4 ms·

> But we're quite far away from that How do you know? I'm an optimist and I think this is true, but what makes you certain this is true and we're not gonna hit

> But we're quite far away from that How do you know? I'm an optimist and I think this is true, but what makes you certain this is true and we're not gonna hit a wall soon?

locallost 2y ago
What are the obstacles? The only one I can think of is lobbying and politics, e.g. there was a report recently that Trump is selling favors to the fossil fuel industry - a cool billion now for future privileges when he's in the office. I think that's a real possibility, but my view on that is that this will just shoot his own country in the foot. The first one now will later be last - if you hop on the wrong train you'll be going nowhere. Technically I think the biggest advantage is that it's mostly trivial to install and maintain. There's probably a fair deal of complexity in the technology, but it's all contained in a module, it's plug and play. Beta didn't lose to VHS because it was a lesser format. Worse is better. This keeps projects on time and budget, it makes people invest further in it, capacity grows and the prices keep plummeting. This attracts more people into it, rinse repeat. It causes investments to grow in complementary technology and we are seeing that now with batteries and other forms of storage. There is already now a growing panel recycling industry, etc.
- jltsiren 2y ago
  The biggest obstacle is the lack of demand for intermittent power. Most countries that take renewable energy seriously have already reached the point, where the construction of new solar/wind depends on investments that can take advantage of it. Exponential growth is somewhere in the past, and further growth depends on the normal pace of industrial investments.
  - locallost 2y ago
    And yet those countries led the way in the record shattering 2023. Even if you look within the EU there are big differences between the countries, where some like Poland got serious about it less than 10 years ago. They will continue to grow rapidly. Take a look at outside of developed countries and you will see the rest of the world is still far behind, so there's still a huge untapped market. People follow what other people do. There are other factors too (battery prices going down, electrification etc).
jillesvangurp 2y ago
I'm just looking at the untapped potential in terms of R&D pipelines of various companies out there. Gazillions of battery, solar, etc. innovations in various stages of progress and coming to market. The only way I see this ending soon is if somehow all of those researchers are going to hit a brick wall and all progress stops. Even if that happens, it would take a while for growth to stop. But realistically, R&D is going to continue to work fine for quite some time and will be continuing to deliver the goods. Specifically, I'm expecting within the next 2 decades or so - further reductions in cost of solar energy generation. It's already cheap but another few cost halvings won't hurt. I'm thinking 0.001 dollar per kwh cost levels. About 1 order of magnitude less than today. - increases in battery capacities over time from ~0.5kw/kg now to at least 2-3kw/kg enabling lots of new use cases (e.g. short haul flight). - new cheaper battery chemistries and thermal batteries giving us all the energy storage we'll ever need. Battery production is already crossing the 1TWH/year rate right now. - maybe we'll get some fusion going at some point (a wildcard, I admit). I'm not a big believer in nuclear fairy tales but if somebody at all odds gets micro reactors going at a reasonable cost level, why not (the cost levels are the issue here, 0.001 dollar per kwh is the competition).

> But we're quite far away from that How do you know? I'm an optimist and I think this is true, but what makes you certain this is true and we're not gonna hit a wall soon?

locallost 2y ago

What are the obstacles? The only one I can think of is lobbying and politics, e.g. there was a report recently that Trump is selling favors to the fossil fuel industry - a cool billion now for future privileges when he's in the office. I think that's a real possibility, but my view on that is that this will just shoot his own country in the foot. The first one now will later be last - if you hop on the wrong train you'll be going nowhere. Technically I think the biggest advantage is that it's mostly trivial to install and maintain. There's probably a fair deal of complexity in the technology, but it's all contained in a module, it's plug and play. Beta didn't lose to VHS because it was a lesser format. Worse is better. This keeps projects on time and budget, it makes people invest further in it, capacity grows and the prices keep plummeting. This attracts more people into it, rinse repeat. It causes investments to grow in complementary technology and we are seeing that now with batteries and other forms of storage. There is already now a growing panel recycling industry, etc.

jltsiren 2y ago
The biggest obstacle is the lack of demand for intermittent power. Most countries that take renewable energy seriously have already reached the point, where the construction of new solar/wind depends on investments that can take advantage of it. Exponential growth is somewhere in the past, and further growth depends on the normal pace of industrial investments.
- locallost 2y ago
  And yet those countries led the way in the record shattering 2023. Even if you look within the EU there are big differences between the countries, where some like Poland got serious about it less than 10 years ago. They will continue to grow rapidly. Take a look at outside of developed countries and you will see the rest of the world is still far behind, so there's still a huge untapped market. People follow what other people do. There are other factors too (battery prices going down, electrification etc).

jillesvangurp 2y ago

I'm just looking at the untapped potential in terms of R&D pipelines of various companies out there. Gazillions of battery, solar, etc. innovations in various stages of progress and coming to market. The only way I see this ending soon is if somehow all of those researchers are going to hit a brick wall and all progress stops. Even if that happens, it would take a while for growth to stop. But realistically, R&D is going to continue to work fine for quite some time and will be continuing to deliver the goods. Specifically, I'm expecting within the next 2 decades or so - further reductions in cost of solar energy generation. It's already cheap but another few cost halvings won't hurt. I'm thinking 0.001 dollar per kwh cost levels. About 1 order of magnitude less than today. - increases in battery capacities over time from ~0.5kw/kg now to at least 2-3kw/kg enabling lots of new use cases (e.g. short haul flight). - new cheaper battery chemistries and thermal batteries giving us all the energy storage we'll ever need. Battery production is already crossing the 1TWH/year rate right now. - maybe we'll get some fusion going at some point (a wildcard, I admit). I'm not a big believer in nuclear fairy tales but if somebody at all odds gets micro reactors going at a reasonable cost level, why not (the cost levels are the issue here, 0.001 dollar per kwh is the competition).