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by more_corn
724 days ago
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That’s funny.
My take is exactly the reverse. Solar power can 100% solve our energy needs today. It’s cost effective at the unit level. It works at scale. It decentralizes nicely.
Did I mention that it works?
Every home could have rooftop solar for less than it costs to produce centralized power plants. (I have rooftop solar and it cost significantly less than a new car now my power costs won’t go up for 20 years at which point the panels might need a refresh but that part of the system is the cheapest part) We could easily flip from subsidizing fossil fuels to subsidizing rooftop solar today and realize significant gains (higher roi by shifting the investment). If you spent one years investment in fusion and fossil fuel subsidies on deploying rooftop solar and grid scale batteries you’d change the energy story permanently.
Energy would suddenly be plentiful. Fossil fuels would permanently shift out of relevance.
Fission reactors would look like quaint and staggeringly expensive tools of a bygone age. And fusion which DOES NOT WORK. Would look even more like a silly dream.(We are no closer to fusion than we were 30 years ago.) Why the fuck are we still talking about fusion when we have something that works? |
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That said, we still need a grid to distribute electricity to places that consume more energy than roof space. Think apartment blocks, factories etc. And yes, a huge chunk of that load can still be supplied by grid-scale solar and wind etc.
Even with large-scale storage (another fruitful place to spent investment money) there's going to need to be peak-generation.
However you look at it, I don't think fusion will be the answer. Since fusion was first proposed and the landscape of requirements have shifted. By the time it's practical, it'll be solving a problem we dont have.
The science may lead to a working reactor. But no one will build it at scale because it simply won't solve the problem well have then.