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Here is a question I have: if we had basic science pushing battery and solar and wind tech in the 1960s, how far would we have gone in effective alt energy on t

Here is a question I have: if we had basic science pushing battery and solar and wind tech in the 1960s, how far would we have gone in effective alt energy on the grid that far back? Wind certainly would have been effective, it's just electric motors and windmills. But how much of 1960s tech would have enabled LFP/Lithium Ion densities and the various solar cell efficiencies? I get that silicon cells are reliant on fab technology, but perovskites and others?

blihp 5y ago
We would likely have gotten a lot farther, a lot sooner. It's not so much that the tech was advanced back then or directly transferable to what we have today, it wasn't and isn't. But we spent decades with individuals and small companies basically operating in the wilderness due to lack of funding and demand to advance the state of the art faster. Had the funding existed back then it's entirely possible that there would have been developments in directions (out of necessity) that no one is even thinking about today.
- kryptiskt 5y ago
  Solar panels have had customers with deep pockets and need for good performance for space applications since the beginning. Of course, the deep pockets and low volumes meant that they wouldn't be optimized for cost.
  - blihp 5y ago
    Sure, but the orders of magnitude of investment and resulting rate of progress aren't comparable.[1] Understanding the world/existence can't compete with cat pictures and blowing stuff up in video games. The consumer market makes government spending look feeble and comical in comparison. While the industry has been more or less bounded by metrics like Moore's Law over the decades, exploding volumes dramatically altered the price/performance delivered. [1] I'm only talking about the raw price/performance of the capabilities delivered and not the societal value of the respective results.

blihp 5y ago

We would likely have gotten a lot farther, a lot sooner. It's not so much that the tech was advanced back then or directly transferable to what we have today, it wasn't and isn't. But we spent decades with individuals and small companies basically operating in the wilderness due to lack of funding and demand to advance the state of the art faster. Had the funding existed back then it's entirely possible that there would have been developments in directions (out of necessity) that no one is even thinking about today.

kryptiskt 5y ago
Solar panels have had customers with deep pockets and need for good performance for space applications since the beginning. Of course, the deep pockets and low volumes meant that they wouldn't be optimized for cost.
- blihp 5y ago
  Sure, but the orders of magnitude of investment and resulting rate of progress aren't comparable.[1] Understanding the world/existence can't compete with cat pictures and blowing stuff up in video games. The consumer market makes government spending look feeble and comical in comparison. While the industry has been more or less bounded by metrics like Moore's Law over the decades, exploding volumes dramatically altered the price/performance delivered. [1] I'm only talking about the raw price/performance of the capabilities delivered and not the societal value of the respective results.