[hunterpayne]

That's capacity, not generation. Getting through the accounting tricks that make renewables seem viable is a challenge. 1 watt of nuclear capacity is worth 1.5 watts of FF and 9 watts of renewables. That's because the amount of power from each type of plant is very different due to downtimes of generation. Nuclear runs all the time and refuels for a couple of days every 18 months (depending on the reactor). FF plants run most of the time by require 10x more maintenance downtime. Renewables only make power about 10% of the time. That's how they skew the numbers to make renewables seem viable when they produce a shockingly low amount of actual power. Oh, and if you use renewables for baseload you have to keep a spinning reserve which means they actually increase (not decrease) the amount of CO2 emitted per watt generated.

[MichaelNolan]

> That's capacity, not generation.

No that’s generation. It’s on page 49 of the report. Table 7d Part 1 “US Regional Electricity Generation” it’s measured in billions of kilowatt hours.

https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/pdf/steo_full.pdf

And if anyone is interested I have some of my own graphs on top of the EIA data to make it easier to read - https://eia.languagelatte.com/

[JumpCrisscross]

> That's capacity, not generation

Irrelevant. The question is what we're investing in. "The U.S" is "rushing to adopt...renewables."

> FF plants run most of the time

"CCGT capacity factor rose from 40% in 2008 to 57% in 2022" [1]. "In the western United States," meanwhile "the capacity value of PV plants can be in the range of 50% to 80%" [2].

> That's how they skew the numbers to make renewables seem viable when they produce a shockingly low amount of actual power

This is a report from Trump's EIA.

[1] https://www.publicpower.org/periodical/article/average-utili...

[2] https://docs.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/57582.pdf

[dalyons]

You should tell the folks overwhelming choosing to build and finance renewable power plants! They clearly missed this key point, they’ll surely be grateful you let them know that their renewable investments don’t make sense, and they should have picked nuclear due to it being cheaper overall