harris. A black woman who is also liberal is someone who doesn't know their place. We can say this is all very bad, but if she does become presidential candidate she will have to find a way to overcome the prejudice against her. Not certain she will.
    Not entirely true, Michelle Obama polls way better than Harris and is a liberal black woman too.

    The difference is she has charisma, Harris makes Hillary Clinton look like a woman with the common touch
    To those on the left, she was a hard charging DA who railroaded large numbers of minority defendants. Many for long prison terms. As a result her support in the black community is soft.

    To the right, she’s signed up to all the wokery.

    She has a bit of a tin ear on politics in general.

    Which is why she doesn’t poll much better than Biden.
    The polling on her with Black voters is better than Biden, but not as good as Obama.

    https://x.com/USA_Polling/status/1813667374631190594?t=qEz7jRXgVmMvGNgH29TSxw&s=19
    Exactly - she is only a bit better than Biden with black voters, not walking away with all the votes, like Obama.
    Yeah but not unpopular.
    The problem is that the Democrats find a solid black vote very helpful to win elections. Harris kinda crawls to that line, not jumping past it the way Obama did.

    Her ratings with the black community are very poor for a successful, black Democrat.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,250

    Nigelb said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Also FPT

    Cannot speak for the accuracy of the figures, but this is a worrying thread about Labour's green plans:

    https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1814239901094654095

    It doesn't really make sense. For example:

    "Supply exceeds demand 64% of the time, so, lacking any suitable storage technology, we'd be throwing out 120 TWh of power, worth well over £10 billion, every year. That's perhaps £500 per household chucked down the drain."

    How can power produced in excess of what can be used have a value? It is, by definition, worth nothing. Also the assumption that we'd have no suitable storage technology is a bit of a biggie, especially given the possibility of using car batteries for storage.

    Edit: The obvious way to go is to improve connectivity with other countries. After all, the wind is always blowing somewhere.
    Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick, through payments to windfarms when the power is not required:

    "This means that the government is having to pay huge sums in curtailment fees to wind farm owners to switch off turbines when they are generating more power than is needed.
    Some £210m ($267m) of curtailment payments were made to renewable energy generators to curtail output in 2022, said the report
    With the UK planning to grow its offshore wind capacity from 14GW today to 50GW by 2030, the report says that curtailment costs are expected to rise to £3.5bn annually by the end of the decade."

    https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/turn-wasted-wind-power-into-green-hydrogen-and-save-uk-billions-study/2-1-1583623

    or:

    "Wasted wind power adds £40 to household energy costs, says think tank"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67494082
    It's not quite as simple as that.

    The wind farms have guaranteed prices for the power they produce from contracts signed with the government, but they still participate in the spot market.

    During periods of overproduction, instantaneous prices go negative (ie the grid offers to pay producers to reduce production and/or customers to use power). If their guaranteed strike price is higher than the negative market price, it still pays the wind farm to carry on producing; a negative price which exceeds what they earn pays them to stun off production.

    Similarly with solar (though not all solar connections are 'throttleable' in the same manner.)

    With the rapid increase in renewables production, total hours with negative pricing will also grown over then next few years.
    But the very strong market incentive is going to see the storage market grow in response.

    The game changer is the drop in battery prices over the last year. They're now just about at the point it pays to deploy grid scale storage - it just needs the factories to build them.
    Battery prices have dropped 55% since the beginning of last year.

    Lots of things that weren't economic are now economic.
    They won't stay low in the long term unless someone finds an awful lot more copper etc that can be mined cheaply. Raw materials of copper cobalt, lithium etc are a big elephant in the room

    New "battery" techology is needed. Keep seeing breakthrough announcements but few make it to production as the announcements are normally about a lab concept to try and attract (high risk) investment money to turn that into something sellable.
    More fortunes have been lost betting on commodities not being found than any other way.

    As prices rise, more deposits become economic.
    And there's a huge amount of known, unexploited lithium reserves.
    As an example, the US probably one of the world's largest known extractable deposit, and they haven't yet even started mining it.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker_Pass_Lithium_Mine

    Interestingly, ARPA-E, the US energy technology equivalent of DARPA is funding a few projects for innovative mining technology, in the hope of reviving US mining which has been undercut in recent years by low cost producers like China.
    What happens when the lithium runs out?
    Lithium isn't going to run out, there's loads. There was a price spike when batteries were selling much faster than people had expected and lithium production couldn't ramp up fast enough, but then it caught up and the price came back down.

    Social media has a bias to bad news, doomers and Russian propaganda so lots of people saw the graph of the price going up a lot, but hardly anyone saw the graph of it going back down. So this survives as a zombie talking point.
    https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=kg&d=240
    Once again

    1) Rare earths aren’t rare
    2) They aren’t earths
    3) Lithium isn’t a rare earth
    4) Lithium a very, very common element
    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/29/a-worldwide-lithium-shortage-could-come-as-soon-as-2025.html
    Like we're saying, Lithium isn't going to run out. Last year the analyst they quote thought production would be too low around 2030. They may or may not still believe that now. But they say "We believe there will eventually be enough lithium to support the demands of electrification"
    It's a finite resource!
    Which is not, ultimately, used up. Within a fairly short time, one of the best sources of lithium ore will be old batteries….
    I remain convinced that we are not many years from seeing old rubbish dumps as new ‘mines’ for exploitation.
    Have you heard of scrap yards?
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 42,835

    Nigelb said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Also FPT

    Cannot speak for the accuracy of the figures, but this is a worrying thread about Labour's green plans:

    https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1814239901094654095

    It doesn't really make sense. For example:

    "Supply exceeds demand 64% of the time, so, lacking any suitable storage technology, we'd be throwing out 120 TWh of power, worth well over £10 billion, every year. That's perhaps £500 per household chucked down the drain."

    How can power produced in excess of what can be used have a value? It is, by definition, worth nothing. Also the assumption that we'd have no suitable storage technology is a bit of a biggie, especially given the possibility of using car batteries for storage.

    Edit: The obvious way to go is to improve connectivity with other countries. After all, the wind is always blowing somewhere.
    Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick, through payments to windfarms when the power is not required:

    "This means that the government is having to pay huge sums in curtailment fees to wind farm owners to switch off turbines when they are generating more power than is needed.
    Some £210m ($267m) of curtailment payments were made to renewable energy generators to curtail output in 2022, said the report
    With the UK planning to grow its offshore wind capacity from 14GW today to 50GW by 2030, the report says that curtailment costs are expected to rise to £3.5bn annually by the end of the decade."

    https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/turn-wasted-wind-power-into-green-hydrogen-and-save-uk-billions-study/2-1-1583623

    or:

    "Wasted wind power adds £40 to household energy costs, says think tank"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67494082
    It's not quite as simple as that.

    The wind farms have guaranteed prices for the power they produce from contracts signed with the government, but they still participate in the spot market.

    During periods of overproduction, instantaneous prices go negative (ie the grid offers to pay producers to reduce production and/or customers to use power). If their guaranteed strike price is higher than the negative market price, it still pays the wind farm to carry on producing; a negative price which exceeds what they earn pays them to stun off production.

    Similarly with solar (though not all solar connections are 'throttleable' in the same manner.)

    With the rapid increase in renewables production, total hours with negative pricing will also grown over then next few years.
    But the very strong market incentive is going to see the storage market grow in response.

    The game changer is the drop in battery prices over the last year. They're now just about at the point it pays to deploy grid scale storage - it just needs the factories to build them.
    Battery prices have dropped 55% since the beginning of last year.

    Lots of things that weren't economic are now economic.
    They won't stay low in the long term unless someone finds an awful lot more copper etc that can be mined cheaply. Raw materials of copper cobalt, lithium etc are a big elephant in the room

    New "battery" techology is needed. Keep seeing breakthrough announcements but few make it to production as the announcements are normally about a lab concept to try and attract (high risk) investment money to turn that into something sellable.
    More fortunes have been lost betting on commodities not being found than any other way.

    As prices rise, more deposits become economic.
    And there's a huge amount of known, unexploited lithium reserves.
    As an example, the US probably one of the world's largest known extractable deposit, and they haven't yet even started mining it.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker_Pass_Lithium_Mine

    Interestingly, ARPA-E, the US energy technology equivalent of DARPA is funding a few projects for innovative mining technology, in the hope of reviving US mining which has been undercut in recent years by low cost producers like China.
    What happens when the lithium runs out?
    Lithium isn't going to run out, there's loads. There was a price spike when batteries were selling much faster than people had expected and lithium production couldn't ramp up fast enough, but then it caught up and the price came back down.

    Social media has a bias to bad news, doomers and Russian propaganda so lots of people saw the graph of the price going up a lot, but hardly anyone saw the graph of it going back down. So this survives as a zombie talking point.
    https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=kg&d=240
    Once again

    1) Rare earths aren’t rare
    2) They aren’t earths
    3) Lithium isn’t a rare earth
    4) Lithium a very, very common element
    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/29/a-worldwide-lithium-shortage-could-come-as-soon-as-2025.html
    Like we're saying, Lithium isn't going to run out. Last year the analyst they quote thought production would be too low around 2030. They may or may not still believe that now. But they say "We believe there will eventually be enough lithium to support the demands of electrification"
    It's a finite resource!
    Which is not, ultimately, used up. Within a fairly short time, one of the best sources of lithium ore will be old batteries….
    I remain convinced that we are not many years from seeing old rubbish dumps as new ‘mines’ for exploitation.
    Limited resource, though ...
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,250
    edited July 19

    Nigelb said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Also FPT

    Cannot speak for the accuracy of the figures, but this is a worrying thread about Labour's green plans:

    https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1814239901094654095

    It doesn't really make sense. For example:

    "Supply exceeds demand 64% of the time, so, lacking any suitable storage technology, we'd be throwing out 120 TWh of power, worth well over £10 billion, every year. That's perhaps £500 per household chucked down the drain."

    How can power produced in excess of what can be used have a value? It is, by definition, worth nothing. Also the assumption that we'd have no suitable storage technology is a bit of a biggie, especially given the possibility of using car batteries for storage.

    Edit: The obvious way to go is to improve connectivity with other countries. After all, the wind is always blowing somewhere.
    Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick, through payments to windfarms when the power is not required:

    "This means that the government is having to pay huge sums in curtailment fees to wind farm owners to switch off turbines when they are generating more power than is needed.
    Some £210m ($267m) of curtailment payments were made to renewable energy generators to curtail output in 2022, said the report
    With the UK planning to grow its offshore wind capacity from 14GW today to 50GW by 2030, the report says that curtailment costs are expected to rise to £3.5bn annually by the end of the decade."

    https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/turn-wasted-wind-power-into-green-hydrogen-and-save-uk-billions-study/2-1-1583623

    or:

    "Wasted wind power adds £40 to household energy costs, says think tank"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67494082
    It's not quite as simple as that.

    The wind farms have guaranteed prices for the power they produce from contracts signed with the government, but they still participate in the spot market.

    During periods of overproduction, instantaneous prices go negative (ie the grid offers to pay producers to reduce production and/or customers to use power). If their guaranteed strike price is higher than the negative market price, it still pays the wind farm to carry on producing; a negative price which exceeds what they earn pays them to stun off production.

    Similarly with solar (though not all solar connections are 'throttleable' in the same manner.)

    With the rapid increase in renewables production, total hours with negative pricing will also grown over then next few years.
    But the very strong market incentive is going to see the storage market grow in response.

    The game changer is the drop in battery prices over the last year. They're now just about at the point it pays to deploy grid scale storage - it just needs the factories to build them.
    Battery prices have dropped 55% since the beginning of last year.

    Lots of things that weren't economic are now economic.
    They won't stay low in the long term unless someone finds an awful lot more copper etc that can be mined cheaply. Raw materials of copper cobalt, lithium etc are a big elephant in the room

    New "battery" techology is needed. Keep seeing breakthrough announcements but few make it to production as the announcements are normally about a lab concept to try and attract (high risk) investment money to turn that into something sellable.
    More fortunes have been lost betting on commodities not being found than any other way.

    As prices rise, more deposits become economic.
    And there's a huge amount of known, unexploited lithium reserves.
    As an example, the US probably one of the world's largest known extractable deposit, and they haven't yet even started mining it.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker_Pass_Lithium_Mine

    Interestingly, ARPA-E, the US energy technology equivalent of DARPA is funding a few projects for innovative mining technology, in the hope of reviving US mining which has been undercut in recent years by low cost producers like China.
    What happens when the lithium runs out?
    Lithium isn't going to run out, there's loads. There was a price spike when batteries were selling much faster than people had expected and lithium production couldn't ramp up fast enough, but then it caught up and the price came back down.

    Social media has a bias to bad news, doomers and Russian propaganda so lots of people saw the graph of the price going up a lot, but hardly anyone saw the graph of it going back down. So this survives as a zombie talking point.
    https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=kg&d=240
    Once again

    1) Rare earths aren’t rare
    2) They aren’t earths
    3) Lithium isn’t a rare earth
    4) Lithium a very, very common element
    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/29/a-worldwide-lithium-shortage-could-come-as-soon-as-2025.html
    Like we're saying, Lithium isn't going to run out. Last year the analyst they quote thought production would be too low around 2030. They may or may not still believe that now. But they say "We believe there will eventually be enough lithium to support the demands of electrification"
    It's a finite resource!
    So is oxygen, but we’d struggle to get through it all.
    Oxygen is continuously produced during photosynthesis. Lithium isn't...
    Oxygen isn’t continuously produced. It is recycled. That is why the amount of it in the air is quite stable.
    But Lithium is finite, like coal...
    And Oxygen is finite. There are only just so many atoms of it on the planet. Not making more here….
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,643
    FF43 said:

    darkage said:

    HYUFD said:

    FF43 said:

    Forgive me, I haven’t been following US politics particularly closely - can someone summarise for me, please, why is everyone so down on Harris’s chances in the general?

    Like, I can read the polls, but is she like, hopeless on stage? Or a whack job, policy wise?

    None of those things. Her previous experience is as largely as a somewhat effective prosecutor.

    I think there's a degree of misogyny with Harris. A black woman who is also liberal is someone who doesn't know their place. We can say this is all very bad, but if she does become presidential candidate she will have to find a way to overcome the prejudice against her. Not certain she will.
    Not entirely true, Michelle Obama polls way better than Harris and is a liberal black woman too.

    The difference is she has charisma, Harris makes Hillary Clinton look like a woman with the common touch
    Isn't the problem just that Harris doesn't poll very well. The main complaint seems to be that she was put in charge of the border issue and hasn't done very well on that. She has also supported a lot of quite divisive 'woke' stuff that Biden and Obama would avoid.
    Harris is vulnerable on border control. She actually had a relatively limited role on immigration and mostly did what she was tasked with but as immigration has massively increased for other reasons, no-one will give Harris a pass on that.

    The "woke stuff" is mostly abortion rights, which are popular. I don't think she will have a problem with those.
    She isn't a perfect candidate of course, but a far better choice than either Biden or Trump.

    Dems need to go for broke.
  • boulayboulay Posts: 5,486

    geoffw said:

    It's eerie what Robert Jenkins, Vincent van Gogh and Donald J Trump have in common

    And an insolent farmer (for advanced students)
    I’ve just realised, on reading your post, that the use of “eerie” had already been used in the original post when I wittily replied. How embarrassing. I’m such a cochlea.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,250
    Carnyx said:

    Nigelb said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Also FPT

    Cannot speak for the accuracy of the figures, but this is a worrying thread about Labour's green plans:

    https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1814239901094654095

    It doesn't really make sense. For example:

    "Supply exceeds demand 64% of the time, so, lacking any suitable storage technology, we'd be throwing out 120 TWh of power, worth well over £10 billion, every year. That's perhaps £500 per household chucked down the drain."

    How can power produced in excess of what can be used have a value? It is, by definition, worth nothing. Also the assumption that we'd have no suitable storage technology is a bit of a biggie, especially given the possibility of using car batteries for storage.

    Edit: The obvious way to go is to improve connectivity with other countries. After all, the wind is always blowing somewhere.
    Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick, through payments to windfarms when the power is not required:

    "This means that the government is having to pay huge sums in curtailment fees to wind farm owners to switch off turbines when they are generating more power than is needed.
    Some £210m ($267m) of curtailment payments were made to renewable energy generators to curtail output in 2022, said the report
    With the UK planning to grow its offshore wind capacity from 14GW today to 50GW by 2030, the report says that curtailment costs are expected to rise to £3.5bn annually by the end of the decade."

    https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/turn-wasted-wind-power-into-green-hydrogen-and-save-uk-billions-study/2-1-1583623

    or:

    "Wasted wind power adds £40 to household energy costs, says think tank"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67494082
    It's not quite as simple as that.

    The wind farms have guaranteed prices for the power they produce from contracts signed with the government, but they still participate in the spot market.

    During periods of overproduction, instantaneous prices go negative (ie the grid offers to pay producers to reduce production and/or customers to use power). If their guaranteed strike price is higher than the negative market price, it still pays the wind farm to carry on producing; a negative price which exceeds what they earn pays them to stun off production.

    Similarly with solar (though not all solar connections are 'throttleable' in the same manner.)

    With the rapid increase in renewables production, total hours with negative pricing will also grown over then next few years.
    But the very strong market incentive is going to see the storage market grow in response.

    The game changer is the drop in battery prices over the last year. They're now just about at the point it pays to deploy grid scale storage - it just needs the factories to build them.
    Battery prices have dropped 55% since the beginning of last year.

    Lots of things that weren't economic are now economic.
    They won't stay low in the long term unless someone finds an awful lot more copper etc that can be mined cheaply. Raw materials of copper cobalt, lithium etc are a big elephant in the room

    New "battery" techology is needed. Keep seeing breakthrough announcements but few make it to production as the announcements are normally about a lab concept to try and attract (high risk) investment money to turn that into something sellable.
    More fortunes have been lost betting on commodities not being found than any other way.

    As prices rise, more deposits become economic.
    And there's a huge amount of known, unexploited lithium reserves.
    As an example, the US probably one of the world's largest known extractable deposit, and they haven't yet even started mining it.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker_Pass_Lithium_Mine

    Interestingly, ARPA-E, the US energy technology equivalent of DARPA is funding a few projects for innovative mining technology, in the hope of reviving US mining which has been undercut in recent years by low cost producers like China.
    What happens when the lithium runs out?
    Lithium isn't going to run out, there's loads. There was a price spike when batteries were selling much faster than people had expected and lithium production couldn't ramp up fast enough, but then it caught up and the price came back down.

    Social media has a bias to bad news, doomers and Russian propaganda so lots of people saw the graph of the price going up a lot, but hardly anyone saw the graph of it going back down. So this survives as a zombie talking point.
    https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=kg&d=240
    Once again

    1) Rare earths aren’t rare
    2) They aren’t earths
    3) Lithium isn’t a rare earth
    4) Lithium a very, very common element
    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/29/a-worldwide-lithium-shortage-could-come-as-soon-as-2025.html
    Like we're saying, Lithium isn't going to run out. Last year the analyst they quote thought production would be too low around 2030. They may or may not still believe that now. But they say "We believe there will eventually be enough lithium to support the demands of electrification"
    It's a finite resource!
    Which is not, ultimately, used up. Within a fairly short time, one of the best sources of lithium ore will be old batteries….
    I remain convinced that we are not many years from seeing old rubbish dumps as new ‘mines’ for exploitation.
    Limited resource, though ...
    Scrap yards never seem to run out…
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,405

    Nigelb said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Also FPT

    Cannot speak for the accuracy of the figures, but this is a worrying thread about Labour's green plans:

    https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1814239901094654095

    It doesn't really make sense. For example:

    "Supply exceeds demand 64% of the time, so, lacking any suitable storage technology, we'd be throwing out 120 TWh of power, worth well over £10 billion, every year. That's perhaps £500 per household chucked down the drain."

    How can power produced in excess of what can be used have a value? It is, by definition, worth nothing. Also the assumption that we'd have no suitable storage technology is a bit of a biggie, especially given the possibility of using car batteries for storage.

    Edit: The obvious way to go is to improve connectivity with other countries. After all, the wind is always blowing somewhere.
    Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick, through payments to windfarms when the power is not required:

    "This means that the government is having to pay huge sums in curtailment fees to wind farm owners to switch off turbines when they are generating more power than is needed.
    Some £210m ($267m) of curtailment payments were made to renewable energy generators to curtail output in 2022, said the report
    With the UK planning to grow its offshore wind capacity from 14GW today to 50GW by 2030, the report says that curtailment costs are expected to rise to £3.5bn annually by the end of the decade."

    https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/turn-wasted-wind-power-into-green-hydrogen-and-save-uk-billions-study/2-1-1583623

    or:

    "Wasted wind power adds £40 to household energy costs, says think tank"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67494082
    It's not quite as simple as that.

    The wind farms have guaranteed prices for the power they produce from contracts signed with the government, but they still participate in the spot market.

    During periods of overproduction, instantaneous prices go negative (ie the grid offers to pay producers to reduce production and/or customers to use power). If their guaranteed strike price is higher than the negative market price, it still pays the wind farm to carry on producing; a negative price which exceeds what they earn pays them to stun off production.

    Similarly with solar (though not all solar connections are 'throttleable' in the same manner.)

    With the rapid increase in renewables production, total hours with negative pricing will also grown over then next few years.
    But the very strong market incentive is going to see the storage market grow in response.

    The game changer is the drop in battery prices over the last year. They're now just about at the point it pays to deploy grid scale storage - it just needs the factories to build them.
    Battery prices have dropped 55% since the beginning of last year.

    Lots of things that weren't economic are now economic.
    They won't stay low in the long term unless someone finds an awful lot more copper etc that can be mined cheaply. Raw materials of copper cobalt, lithium etc are a big elephant in the room

    New "battery" techology is needed. Keep seeing breakthrough announcements but few make it to production as the announcements are normally about a lab concept to try and attract (high risk) investment money to turn that into something sellable.
    More fortunes have been lost betting on commodities not being found than any other way.

    As prices rise, more deposits become economic.
    And there's a huge amount of known, unexploited lithium reserves.
    As an example, the US probably one of the world's largest known extractable deposit, and they haven't yet even started mining it.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker_Pass_Lithium_Mine

    Interestingly, ARPA-E, the US energy technology equivalent of DARPA is funding a few projects for innovative mining technology, in the hope of reviving US mining which has been undercut in recent years by low cost producers like China.
    What happens when the lithium runs out?
    Lithium isn't going to run out, there's loads. There was a price spike when batteries were selling much faster than people had expected and lithium production couldn't ramp up fast enough, but then it caught up and the price came back down.

    Social media has a bias to bad news, doomers and Russian propaganda so lots of people saw the graph of the price going up a lot, but hardly anyone saw the graph of it going back down. So this survives as a zombie talking point.
    https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=kg&d=240
    Once again

    1) Rare earths aren’t rare
    2) They aren’t earths
    3) Lithium isn’t a rare earth
    4) Lithium a very, very common element
    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/29/a-worldwide-lithium-shortage-could-come-as-soon-as-2025.html
    Like we're saying, Lithium isn't going to run out. Last year the analyst they quote thought production would be too low around 2030. They may or may not still believe that now. But they say "We believe there will eventually be enough lithium to support the demands of electrification"
    It's a finite resource!
    So is oxygen, but we’d struggle to get through it all.
    Oxygen is continuously produced during photosynthesis. Lithium isn't...
    That’s O2. I said oxygen.
    Same thing...
    Shame on you. I refer to the element oxygen. O2 is dioxygen, comprised of two covalently bound oxygen atoms. Would you say that ozone is the same thing?
    And you a chemist with papers published and all!
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 11,052
    Sandpit said:

    https://x.com/natesilver538/status/1814326275642737064

    “Today's model update. A lot of polling in since yesterday, and we're seeing an unmistakable spike for Trump, who is now up almost 4 points in our national polling average.”

    Isn’t that typical for a convention boost? Not certain it tells us much.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 17,405

    Nigelb said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Also FPT

    Cannot speak for the accuracy of the figures, but this is a worrying thread about Labour's green plans:

    https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1814239901094654095

    It doesn't really make sense. For example:

    "Supply exceeds demand 64% of the time, so, lacking any suitable storage technology, we'd be throwing out 120 TWh of power, worth well over £10 billion, every year. That's perhaps £500 per household chucked down the drain."

    How can power produced in excess of what can be used have a value? It is, by definition, worth nothing. Also the assumption that we'd have no suitable storage technology is a bit of a biggie, especially given the possibility of using car batteries for storage.

    Edit: The obvious way to go is to improve connectivity with other countries. After all, the wind is always blowing somewhere.
    Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick, through payments to windfarms when the power is not required:

    "This means that the government is having to pay huge sums in curtailment fees to wind farm owners to switch off turbines when they are generating more power than is needed.
    Some £210m ($267m) of curtailment payments were made to renewable energy generators to curtail output in 2022, said the report
    With the UK planning to grow its offshore wind capacity from 14GW today to 50GW by 2030, the report says that curtailment costs are expected to rise to £3.5bn annually by the end of the decade."

    https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/turn-wasted-wind-power-into-green-hydrogen-and-save-uk-billions-study/2-1-1583623

    or:

    "Wasted wind power adds £40 to household energy costs, says think tank"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67494082
    It's not quite as simple as that.

    The wind farms have guaranteed prices for the power they produce from contracts signed with the government, but they still participate in the spot market.

    During periods of overproduction, instantaneous prices go negative (ie the grid offers to pay producers to reduce production and/or customers to use power). If their guaranteed strike price is higher than the negative market price, it still pays the wind farm to carry on producing; a negative price which exceeds what they earn pays them to stun off production.

    Similarly with solar (though not all solar connections are 'throttleable' in the same manner.)

    With the rapid increase in renewables production, total hours with negative pricing will also grown over then next few years.
    But the very strong market incentive is going to see the storage market grow in response.

    The game changer is the drop in battery prices over the last year. They're now just about at the point it pays to deploy grid scale storage - it just needs the factories to build them.
    Battery prices have dropped 55% since the beginning of last year.

    Lots of things that weren't economic are now economic.
    They won't stay low in the long term unless someone finds an awful lot more copper etc that can be mined cheaply. Raw materials of copper cobalt, lithium etc are a big elephant in the room

    New "battery" techology is needed. Keep seeing breakthrough announcements but few make it to production as the announcements are normally about a lab concept to try and attract (high risk) investment money to turn that into something sellable.
    More fortunes have been lost betting on commodities not being found than any other way.

    As prices rise, more deposits become economic.
    And there's a huge amount of known, unexploited lithium reserves.
    As an example, the US probably one of the world's largest known extractable deposit, and they haven't yet even started mining it.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker_Pass_Lithium_Mine

    Interestingly, ARPA-E, the US energy technology equivalent of DARPA is funding a few projects for innovative mining technology, in the hope of reviving US mining which has been undercut in recent years by low cost producers like China.
    What happens when the lithium runs out?
    Lithium isn't going to run out, there's loads. There was a price spike when batteries were selling much faster than people had expected and lithium production couldn't ramp up fast enough, but then it caught up and the price came back down.

    Social media has a bias to bad news, doomers and Russian propaganda so lots of people saw the graph of the price going up a lot, but hardly anyone saw the graph of it going back down. So this survives as a zombie talking point.
    https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=kg&d=240
    Once again

    1) Rare earths aren’t rare
    2) They aren’t earths
    3) Lithium isn’t a rare earth
    4) Lithium a very, very common element
    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/29/a-worldwide-lithium-shortage-could-come-as-soon-as-2025.html
    Like we're saying, Lithium isn't going to run out. Last year the analyst they quote thought production would be too low around 2030. They may or may not still believe that now. But they say "We believe there will eventually be enough lithium to support the demands of electrification"
    It's a finite resource!
    Which is not, ultimately, used up. Within a fairly short time, one of the best sources of lithium ore will be old batteries….
    I remain convinced that we are not many years from seeing old rubbish dumps as new ‘mines’ for exploitation.
    Have you heard of scrap yards?
    Obviously, but I’m thinking especially of the old rubbish dumps that were landfill, and then covered over.
  • FF43FF43 Posts: 17,208
    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    HYUFD said:

    FF43 said:

    Forgive me, I haven’t been following US politics particularly closely - can someone summarise for me, please, why is everyone so down on Harris’s chances in the general?

    Like, I can read the polls, but is she like, hopeless on stage? Or a whack job, policy wise?

    None of those things. Her previous experience is as largely as a somewhat effective prosecutor.

    I think there's a degree of misogyny with Harris. A black woman who is also liberal is someone who doesn't know their place. We can say this is all very bad, but if she does become presidential candidate she will have to find a way to overcome the prejudice against her. Not certain she will.
    Not entirely true, Michelle Obama polls way better than Harris and is a liberal black woman too.

    The difference is she has charisma, Harris makes Hillary Clinton look like a woman with the common touch
    To those on the left, she was a hard charging DA who railroaded large numbers of minority defendants. Many for long prison terms. As a result her support in the black community is soft.

    To the right, she’s signed up to all the wokery.

    She has a bit of a tin ear on politics in general.

    Which is why she doesn’t poll much better than Biden.
    The polling on her with Black voters is better than Biden, but not as good as Obama.

    https://x.com/USA_Polling/status/1813667374631190594?t=qEz7jRXgVmMvGNgH29TSxw&s=19
    Exactly - she is only a bit better than Biden with black voters, not walking away with all the votes, like Obama.
    Yeah but not unpopular.
    Harris isn't massively unpopular. She has slightly better ratings than Trump and better ratings than Biden. They are all somewhat unfavourable.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 50,250

    Nigelb said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Also FPT

    Cannot speak for the accuracy of the figures, but this is a worrying thread about Labour's green plans:

    https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1814239901094654095

    It doesn't really make sense. For example:

    "Supply exceeds demand 64% of the time, so, lacking any suitable storage technology, we'd be throwing out 120 TWh of power, worth well over £10 billion, every year. That's perhaps £500 per household chucked down the drain."

    How can power produced in excess of what can be used have a value? It is, by definition, worth nothing. Also the assumption that we'd have no suitable storage technology is a bit of a biggie, especially given the possibility of using car batteries for storage.

    Edit: The obvious way to go is to improve connectivity with other countries. After all, the wind is always blowing somewhere.
    Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick, through payments to windfarms when the power is not required:

    "This means that the government is having to pay huge sums in curtailment fees to wind farm owners to switch off turbines when they are generating more power than is needed.
    Some £210m ($267m) of curtailment payments were made to renewable energy generators to curtail output in 2022, said the report
    With the UK planning to grow its offshore wind capacity from 14GW today to 50GW by 2030, the report says that curtailment costs are expected to rise to £3.5bn annually by the end of the decade."

    https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/turn-wasted-wind-power-into-green-hydrogen-and-save-uk-billions-study/2-1-1583623

    or:

    "Wasted wind power adds £40 to household energy costs, says think tank"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67494082
    It's not quite as simple as that.

    The wind farms have guaranteed prices for the power they produce from contracts signed with the government, but they still participate in the spot market.

    During periods of overproduction, instantaneous prices go negative (ie the grid offers to pay producers to reduce production and/or customers to use power). If their guaranteed strike price is higher than the negative market price, it still pays the wind farm to carry on producing; a negative price which exceeds what they earn pays them to stun off production.

    Similarly with solar (though not all solar connections are 'throttleable' in the same manner.)

    With the rapid increase in renewables production, total hours with negative pricing will also grown over then next few years.
    But the very strong market incentive is going to see the storage market grow in response.

    The game changer is the drop in battery prices over the last year. They're now just about at the point it pays to deploy grid scale storage - it just needs the factories to build them.
    Battery prices have dropped 55% since the beginning of last year.

    Lots of things that weren't economic are now economic.
    They won't stay low in the long term unless someone finds an awful lot more copper etc that can be mined cheaply. Raw materials of copper cobalt, lithium etc are a big elephant in the room

    New "battery" techology is needed. Keep seeing breakthrough announcements but few make it to production as the announcements are normally about a lab concept to try and attract (high risk) investment money to turn that into something sellable.
    More fortunes have been lost betting on commodities not being found than any other way.

    As prices rise, more deposits become economic.
    And there's a huge amount of known, unexploited lithium reserves.
    As an example, the US probably one of the world's largest known extractable deposit, and they haven't yet even started mining it.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker_Pass_Lithium_Mine

    Interestingly, ARPA-E, the US energy technology equivalent of DARPA is funding a few projects for innovative mining technology, in the hope of reviving US mining which has been undercut in recent years by low cost producers like China.
    What happens when the lithium runs out?
    Lithium isn't going to run out, there's loads. There was a price spike when batteries were selling much faster than people had expected and lithium production couldn't ramp up fast enough, but then it caught up and the price came back down.

    Social media has a bias to bad news, doomers and Russian propaganda so lots of people saw the graph of the price going up a lot, but hardly anyone saw the graph of it going back down. So this survives as a zombie talking point.
    https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=kg&d=240
    Once again

    1) Rare earths aren’t rare
    2) They aren’t earths
    3) Lithium isn’t a rare earth
    4) Lithium a very, very common element
    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/29/a-worldwide-lithium-shortage-could-come-as-soon-as-2025.html
    Like we're saying, Lithium isn't going to run out. Last year the analyst they quote thought production would be too low around 2030. They may or may not still believe that now. But they say "We believe there will eventually be enough lithium to support the demands of electrification"
    It's a finite resource!
    Which is not, ultimately, used up. Within a fairly short time, one of the best sources of lithium ore will be old batteries….
    I remain convinced that we are not many years from seeing old rubbish dumps as new ‘mines’ for exploitation.
    Have you heard of scrap yards?
    Obviously, but I’m thinking especially of the old rubbish dumps that were landfill, and then covered over.
    There’s plastics in some of the older ones. Methane from some of them - but not much.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,643
    ohnotnow said:

    Nigelb said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Also FPT

    Cannot speak for the accuracy of the figures, but this is a worrying thread about Labour's green plans:

    https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1814239901094654095

    It doesn't really make sense. For example:

    "Supply exceeds demand 64% of the time, so, lacking any suitable storage technology, we'd be throwing out 120 TWh of power, worth well over £10 billion, every year. That's perhaps £500 per household chucked down the drain."

    How can power produced in excess of what can be used have a value? It is, by definition, worth nothing. Also the assumption that we'd have no suitable storage technology is a bit of a biggie, especially given the possibility of using car batteries for storage.

    Edit: The obvious way to go is to improve connectivity with other countries. After all, the wind is always blowing somewhere.
    Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick, through payments to windfarms when the power is not required:

    "This means that the government is having to pay huge sums in curtailment fees to wind farm owners to switch off turbines when they are generating more power than is needed.
    Some £210m ($267m) of curtailment payments were made to renewable energy generators to curtail output in 2022, said the report
    With the UK planning to grow its offshore wind capacity from 14GW today to 50GW by 2030, the report says that curtailment costs are expected to rise to £3.5bn annually by the end of the decade."

    https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/turn-wasted-wind-power-into-green-hydrogen-and-save-uk-billions-study/2-1-1583623

    or:

    "Wasted wind power adds £40 to household energy costs, says think tank"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67494082
    It's not quite as simple as that.

    The wind farms have guaranteed prices for the power they produce from contracts signed with the government, but they still participate in the spot market.

    During periods of overproduction, instantaneous prices go negative (ie the grid offers to pay producers to reduce production and/or customers to use power). If their guaranteed strike price is higher than the negative market price, it still pays the wind farm to carry on producing; a negative price which exceeds what they earn pays them to stun off production.

    Similarly with solar (though not all solar connections are 'throttleable' in the same manner.)

    With the rapid increase in renewables production, total hours with negative pricing will also grown over then next few years.
    But the very strong market incentive is going to see the storage market grow in response.

    The game changer is the drop in battery prices over the last year. They're now just about at the point it pays to deploy grid scale storage - it just needs the factories to build them.
    Battery prices have dropped 55% since the beginning of last year.

    Lots of things that weren't economic are now economic.
    They won't stay low in the long term unless someone finds an awful lot more copper etc that can be mined cheaply. Raw materials of copper cobalt, lithium etc are a big elephant in the room

    New "battery" techology is needed. Keep seeing breakthrough announcements but few make it to production as the announcements are normally about a lab concept to try and attract (high risk) investment money to turn that into something sellable.
    More fortunes have been lost betting on commodities not being found than any other way.

    As prices rise, more deposits become economic.
    And there's a huge amount of known, unexploited lithium reserves.
    As an example, the US probably one of the world's largest known extractable deposit, and they haven't yet even started mining it.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker_Pass_Lithium_Mine

    Interestingly, ARPA-E, the US energy technology equivalent of DARPA is funding a few projects for innovative mining technology, in the hope of reviving US mining which has been undercut in recent years by low cost producers like China.
    What happens when the lithium runs out?
    Lithium isn't going to run out, there's loads. There was a price spike when batteries were selling much faster than people had expected and lithium production couldn't ramp up fast enough, but then it caught up and the price came back down.

    Social media has a bias to bad news, doomers and Russian propaganda so lots of people saw the graph of the price going up a lot, but hardly anyone saw the graph of it going back down. So this survives as a zombie talking point.
    https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=kg&d=240
    Once again

    1) Rare earths aren’t rare
    2) They aren’t earths
    3) Lithium isn’t a rare earth
    4) Lithium a very, very common element
    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/29/a-worldwide-lithium-shortage-could-come-as-soon-as-2025.html
    Like we're saying, Lithium isn't going to run out. Last year the analyst they quote thought production would be too low around 2030. They may or may not still believe that now. But they say "We believe there will eventually be enough lithium to support the demands of electrification"
    It's a finite resource!
    So is oxygen, but we’d struggle to get through it all.
    Oxygen is continuously produced during photosynthesis. Lithium isn't...
    Oxygen isn’t continuously produced. It is recycled. That is why the amount of it in the air is quite stable.
    But Lithium is finite, like coal...
    And Oxygen is finite. There are only just so many atoms of it on the planet. Not making more here….
    Whenever I'm considering a steak with blue cheese sauce, I console myself with the idea that it's basically the same atoms as salad.
    And wine is grape juice, therefore one of your "5 a day". Indeed a whole bottle ticks the entire box.
  • Foxy said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Nigelb said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Also FPT

    Cannot speak for the accuracy of the figures, but this is a worrying thread about Labour's green plans:

    https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1814239901094654095

    It doesn't really make sense. For example:

    "Supply exceeds demand 64% of the time, so, lacking any suitable storage technology, we'd be throwing out 120 TWh of power, worth well over £10 billion, every year. That's perhaps £500 per household chucked down the drain."

    How can power produced in excess of what can be used have a value? It is, by definition, worth nothing. Also the assumption that we'd have no suitable storage technology is a bit of a biggie, especially given the possibility of using car batteries for storage.

    Edit: The obvious way to go is to improve connectivity with other countries. After all, the wind is always blowing somewhere.
    Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick, through payments to windfarms when the power is not required:

    "This means that the government is having to pay huge sums in curtailment fees to wind farm owners to switch off turbines when they are generating more power than is needed.
    Some £210m ($267m) of curtailment payments were made to renewable energy generators to curtail output in 2022, said the report
    With the UK planning to grow its offshore wind capacity from 14GW today to 50GW by 2030, the report says that curtailment costs are expected to rise to £3.5bn annually by the end of the decade."

    https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/turn-wasted-wind-power-into-green-hydrogen-and-save-uk-billions-study/2-1-1583623

    or:

    "Wasted wind power adds £40 to household energy costs, says think tank"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67494082
    It's not quite as simple as that.

    The wind farms have guaranteed prices for the power they produce from contracts signed with the government, but they still participate in the spot market.

    During periods of overproduction, instantaneous prices go negative (ie the grid offers to pay producers to reduce production and/or customers to use power). If their guaranteed strike price is higher than the negative market price, it still pays the wind farm to carry on producing; a negative price which exceeds what they earn pays them to stun off production.

    Similarly with solar (though not all solar connections are 'throttleable' in the same manner.)

    With the rapid increase in renewables production, total hours with negative pricing will also grown over then next few years.
    But the very strong market incentive is going to see the storage market grow in response.

    The game changer is the drop in battery prices over the last year. They're now just about at the point it pays to deploy grid scale storage - it just needs the factories to build them.
    Battery prices have dropped 55% since the beginning of last year.

    Lots of things that weren't economic are now economic.
    They won't stay low in the long term unless someone finds an awful lot more copper etc that can be mined cheaply. Raw materials of copper cobalt, lithium etc are a big elephant in the room

    New "battery" techology is needed. Keep seeing breakthrough announcements but few make it to production as the announcements are normally about a lab concept to try and attract (high risk) investment money to turn that into something sellable.
    More fortunes have been lost betting on commodities not being found than any other way.

    As prices rise, more deposits become economic.
    And there's a huge amount of known, unexploited lithium reserves.
    As an example, the US probably one of the world's largest known extractable deposit, and they haven't yet even started mining it.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker_Pass_Lithium_Mine

    Interestingly, ARPA-E, the US energy technology equivalent of DARPA is funding a few projects for innovative mining technology, in the hope of reviving US mining which has been undercut in recent years by low cost producers like China.
    What happens when the lithium runs out?
    Lithium isn't going to run out, there's loads. There was a price spike when batteries were selling much faster than people had expected and lithium production couldn't ramp up fast enough, but then it caught up and the price came back down.

    Social media has a bias to bad news, doomers and Russian propaganda so lots of people saw the graph of the price going up a lot, but hardly anyone saw the graph of it going back down. So this survives as a zombie talking point.
    https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=kg&d=240
    Once again

    1) Rare earths aren’t rare
    2) They aren’t earths
    3) Lithium isn’t a rare earth
    4) Lithium a very, very common element
    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/29/a-worldwide-lithium-shortage-could-come-as-soon-as-2025.html
    Like we're saying, Lithium isn't going to run out. Last year the analyst they quote thought production would be too low around 2030. They may or may not still believe that now. But they say "We believe there will eventually be enough lithium to support the demands of electrification"
    It's a finite resource!
    So is oxygen, but we’d struggle to get through it all.
    Oxygen is continuously produced during photosynthesis. Lithium isn't...
    Oxygen isn’t continuously produced. It is recycled. That is why the amount of it in the air is quite stable.
    But Lithium is finite, like coal...
    And Oxygen is finite. There are only just so many atoms of it on the planet. Not making more here….
    Whenever I'm considering a steak with blue cheese sauce, I console myself with the idea that it's basically the same atoms as salad.
    And wine is grape juice, therefore one of your "5 a day". Indeed a whole bottle ticks the entire box.
    And an entire box of wine an evening and you're basically immortal.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 48,643

    Foxy said:

    ohnotnow said:

    Nigelb said:

    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Also FPT

    Cannot speak for the accuracy of the figures, but this is a worrying thread about Labour's green plans:

    https://x.com/aDissentient/status/1814239901094654095

    It doesn't really make sense. For example:

    "Supply exceeds demand 64% of the time, so, lacking any suitable storage technology, we'd be throwing out 120 TWh of power, worth well over £10 billion, every year. That's perhaps £500 per household chucked down the drain."

    How can power produced in excess of what can be used have a value? It is, by definition, worth nothing. Also the assumption that we'd have no suitable storage technology is a bit of a biggie, especially given the possibility of using car batteries for storage.

    Edit: The obvious way to go is to improve connectivity with other countries. After all, the wind is always blowing somewhere.
    Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick, through payments to windfarms when the power is not required:

    "This means that the government is having to pay huge sums in curtailment fees to wind farm owners to switch off turbines when they are generating more power than is needed.
    Some £210m ($267m) of curtailment payments were made to renewable energy generators to curtail output in 2022, said the report
    With the UK planning to grow its offshore wind capacity from 14GW today to 50GW by 2030, the report says that curtailment costs are expected to rise to £3.5bn annually by the end of the decade."

    https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/turn-wasted-wind-power-into-green-hydrogen-and-save-uk-billions-study/2-1-1583623

    or:

    "Wasted wind power adds £40 to household energy costs, says think tank"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67494082
    It's not quite as simple as that.

    The wind farms have guaranteed prices for the power they produce from contracts signed with the government, but they still participate in the spot market.

    During periods of overproduction, instantaneous prices go negative (ie the grid offers to pay producers to reduce production and/or customers to use power). If their guaranteed strike price is higher than the negative market price, it still pays the wind farm to carry on producing; a negative price which exceeds what they earn pays them to stun off production.

    Similarly with solar (though not all solar connections are 'throttleable' in the same manner.)

    With the rapid increase in renewables production, total hours with negative pricing will also grown over then next few years.
    But the very strong market incentive is going to see the storage market grow in response.

    The game changer is the drop in battery prices over the last year. They're now just about at the point it pays to deploy grid scale storage - it just needs the factories to build them.
    Battery prices have dropped 55% since the beginning of last year.

    Lots of things that weren't economic are now economic.
    They won't stay low in the long term unless someone finds an awful lot more copper etc that can be mined cheaply. Raw materials of copper cobalt, lithium etc are a big elephant in the room

    New "battery" techology is needed. Keep seeing breakthrough announcements but few make it to production as the announcements are normally about a lab concept to try and attract (high risk) investment money to turn that into something sellable.
    More fortunes have been lost betting on commodities not being found than any other way.

    As prices rise, more deposits become economic.
    And there's a huge amount of known, unexploited lithium reserves.
    As an example, the US probably one of the world's largest known extractable deposit, and they haven't yet even started mining it.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker_Pass_Lithium_Mine

    Interestingly, ARPA-E, the US energy technology equivalent of DARPA is funding a few projects for innovative mining technology, in the hope of reviving US mining which has been undercut in recent years by low cost producers like China.
    What happens when the lithium runs out?
    Lithium isn't going to run out, there's loads. There was a price spike when batteries were selling much faster than people had expected and lithium production couldn't ramp up fast enough, but then it caught up and the price came back down.

    Social media has a bias to bad news, doomers and Russian propaganda so lots of people saw the graph of the price going up a lot, but hardly anyone saw the graph of it going back down. So this survives as a zombie talking point.
    https://www.dailymetalprice.com/metalpricecharts.php?c=li&u=kg&d=240
    Once again

    1) Rare earths aren’t rare
    2) They aren’t earths
    3) Lithium isn’t a rare earth
    4) Lithium a very, very common element
    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/29/a-worldwide-lithium-shortage-could-come-as-soon-as-2025.html
    Like we're saying, Lithium isn't going to run out. Last year the analyst they quote thought production would be too low around 2030. They may or may not still believe that now. But they say "We believe there will eventually be enough lithium to support the demands of electrification"
    It's a finite resource!
    So is oxygen, but we’d struggle to get through it all.
    Oxygen is continuously produced during photosynthesis. Lithium isn't...
    Oxygen isn’t continuously produced. It is recycled. That is why the amount of it in the air is quite stable.
    But Lithium is finite, like coal...
    And Oxygen is finite. There are only just so many atoms of it on the planet. Not making more here….
    Whenever I'm considering a steak with blue cheese sauce, I console myself with the idea that it's basically the same atoms as salad.
    And wine is grape juice, therefore one of your "5 a day". Indeed a whole bottle ticks the entire box.
    And an entire box of wine an evening and you're basically immortal.
    Or at least likely to meet the immortals...
This discussion has been closed.