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Three things are killing it: It is exponentially harder to finance a few huge super costly projects than loads of small ones. It has a high "PITA factor." Tha
by api 9y ago
Three things are killing it:
It is exponentially harder to finance a few huge super costly projects than loads of small ones.
It has a high "PITA factor." That stands for pain in the you know what. A high PITA factor means there is a very long tail of non obvious problems that compound and multiply. It looks much better on paper than in real life because on paper that stuff doesn't show up.
An exponential is now in place for solar and storage. It would not surprise me if almost all energy outside aviation and a few heavy industry applications is solar and batteries by 2050.
- wbl 9y agoIt would surprise me. Battery chemistry has already tried everything on the periodic table together, and storage remains expensive. Right now more solar leads to more natural gas to cover loads when the sun doesn't shine. Load shifting can only go so far.
- Jeff_Brown 9y ago> already tried everything on the periodic table together Shall we consider the size of the space to explore? If n is the number of elements, at first blush it's n*2. But there are compounds -- more than nine million organic compounds alone. Electrical and temperature treatments can have different effects -- and those are functional spaces, you don't just choose a current, you vary the current over time. Simple positioning can have an effect: rotate one surface relative to another and it can behave totally differently. Wafers behave differently than strings, which behave differently than spheres and crystals, which behave differently than dust ... If there was a race between our exploring the entire chemical space and colonizing the universe, I would not know which to bet on.