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Power

India Hydropower Output Records Steepest Fall In Nearly Four Decades (reuters.com) 69

Posted by BeauHD from the supply-and-demand dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: India's hydroelectricity output fell at the steepest pace in at least 38 years during the year ended March 31, a Reuters analysis of government data showed, as erratic rainfall forced further dependence on coal-fired power amid higher demand. The 16.3% drop in generation from the country's biggest clean energy source coincided with the share of renewables in power generation sliding for the first time since Prime Minister Narendra Modi made commitments to boost solar and wind capacity at the United Nations climate talks at Paris in 2015.

Renewables accounted for 11.7% of India's power output in the year that ended in March, down from 11.8% a year earlier, a Reuters analysis of daily load despatch data from the federal grid regulator Grid-India showed. India is the world's third-largest greenhouse gas emitter, and the government often points to lower per-capita emissions compared to developed nations to defend rising coal use. A five-year low in reservoir levels means hydro output will likely remain low during the hottest months of April-June, experts say, potentially boosting dependence on coal during a period of high demand before the monsoon starts in June. [...]

Globally, hydropower output fell for only the fourth time since 2000 due to lower rainfall and warmer temperature brought about by the El Nino weather pattern, according to energy think tank Ember. Hydro output in India, the sixth-biggest hydropower producer, fell nearly seven times faster than the global average, Ember data showed.
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India Hydropower Output Records Steepest Fall In Nearly Four Decades More

India Hydropower Output Records Steepest Fall In Nearly Four Decades

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  • Solar and nuclear (Score:5, Insightful)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Tuesday April 02, 2024 @12:50AM (#64362944)

    The only types of energy we should have. Fossil fuel is bad because it makes religious psychos rich. Forget climate change, oil makes uneducated religious crazy people disproportionately rich, that's fucking dangerous. We need to double down on solar manufacturing and nuclear ASAP. Like full speed, Manhattan project level. Make fully automated solar panel factories .. sand and iron ore in one end and solar panels out the other.

    • Re:Solar and nuclear (Score:4, Insightful)

      by bubblyceiling ( 7940768 ) on Tuesday April 02, 2024 @01:22AM (#64362974)
      Nuclear is a stop gap, until renewables pick up, but is not a solution. High maintenance costs, high constructions costs, disposal of spent fuel, collateral damage incase of failure, are just some of the issues with nuclear. Not to mention that the industry is monopolized by a few small players, which is the same problem as with fossil fuels

      • Re:Solar and nuclear (Score:5, Insightful)

        by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Tuesday April 02, 2024 @06:39AM (#64363252)

        You have this backwards. Nuclear can't be a stopgap because it's simply not possible to build in a reasonable timeframe in which it were effective. Nuclear is a *long term* solution, but one that has an incredibly high cost. Gas is a stopgap. Solar and Wind are intermittent, pumped hydro takes forever to build, battery storage lacks manufacturing capacity.

        One interesting other one is ammonia cracking. Building out excess green energy, using the excess to generate hydrogen and storing it as ammonia in a tank to be cracked or even fed directly into turbines to provide power while the sun doesn't shine. But honestly the complexity alone here is holding it back, plus the technology isn't proven so it suffers the same problem as nuclear: timing.

        • Re:Solar and nuclear (Score:5, Interesting)

          by ghoul ( 157158 ) on Tuesday April 02, 2024 @08:27AM (#64363422)
          Gas is looking to be even worse then coal for global warming if you consider the greenhouse effects of leaked methane from gas plants. There was a debate here on /. a few days back and I was schooled by people on how methane is worse than CO2. So if we consider that, its better to keep burning coal than setup natural gas plants.

          Nuclear can be built cheaply and safely. You just need to get out of paranoia mode. You build small pebble bed reactors . You dont try to reprocess or refuel. You treat them like batteries. Have a few spread across a large city with local grids. When you are done, dump them in the Mariana trench and replace with a new one. Make them using Thorium so the Uranium they produce is too poisoned to use to build nukes. Thorium is lot more abundant than Uranium.

          If you are really serious about fighting climate change you need to make sacrifices somewhere else so the deep sea makes the sacrifice

          Regarding Ammonia many companies are working on NH3 based FCEVs. These will have smaller batteries than BEVs requiring less mining, similar refueling speed to gas vehicles and an existing infrastructure for transporting NH3 as well as more efficient than simply burning the NH3 in a combustion engine. NH3 is a good transition fuel as we can make it right now using natural gas but can make it in the future using electricity.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            First thing to do with nuclear, which involves zero technology, is to publicly recognize and excoriate the nonsensical LNT model which is the source of radiation hysteria. (also for the regulators using it.) At modest levels, even sunlight is more of a concern; it takes quite a high rate of exposure to do real harm, which is easily monitored for and protected against. Even with our antiquated technology, nuclear was built cheaply and safely, and MSRs could drop costs much further and essentially eliminate a

          • No doubt, nuclear can be built safely and cheaply. Despite so pretty obvious mishaps, it has being doing pretty well on "safely" in recent years. But cheaply, no, no one has ever shown that. It might happen in the future. It might not.

          • Gas is looking to be even worse then coal for global warming if you consider the greenhouse effects of leaked methane from gas plants. There was a debate here on /. a few days back and I was schooled by people on how methane is worse than CO2. So if we consider that, its better to keep burning coal than setup natural gas plants.

            Yes I was one of the ones who schooled you. Methane doesn't leak from gas plants (at least properly run ones). Think about it, why would you waste your primary product, your main expense in running a facility on useless emissions. The main methane gas problem arises from production, and that is largely in cases where gas isn't a primary product. All those methane hotspots you seen on global maps in stories we've covered, they are *oil* producing plants. Gas plants both production and consumption leak compar

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by ghoul ( 157158 )
              What you missed is that the coal plants are already built. Their carbon emissions of building are already emitted. Keeping an existing coal plant going with electrostatic chimneys just emits CO2. Building a new gas plant as a clean stopgap till renewables scale up just increases emissions in the short term.

              So Short term keep the existing coal plants going. Dont build new gas plants. Medium term build some nuclear plants to replace when the coal plants reach extended end of life. Long term renewables scal

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by ghoul ( 157158 )
              The whole point of using new "non-established" methods is that the existing methods have failed economically. All of the existing nuclear plants have been built at scales where a single meltdown can take out an entire region so they are overengineered. Building small plants means they get built soon enough to make a difference with the climate crisis. When they are small enough that a single meltdown can take out a neighborhood not a city, the amount of safety measures go way down reducing cost. We dont bui

          • Dude, I am a full nuclear kind of person and yet even I had to pause at this claim:

            Nuclear can be built cheaply and safely.

            An argument loses credibility when such sweeping generalizations are made; especially, when they are very arguable. Choose another tack to argue down.

        • Rolling blackouts is the stop gap when nobody takes infrastructure planning seriously.

          • People do take infrastructure planning seriously in America. "The Market will result in an optimal solution" is a plan, and it's worked faultlessly so far.

        • pumped hydro takes forever to build,

          More importantly, the number of potential sites are strongly limited, and also strongly concentrated (got less than 100m of relief in your area - you're not going to get any pumped storage ; got more than 500m of relief and you've probably got plenty of sites - but few roads to the sites). Which means even more strain on electrical transmission infrastructure.

          "forever to build" - well, we've built a second in Scotland in the last few years, and only a few howls of prote

        • Nuclear is a *long term* solution, but one that has an incredibly high cost.

          And how much of this cost is eaten up by the construction company working its way through a complex, byzantine legal process (I repeat myself here, of course.) just to get the permits and other approvals needed, not to mention the mass of frivolous NIMBY lawsuits by Luddites, Greens and local inhabitants who don't want to live near a nuclear facility no matter how safe it is?

          And, in the US at least, every reactor has to be desi

          • And how much of this cost is eaten up by the construction company working its way through a complex, byzantine legal process

            Very little. Like really very very little. I used to work in the nuclear industry. The regulatory overhead is huge, but it's not legal or NIMBY overhead, it's overhead of the industry's own making. Nuclear has an excellent safety record largely due to the expense of making it safe. But in any case people who think that it's all just paperwork really ignore the incredible complexity of a nuclear plant. The foundational structure is insanely difficult to build. Materials need high level of quality control. Co

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Renewables will NEVER be able to supply the constant and sheer amount of power that nuclear can.

        Modern reactor designs don't leave much waste. Much less than alternative energy. Maintenance is massively less expensive than solar, wind, hydroelectric, etc.

        Construction cost, agree but energy is simply getting more expensive no matter how you go about it.

        Collateral damage? FUD

        • Considering these two things: sheer amount of power, well, that is wrong. In the UK as a whole, wind alone now surpasses nuclear and that it is from a standard start 15 or 20 years ago. Constant power is correct, but first renewables do not need to provide constant power, the whole grid does and second, we don't want constant power anyway; we want it when we need it. Nuclear provides that as poorly as renewables, if for the opposite reason.

          And, the last point, energy is getting more expensive is clearly wro

    • Nuclear costs so much in 2024that it makes zero sense to build new nuclear generation.
      Each kWh costs about 4x more than any other source. The only valid use cases for nuclear is to build bombs or to maintain some high paid cartel jobs in a very corrupt industry.

      • Wind is no good .. the perception is that it alters the weather .. it's not worth fighting that unnecessary battle with the 5G chemtrail anti-vaxxers. Plus wind patterns change so it's unreliable. Hydro .. well we're commenting on an article that shows exactly why that's not good either. Solar is the best, it can be distributed all over. Doesn't need large central power plants .. though that's possible too. Solar is the best and nuclear is second. If nuclear is not second, the wind and hydro are not good ei

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by stooo ( 2202012 )

          >> Wind is no good ..
          The industry does not care your subjective impressions, but scale and economics.
          Solar overtakes Nuclear in 2 Years, Wind in 5 Years.
          https://cdn.aiidatapro.net/med... [aiidatapro.net]

          • Solar isn't going to do anything between sunset and sunrise. Total power generation of solar may take over everything, but that doesn't mean much for an intermittent source without storage.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by stooo ( 2202012 )

              I strongly disagree with that statement.
              Even without storage, a very strong solar will huge mean excess solar in the day, shutting everything else down, and influence prices, (and thus consumption) extremely.
              When generators previously considered "baseload" are forced to shutdown 8h per day, they get 50% more expensive due to their fixed costs.

              • Sure, the lowest price of energy in a day may be set by abundant solar, but it's incorrect and incomplete to compare only to that lowest price.

        • Fighting 5G chemtrail anti-vaxers? They pose less of a threat than a toddler in a fight.

          It is generally easy to ignore unhinged people who are typically disorganized in both thoughts and action. What consequences can there really be from a finge group that does little more than moan online?

          • They pose less of a threat than a toddler in a fight.

            ... until they exercise their "Second Amendment" rights and start expressing their opinions at 10 rounds/second.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Wind, especially offshore, is a great option too.

      I doubt we can do much to speed up commercial nuclear deployment, at least not without massively compromising safety. And even if we could, we would be setting ourselves up for some severe pain. The next time one melts down, large numbers of them get taken offline, investment dries up... The risk is too great, but fortunately it's not one we need to take.

  • Climate change is causing weather fluctuations all over the world, which is impacting things downstream.

  • Actually, we've never stopped in the first place...

    • Back to phasing out shoveling coal. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by stooo ( 2202012 ) on Tuesday April 02, 2024 @02:45AM (#64363030) Homepage

      Many countries are slowly exiting coal.
      The USA also.

    • Coal is stupid. You see how Dubai, with all its oil money, is building random and useless shit at a crazy pace with cheap African and south asian labor? Why can't we get in on that? We have millions of illegal immigrants .. why can't we tell them to work sub-minimum wage building us solar panel factories for 10 years in exchange for a pathway to citizenship? Think of it like an 10-year long internship. It's more humane than deportation, plus they are free to leave. Dubai pays most of its migrant workers $20

      • I might even think about adding a stick to your carrot. Go a step further and put any illegal immigrant working at a non-sanctioned job in prison for five years, right next to whoever hired them. Give the employer an extra year or two for cheating taxpayers and competitors.

        • Fully enforcing I9 violations with jail time for employers would end 99% of illegal immigration.

          • Fully enforcing I9 violations with jail time for employers would end 99% of illegal immigration.

            But Texas will never do that. Their economy would collapse if their businesses stopped using illegal immigrants. This is why you don't hear Abbott crowing about raids on businesses which knowingly hire illegals.

            Hans Kristian Graebener = StoneToss

            • No one would do that. I9 is a federal program anyway. Texas has nothing to do with it.

              The IRS is perfectly aware of SSNs being shared by as many as (in some extreme cases) thousands of people and no one cares.

              We have programs to allow seasonal worker visas that have been in place forever. Farm workers is not the issue.

              • Texas has no problem ignoring federal law when it feels like it, or thinking it has superiority over federal law. There is no reason they couldn't use the I9 program as a bludgeon against businesses.

                Further, it's not just farm workers. Hotels, golf courses, restaurants, construction, landscaping, meat packing, and house cleaning are regular users of illegal immigrants. This is why construction sites in Florida were abandoned last year [newsweek.com] when DeSantis upped the ante. His state, like Texas, would collapse [usatoday.com] if

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by ghoul ( 157158 )
                If thousands of people are sharing SSNs is the IRS taxing them at the highest marginal rate? Because with all the W2s piled up that hypotherical taxpayer is making millions.... And all of these people have SS deducted at source and will never see a dime of it. Without this SS would have collapsed long time back.
                • Tax withholding is by income per year per employer as computed per employer. As no tax return is filed on said SSN, the US tresury is filled will illegally earned dollars, nobody looks to hard to return these dollars to the taxpayer.

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by ghoul ( 157158 )
                    Just imagine how soon SS will go bankrupt if these people are provided a route to legalization.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by DarkOx ( 621550 )

          Yeah great there; America needs more unproductive mouths to feed...

          illegal immigrants should be deported, people who employ them should be assessed for the cost of that repatriation, and imprisoned for a period of not less than then the period they had illegal immigrants in their employ.

          • If they work for ten years that's proof they’re not unproductive. It's not likely that they would work for ten years and then decide they want to go on welfare. Also productivity is not zero-sum, so they won't be added mouths to feed because larger and more productive farms will be possible. More workers means more goods and services available for everyone.

      • Great idea! We can make really good use of a powerless underclass, using them for cheap labor on an official government mandated basis. All we have to do is change all that silly shit in the constitution about rights and slavery and we're good!

        Brilliant idea, bro. Tell us more!

        Maybe we can directly import people from Africa in the holds of ships to weed out the weaklings.

        • Huh? This isn't slavery, no constitutional change is needed. Go get yourself a dictionary. I'm not proposing anything involuntary. You think that deporting them to live in worse conditions is better for them and more humane? This is offering them a path to earn citizenship. A person is starving, and I'm offering them bread and you're saying if I don't give them cake I shouldn't give them anything at all and let them starve instead? That seems humanitarian in your mind?

      • A work visa program would be even easier to do and you wouldn't even have to offer green cards, let alone citizenship.

        But labor cost isn't the barrier to turning things around here. It is a lack of will. Nobody can agree to how to handle our nations problems. From climate change, to infrastructure, to society. We are tied up in knots arguing over petty partisan scorekeeping rather than the legitimate issues of the day.

  • Indian rivers 'clean'? (Score:5, Informative)

    by usedtobestine ( 7476084 ) on Tuesday April 02, 2024 @08:39AM (#64363460)

    What stoned environmentalist wrote that blather? There aren't any waterways in India that are clean. They may not catch fire as the Cuyahoga river has, but to claim they are clean is ridiculous.

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