[choilive]

Luckily about 50% of the Earth is lit up by the sun at any moment and energy storage capabilities are advancing much faster than fusion's capabilities are.

Distribution and storage are way more tractable problems than fusion.

If you want to be really ambitious you can go to space and have 100% capacity :).

[okanat]

Unless you colonize it, you cannot utilize 50% of the Earth's energy. If it proven anything, what the war in Ukraine showed us is how terrible of an idea to outsource energy, especially to nations who don't share interests with us.

[janalsncm]

It would be interesting if there was a global grid and market for (hopefully clean) energy so that a joule of energy could be sold anywhere instantaneously, just like any other commodity. This would allow countries to quickly power up without even building a power plant. It would also allow large base load power stations (like nuclear) to have permanent demand.

Of course there are technical challenges of building out UHVDC everywhere. This probably means a joule isn’t perfectly fungible.

Perhaps Europe’s problem was being overly reliant on only one supplier.

[IMTDb]

A global and free market for electricity means that African citizens are going to have to outbid bitcoin miners and ai trainers for electricity.

I would much rather see a world where governments are at least partially in charge of the grid to ensure that their population gets their share of the capacity.

[npoc]

It will be almost impossible to not outbid bitcoin miners for electricity due to the fact that mining is a non-geographically constrained free market where miners are not profitable unless their electricity cost is very close to zero (i.e. otherwise wasted energy). As soon as there's other demand for the same energy, bitcoin mining will instantly become unprofitable in that area and they will need to relocate.

[BobaFloutist]

Well they didn't say a free market. I would certainly hope for some treaties making sure everyone gets a baseline before extras get put up to bid.

[metadat]

This is a nice fantasy, but you still need the infrastructure to efficiently transmit said energy.

[Larrikin]

Needing the sun for energy and improving solar panel feels like trying to make the best ICE engine ten years ago or working on an expert system for AI in the 90s. There are obvious immediate gains in the short term, but research has shown there is something else better out there and its best if someone is doing the R&D now so we can get a leap frog moment eventually.

[bruce511]

Improving solar panels might be nice, but the panels themselves are a cheap part of the system. And the big gains have already been made.

Solar panels are now being produced and install at gigawatt scale. Per year. (Over 400gw per year, and climbing). Capital is being supplied by individuals (rooftop) and companies (utilities).

I'm not sure what leap-frog tech you have in mind, but its not fusion.

In the 60s fusion was touted as "free energy for all". But fusion is very (very) much not "free". The cost of a fusion plant will make your eyes water. The lead-time to build it will be measured in years. The output from one plant won't move the needle (we'd need hundreds of them). Electricity from these plants will be expensive, because at the very least it'll need to generate a return to the investors. And that's before we factor in running costs which (I guess) won't be cheap.

The problem with fusion is not physics, it's economics. As long as we present fusion as a physics problem interest remains. Because once we view it as an economics problem it dies overnight.