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What I love about technology is that "real" high technology doesn't have mountains of transistors and actuators. It has lots of the most abundant materials the

What I love about technology is that "real" high technology doesn't have mountains of transistors and actuators. It has lots of the most abundant materials the planet has to offer. Soil, rock, sun, air. Technology harmonizes with all these things because if it didn't, there could never be enough of it to make any kind of difference. The amount of scale involved simply boggles the imagination. Grid-scale battery banks, that's something you would think was perfected back in the fifties or so. But the best we could come up with was pumped storage, and that's simply not an option everywhere. China can't have the same Industrial Revolution the West enjoyed. It has to figure out how to leapfrog past it simply because oil just isn't what it was in the 1900s. Africa is going to have to leapfrog past what China does. We look at cars and computers and think that technology is always going to get more sophisticated, harder for the average joe to work on. But the pendulum is swinging in the other direction now. We are going to have to value things like repairability and durability, aspects that are meaningless inside tech bubbles, simply because when one of your 500lb batteries breaks, you can't exactly get another 500lb battery out there. You have to fix it. Swap it out for a spare, sure, but you need to be able to repair it to return it to the pool.

bhnmmhmd 9y ago
I agree. Sometimes I review what 70s or 80s were like: lots of folks who were interested in electronics and computers essentially built the very first personal computers and software. Now, can we expect some new technology to be invented by these kinds of enthusiasts these days? I don't think so. Technology has become too sophisticated and complex that no single mind can comprehend it, let alone coming up with a better version of it. Those batteries you mentioned, they most probably will just be replaceable, not fixable by average Joe.
- vinceguidry 9y ago
  If they're only replaceable, then eventually nobody's going to buy them. So many people I know won't buy electric vehicles because they're worried about what's going to happen when the battery goes bad. Individuals think on one scale, organizations think on another. Individuals can't plan for a lot of things, how many people do you know save up to get their tires replaced? I bet not many. But organizations can work that sort of thing into operational plans and pay people to keep up maintenance schedules. But all of that breaks down when you're talking about long distances. The cost of shipping out a brand new tractor is going to so dwarf any kind of repair that even at the organizational level, the company that farmers pay to provide equipment is going to demand that tractors be serviceable.
wonderbear 9y ago
> China can't have the same Industrial Revolution the West enjoyed. It has to figure out how to leapfrog past it simply because oil just isn't what it was in the 1900s. Africa is going to have to leapfrog past what China does. Besides accessible space travel, one of the things I most regret not being immortal for is that I don't expect to live to see how/if any nation on the African continent pulls that off.
- pjc50 9y ago
  It's easier to go to Africa than space (apologies for clickbait site but it's a reasonable summary): http://www.upworthy.com/11-awe-inspiring-african-cities-that-are-changing-the-face-of-urban-living-in-the-future http://www.upworthy.com/11-awe-inspiring-african-cities-that... The future is not at all evenly distributed, and Africa still doesn't really have too many export industries that don't rely on resource extraction, but it's definitely happening at the moment. It's just really under-reported.
sliverstorm 9y ago
Look to corporations or government, 50,000lb batteries would be repaired mostly because at massive scales it's cheaper. Think of, for example, the Navy stripping & rebuilding entire ships. They could have made a new hull, but a huge crew of workers is cheaper. The main reason consumer stuff is not repaired, I've decided, is the scale is so small that the savings, too, are so small they vanish.
dreamcompiler 9y ago
> Grid-scale battery banks, that's something you would think was perfected back in the fifties or so. Until very recently (and maybe even now) the electric utilities spent less on R&D than the dog food industry [0]. Because they didn't need to. There was virtually no need for storage before PV became cheap and fossil fuel became expensive and the regulated monopolies had to start thinking about competition from renewables. Although most of them still haven't recognized this. [0] https://thebreakthrough.org/archive/dog_food_beats_energy https://thebreakthrough.org/archive/dog_food_beats_energy
- tfolbrecht 9y ago
  > R&D spending of Vertically integrated companies v. Utilities? For Energy related R&D See: GE, Siemens, BP, Shell, Exxonmobile, not the local gas station. >> Grid-scale battery banks, that's something you would think was perfected back in the fifties or so. When you can scale energy production on demand with knobs and levers, why? Here and now: When do renewables create an excess of energy so great that the baseload power sources can't be scaled back to balance it and greater after that to warrant the infrastructure and efficiency penalty of batteries?
- cardiffspaceman 9y ago
  And yet pumped storage has been on line for decades. According to this brief reference [1] Castaic Lake in the LA DWP system has been doing pumped storage since 1972. [1] http://globalenergyobservatory.org/geoid/282 http://globalenergyobservatory.org/geoid/282
  - dreamcompiler 9y ago
    True. Peaking load was one of the few reasons (maybe the only reason) for storage before renewables. Pumped hydro was just about the only option. It works great as long as you have an elevated lake nearby.

bhnmmhmd 9y ago

I agree. Sometimes I review what 70s or 80s were like: lots of folks who were interested in electronics and computers essentially built the very first personal computers and software. Now, can we expect some new technology to be invented by these kinds of enthusiasts these days? I don't think so. Technology has become too sophisticated and complex that no single mind can comprehend it, let alone coming up with a better version of it. Those batteries you mentioned, they most probably will just be replaceable, not fixable by average Joe.

vinceguidry 9y ago
If they're only replaceable, then eventually nobody's going to buy them. So many people I know won't buy electric vehicles because they're worried about what's going to happen when the battery goes bad. Individuals think on one scale, organizations think on another. Individuals can't plan for a lot of things, how many people do you know save up to get their tires replaced? I bet not many. But organizations can work that sort of thing into operational plans and pay people to keep up maintenance schedules. But all of that breaks down when you're talking about long distances. The cost of shipping out a brand new tractor is going to so dwarf any kind of repair that even at the organizational level, the company that farmers pay to provide equipment is going to demand that tractors be serviceable.

wonderbear 9y ago

> China can't have the same Industrial Revolution the West enjoyed. It has to figure out how to leapfrog past it simply because oil just isn't what it was in the 1900s. Africa is going to have to leapfrog past what China does. Besides accessible space travel, one of the things I most regret not being immortal for is that I don't expect to live to see how/if any nation on the African continent pulls that off.

pjc50 9y ago
It's easier to go to Africa than space (apologies for clickbait site but it's a reasonable summary): http://www.upworthy.com/11-awe-inspiring-african-cities-that-are-changing-the-face-of-urban-living-in-the-future http://www.upworthy.com/11-awe-inspiring-african-cities-that... The future is not at all evenly distributed, and Africa still doesn't really have too many export industries that don't rely on resource extraction, but it's definitely happening at the moment. It's just really under-reported.

sliverstorm 9y ago

Look to corporations or government, 50,000lb batteries would be repaired mostly because at massive scales it's cheaper. Think of, for example, the Navy stripping & rebuilding entire ships. They could have made a new hull, but a huge crew of workers is cheaper. The main reason consumer stuff is not repaired, I've decided, is the scale is so small that the savings, too, are so small they vanish.

dreamcompiler 9y ago

> Grid-scale battery banks, that's something you would think was perfected back in the fifties or so. Until very recently (and maybe even now) the electric utilities spent less on R&D than the dog food industry [0]. Because they didn't need to. There was virtually no need for storage before PV became cheap and fossil fuel became expensive and the regulated monopolies had to start thinking about competition from renewables. Although most of them still haven't recognized this. [0] https://thebreakthrough.org/archive/dog_food_beats_energy https://thebreakthrough.org/archive/dog_food_beats_energy

tfolbrecht 9y ago
> R&D spending of Vertically integrated companies v. Utilities? For Energy related R&D See: GE, Siemens, BP, Shell, Exxonmobile, not the local gas station. >> Grid-scale battery banks, that's something you would think was perfected back in the fifties or so. When you can scale energy production on demand with knobs and levers, why? Here and now: When do renewables create an excess of energy so great that the baseload power sources can't be scaled back to balance it and greater after that to warrant the infrastructure and efficiency penalty of batteries?
cardiffspaceman 9y ago
And yet pumped storage has been on line for decades. According to this brief reference [1] Castaic Lake in the LA DWP system has been doing pumped storage since 1972. [1] http://globalenergyobservatory.org/geoid/282 http://globalenergyobservatory.org/geoid/282
- dreamcompiler 9y ago
  True. Peaking load was one of the few reasons (maybe the only reason) for storage before renewables. Pumped hydro was just about the only option. It works great as long as you have an elevated lake nearby.