goodsam2

goodsam2 t1_j9tq9jn wrote

For me La Milpa > Panchito's but you can't beat Panchito's Wednesday $1.50 taco deal or whatever.

Also for me I don't love Panchito's lack of salsas that are not hot. La Milpa has guacamole, mild, salsa Verde , and Chipotle. If I'm driving 15 minutes for awesome tacos I want to taste them.

If it's little Mexico/Lalo's cheap tacos drenched it tapatio and a fresh thing of chips and salsa. That's good but a fundamentally different experience.

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goodsam2 t1_j9f7o4p wrote

To me I like having 4 full seasons without us being dumped on for winter or summer. Seems like my ideal climate has moved north somewhat but Virginia was pretty good for a couple of decent snows and didn't get as hot as it is further south.

Kind of in the middle temperature wise while experiencing it all. In New York their winters are absolutely brutal and in the summer the south is unbearable.

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goodsam2 t1_j8os6ff wrote

The problem is that electricity is a natural monopoly which means it will basically always be a monopoly so the options are since the cost is too much for their to be naturally competing wires to your house:

  1. have it be a state agency

  2. have it be a monopoly but heavily regulate it

  3. Have it be a Texas style market that guarantees access to the monopoly piece of the physical wires. Which has lead them to basically running out of energy how many times...

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goodsam2 t1_j8ormei wrote

Texas.

They have a market that guarantees access to the lines, but privatizes it otherwise.

That's why they keep having power outages the basic theory was that if you could provide power during a very cold time then you would make more money... Turns out the model doesn't work.

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goodsam2 t1_j7z6raw wrote

>And even still, you probably have natural gas turbines hanging around for a few decades for those low periods, but we use them less and less as we increase storage and over build our wind and solar installs.

That's not the 100% promised that I don't think we have answers to. We have answers for the next step for a decade+ but don't know the grid at 100% carbon free.

With geothermal like you mentioned in your other comment the math all works fine on top of already built hydro.

The study I always talks about 80% renewables with 12 hours of batteries (which is a shit ton) and 20% firm hydro, nuclear geothermal, biomass etc.

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goodsam2 t1_j7y3zot wrote

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-19/california-to-build-temporary-gas-plants-to-avoid-blackouts

The point is not maximum 100% is easy but 100% on the cloudy not windy days you need electricity. There is 0 downtime.

There is enough to continue to reduce consumption but there basically is not a 100% renewable grid. The natural gas would be run sporadically contributing around 10% of power on the low end.

Getting to 100% electricity is hard with renewables. I'm not disputing 60% or even up to like 80%, 90% is a little niche these days.

We have the technology to make massive improvements but not the answer to 100% renewable 0 down time.

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goodsam2 t1_j7xxl3x wrote

But that's the thing is that California has a bunch of natural gas peaked plants because it's hard to get over 70% renewable.

I mean double the solar panels and you are adding excess capacity at the wrong times. The duck curve is a thing so the marginal value added from a solar panel means getting over 80% is incredibly hard with batteries.

Having some amount of firm and dispatchable power is necessary unless our batteries improve an insane amount. Lithium ion isn't the best store of electricity over say 6 months when you are banking solar energy from the winter.

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goodsam2 t1_j7vx1ov wrote

Me too.

Yeah I mean some niche places are getting close to the upper end but renewables can get us rather far.

Yeah we have clear answers about what to add on the marginal short to medium term for decarbonization. Something like 60% renewable on average is the estimated floor I've seen and by the time we get closer to that we'll know what to do for the next part or at least yeah a better idea.

I think geothermal is a clear winner with improved drilling techniques. Leading to less obvious geothermal being added. IDK how far that goes but lots of places could add some.

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