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We haven't invented commercial fusion power, so none; but theoretically that is how they would function. Solar and batteries are nice but they're not yet cost

We haven't invented commercial fusion power, so none; but theoretically that is how they would function. Solar and batteries are nice but they're not yet cost effective. They're getting better. But you can't just handwave away real problems from your armchair viewpoint and assume thats all fine.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
> We haven't invented commercial fusion power We don't have working fusion power, at all. > Solar and batteries are nice but they're not yet cost effective "Cost effective" is a judgement call, not physics. If I told you that the cost of coal-generated electricity was that your great-grandchildren would live in an impoverished and difficult world, you might not view that a particular cost-effective either, yet somehow that's the "standard" against which things are judged.
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  > We don't have working fusion power, at all. Sure we do. Look no further than this article. We can make it, but its not commercially viable. > "Cost effective" is a judgement call, not physics. If I told you that the cost of coal-generated electricity was that your great-grandchildren would live in an impoverished and difficult world, you might not view that a particular cost-effective either, yet somehow that's the "standard" against which things are judged. Ah yes, think of the children. Yes, coal is problematic, but the reality is that energy is expensive and we need a lot of it. If we tried to go full solar right now it would cost trillions of dollars, and the grid would still fail in the winter when heating is most important, and the economy would enter a massive depression as the cost of doing things gets both more expensive on average and extremely volatile. You say this is a judgement call, not physics, but then go on to just broadly make assumptions about all of the relevant facts. You're not the one being logical and fact based. You're the one observing, yes, we have a climate crisis, and thus assuming that a radical solution for which you have no particular understanding of the economic or infrastructure implications is the right one because it's at least different from what we have now. Renewables are good. They are getting cheaper. They're growing in capacity. And yet, I guarantee you, we cannot go full solar now. And I also guarantee that you do not have nearly sufficient of a view of the system dynamics to be making statements as bold as you are. This is hard. It's not just evil greedy coal mine operators ruining everything.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    > Sure we do. Look no further than this article. We can make it, but its not commercially viable. Q total is way below 1 (translation: it took far more energy to make the energy that was produced, than was produced). We do not have working fusion power, if "working fusion power" means "you get more out than you put in". As for the rest of this, I have no idea who you think you're replying to. Just one follow up, neverthless: > And yet, I guarantee you, we cannot go full solar now. The USA spent more than US$300M per day on the war in Afghanistan, for 20 years. I guarantee you that if "we wanted to go full solar" now, we could. US$2T buys you a lot of anything, including even today's vaguely clunky battery tech.
    - spywaregorilla 5y ago
      > Q total is way below 1 (translation: it took far more energy to make the energy that was produced, than was produced). We do not have working fusion power, if "working fusion power" means "you get more out than you put in". That's not what it means. Working means it works. Can you produce fusion power? Yes. Can you do so in a commercially viable way? No. Q is obviously a part of this. Uninteresting semantics. > The USA spent more than US$300M per day on the war in Afghanistan, for 20 years. I guarantee you that if "we wanted to go full solar" now, we could. US$2T buys you a lot of anything, including even today's vaguely clunky battery tech. And I'm telling you, no, we could not, because that's not how the world works. From many perspectives, including economics of how to actually acquire all these solar assets many of which are already being consumed as fast as produced and dependent on limited metals supply chains; land availability with reasonable transmission setups; grid capacity to absorb these new generation facilities on the transmission lines; power availability during non peak times; and the preposterous externalities of trying to rapidly undermine the global energy market.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        > Can you produce fusion power? Yes If it takes more than 1W of input power to produce 1W of power from fusion, then I'd say the answer is no. The distinction is not "commercially viable", it's "net energy production". We're not there yet (and are actually quite a lot way from it). > And I'm telling you, ... that US$2T is a lot of money, and that's just what we spent on 1 war. Yes, there would be complications and side effects and what have you. Money, in our system, combined with the other abilities of the federal government, can do a lot.
dymk 5y ago
> They're getting better. Solar is getting so much cheaper, at such a fast pace, that I really don't understand how one can disagree that it's the future of our energy grids. Installing solar is a no-brainer in some parts of the world now, and in the very near future (extrapolating from the last 10 years), it'll be every part of the world soon. What problems am I hand waving away? https://www.statista.com/chart/26085/price-per-megawatt-hour-of-electricity-by-source/ https://www.statista.com/chart/26085/price-per-megawatt-hour...
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  Solar is, without a doubt, a major part of future energy grids. But this chart is the levelized cost of energy. Its not the price at which you can get it. Energy demands are higher in winter. They are non trivial at night. The cost of energy might be low, but the price at which you can get it may be very high if not enough is available.
  - formvoltron 5y ago
    A lot of the "not available at night" argument can be solved with.... owning an EV. I use 6kWh / day. (not sure how! but that's what the power company says) A decent EV battery holds 20 kWh or more. Boom. There is my night time storage buffer.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      to be fair, you need more than the EV. Using your EV battery as a power source to feed into your main house/home wiring is not crazy complicated, but it's not just a plugin.
    - spywaregorilla 5y ago
      Average home uses 30kWh per day. And that's average. Winter is higher, and would be much much higher if we were trying to use electricity to heat homes instead natural gas. Where do you live? CA? You have a lot more sun and land than other areas. Building the generation capacity in your area might not help areas that actually need the power to the north and east. And what if you need your car to have full power? What if you're not a low needs residential unit but a hospital? Or a factory? What if you have a couple low sun days in a row? What if your city just does not have enough power in reserves and its very cold or very hot? Battery tech and solar is great, but its not the perfect solution.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

> We haven't invented commercial fusion power We don't have working fusion power, at all. > Solar and batteries are nice but they're not yet cost effective "Cost effective" is a judgement call, not physics. If I told you that the cost of coal-generated electricity was that your great-grandchildren would live in an impoverished and difficult world, you might not view that a particular cost-effective either, yet somehow that's the "standard" against which things are judged.

spywaregorilla 5y ago
> We don't have working fusion power, at all. Sure we do. Look no further than this article. We can make it, but its not commercially viable. > "Cost effective" is a judgement call, not physics. If I told you that the cost of coal-generated electricity was that your great-grandchildren would live in an impoverished and difficult world, you might not view that a particular cost-effective either, yet somehow that's the "standard" against which things are judged. Ah yes, think of the children. Yes, coal is problematic, but the reality is that energy is expensive and we need a lot of it. If we tried to go full solar right now it would cost trillions of dollars, and the grid would still fail in the winter when heating is most important, and the economy would enter a massive depression as the cost of doing things gets both more expensive on average and extremely volatile. You say this is a judgement call, not physics, but then go on to just broadly make assumptions about all of the relevant facts. You're not the one being logical and fact based. You're the one observing, yes, we have a climate crisis, and thus assuming that a radical solution for which you have no particular understanding of the economic or infrastructure implications is the right one because it's at least different from what we have now. Renewables are good. They are getting cheaper. They're growing in capacity. And yet, I guarantee you, we cannot go full solar now. And I also guarantee that you do not have nearly sufficient of a view of the system dynamics to be making statements as bold as you are. This is hard. It's not just evil greedy coal mine operators ruining everything.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  > Sure we do. Look no further than this article. We can make it, but its not commercially viable. Q total is way below 1 (translation: it took far more energy to make the energy that was produced, than was produced). We do not have working fusion power, if "working fusion power" means "you get more out than you put in". As for the rest of this, I have no idea who you think you're replying to. Just one follow up, neverthless: > And yet, I guarantee you, we cannot go full solar now. The USA spent more than US$300M per day on the war in Afghanistan, for 20 years. I guarantee you that if "we wanted to go full solar" now, we could. US$2T buys you a lot of anything, including even today's vaguely clunky battery tech.
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
    > Q total is way below 1 (translation: it took far more energy to make the energy that was produced, than was produced). We do not have working fusion power, if "working fusion power" means "you get more out than you put in". That's not what it means. Working means it works. Can you produce fusion power? Yes. Can you do so in a commercially viable way? No. Q is obviously a part of this. Uninteresting semantics. > The USA spent more than US$300M per day on the war in Afghanistan, for 20 years. I guarantee you that if "we wanted to go full solar" now, we could. US$2T buys you a lot of anything, including even today's vaguely clunky battery tech. And I'm telling you, no, we could not, because that's not how the world works. From many perspectives, including economics of how to actually acquire all these solar assets many of which are already being consumed as fast as produced and dependent on limited metals supply chains; land availability with reasonable transmission setups; grid capacity to absorb these new generation facilities on the transmission lines; power availability during non peak times; and the preposterous externalities of trying to rapidly undermine the global energy market.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      > Can you produce fusion power? Yes If it takes more than 1W of input power to produce 1W of power from fusion, then I'd say the answer is no. The distinction is not "commercially viable", it's "net energy production". We're not there yet (and are actually quite a lot way from it). > And I'm telling you, ... that US$2T is a lot of money, and that's just what we spent on 1 war. Yes, there would be complications and side effects and what have you. Money, in our system, combined with the other abilities of the federal government, can do a lot.

dymk 5y ago

> They're getting better. Solar is getting so much cheaper, at such a fast pace, that I really don't understand how one can disagree that it's the future of our energy grids. Installing solar is a no-brainer in some parts of the world now, and in the very near future (extrapolating from the last 10 years), it'll be every part of the world soon. What problems am I hand waving away? https://www.statista.com/chart/26085/price-per-megawatt-hour-of-electricity-by-source/ https://www.statista.com/chart/26085/price-per-megawatt-hour...

spywaregorilla 5y ago
Solar is, without a doubt, a major part of future energy grids. But this chart is the levelized cost of energy. Its not the price at which you can get it. Energy demands are higher in winter. They are non trivial at night. The cost of energy might be low, but the price at which you can get it may be very high if not enough is available.
- formvoltron 5y ago
  A lot of the "not available at night" argument can be solved with.... owning an EV. I use 6kWh / day. (not sure how! but that's what the power company says) A decent EV battery holds 20 kWh or more. Boom. There is my night time storage buffer.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    to be fair, you need more than the EV. Using your EV battery as a power source to feed into your main house/home wiring is not crazy complicated, but it's not just a plugin.
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
    Average home uses 30kWh per day. And that's average. Winter is higher, and would be much much higher if we were trying to use electricity to heat homes instead natural gas. Where do you live? CA? You have a lot more sun and land than other areas. Building the generation capacity in your area might not help areas that actually need the power to the north and east. And what if you need your car to have full power? What if you're not a low needs residential unit but a hospital? Or a factory? What if you have a couple low sun days in a row? What if your city just does not have enough power in reserves and its very cold or very hot? Battery tech and solar is great, but its not the perfect solution.