[grecy]

Given how rapidly the price of batteries and solar are falling, it seems absurd to think it will make any economic sense to spend tens of billions of dollars on a monster fusion plant.

China are churning out regular old fission plants, and have 27 under construction right now. Even still, the average build time is 7 years.

So even if we get some breakthrough and figure out how to build a commercial fusion plant, it's a certainty it won't be up and running for something like 10-15 years. Solar and batteries will be so cheap there won't be any discussions.

[cubefox]

> Given how rapidly the price of batteries and solar are falling

Battery prices are pretty stable, which is huge problem for wind and solar energy.

[olddustytrail]

That's just so bizarrely wrong I don't even know where it came from.

The price of batteries has declined by 97% in the last three decades: https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline

[cubefox]

This article is outdated. The price has been relatively stable in the last ~4 years: https://assets.bbhub.io/professional/sites/24/fig1battery.pn...

Prices are decreasing much slower now. At this pace, large scale energy storage for replacing stable energy sources like coal and fission power plants is far out of reach.

[grecy]

> The price has been relatively stable in the last ~4 years

Your linked source shows the price in the last 4 years going from

cell: $128->$107

Pack: $55->$32

Real: $183->$139

So the price has dropped 25% in the last 4 years. That is NOT relatively stable by any definition.

[cubefox]

If you look at the beginning of the chart, the price decrease (from $780 to $258 in 2017) over the same four year period was 67%. And for 2023 it was only 24%. So progress has slowed a lot. In 2022 there was even a year-over-year price increase. That's bad news when you want to build massive energy storage systems that can replace power plants.

[grecy]

So what you're trying to say is - "In the past prices fell extremely fast, now they're falling just regular fast".