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Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

helionenergy.com

171–180 of 258 posts

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#171
A company that relies on massive amounts of increasingly expensive electricity to make enormous profits. Agrees to pay another company likely over the odds for early - and no details, but quite likely exclusive access and with Azure compute as part of deal (a la OpenAI)) - for the small amount of electricity that may or may not be initially generated by the other company's technology. Then when/if technology is successful, as it scales up they get to fill their boots with effectively limitless Carbon-free electricity at progressively orders of magnitude lower cost than their competitors have access to.

Worst case - a nice bit of PR for Fusion, Helion and MS.

Best case - in a few years provides funds to help Helion rapidly scale up, MS - assuming exclusivity - with increasingly low-cost climate-friendly electricity for their data centres that their competitors cannot access. Carbon capture becomes something other than an oil industry excuse, and the human race's bacon is saved.

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#172

Reminds me of a similarly vague "statement" made by BOOM supersonic, another YC company. [0] Here's an excerpt: United will purchase 15 of Boom’s ‘Overture’ airliners, once Overture meets United’s demanding safety, operating and sustainability requirements, with an option for 35 more aircraft. Slated to carry passengers in 2029, the net-zero carbon aircraft will fly on 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). Let me tel…

"While the agreement carries a risk to Helion, it also unlocks essential benefits, Kirtley said."

It probably has something to do with co-location at a Microsoft Azure data center, several of which or being permitted or under construction in Washington State.

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#173

HN, what the heck has happened to you? What is with all of these cynical comments? Helion is an awesome company, their technology is real, and this is cool. >oh no this might not work! Do you guys not understand that you’re posting on the forum of a venture capital firm/startup accelerator?

What percentage of the negative comments come from chatbots that are part of foreign influence campaigns to spread negativity in this largely Western world (or even largely US) forum?

Don't forget fission industry shills. They are quite active here and are happy to remember everyone that "fission is our only way out" (TM).

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#174
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'd likely have some IP that could be of value to creditors.

at the point you're worrying about paying creditors off with your IP, you're... bust.

Microsoft would have a claim as a creditor. It's more than nothing, but it is a paper promise.

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't the bottleneck that it was difficult to get H3?

It’s not that difficult. You can mine it from the surface of the moon, or produce it via Tritium decay.

> It’s not that difficult. You can mine it from the surface of the moon...

Ha! One of those "only on HN" comments. What would qualify as "difficult"? Mining it on Pluto?

Not criticizing though. I'm glad there are people out there who aren't deterred by these sorts of challenges.

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AIUI Helion’s bottleneck is the number of capacitors needed to run a sustained reaction at a given scale. The numbers don’t seem out of this world to me, and it’s probably smarter money than what we are throwing at ITER given time to market.

Having watched a short documentary on ITER it seems like an incredible waste. A bunch of mismanagement and bureaucratic nonsense. As an American, it seemed like exactly what we would expect from a Euro-based project. By the time any actual work can be done at ITER, won't the technology have progressed beyond they design they are trying to test?

Even if ITER succeeded tomorrow on every one of their goals, it would be worthless.

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#177

HN, what the heck has happened to you? What is with all of these cynical comments? Helion is an awesome company, their technology is real, and this is cool. >oh no this might not work! Do you guys not understand that you’re posting on the forum of a venture capital firm/startup accelerator?

one of the most famous posts on this site was shitting on Dropbox and dismissing it as a weekend project. HN has always been this way

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that true? Seems like this summer I’m driving my Tesla to watch a Starship launch and using my starlink for internet access along the way. Meanwhile I’m using GitHub copilot to help me write code to uses some of openAIs products in my existing SaaS offering. There is a constant stream of waymos driving past my house (with nobody in them) and I’m playing Skyrim in VR. What technology are you talking about that didn…

Well what's the fraction of success stories compared to the promises given? And: The success stories you're mentioning would have been there (even earlier in many cases) if they'd be consistently developed over time. Tesla did not invent the e-car nor did SpaceX have the idea to go to space. Maybe it's just people being fed up with glossy techbro marketing whilst being fired because of "past overhiring"?

I think you're on to something. A lot of it comes down to the expectation and what people feel they were promised.

I think people were sold/sold themselves on unrealistic expectations, but that doesn't mean that everything is shit. They're just jumping from one unrealistic extreme to another.

We don't live in some post scarcity Jetsons future, but that was never realistic. People are disappointed that they don't have what's the homes and Families they saw in the TV shows growing up, but those were always fiction and not an accurate depiction of how most people lived

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#179
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your argument at all. In a world where people can produce power through fusion cheaper than they can through coal or oil, why would use of non-clean materials increase?

Because it isn't just about power production. People use that power to then go off and do things. The question I'm asking is what does that look like? Because how we do things still requires oil and other destructive acts, for example. An analogous situation is electric cars. Electric cars, eventually over the lifetime of use (not immediately), save emissions over combustion engine cars. However, building a single mi…

>then that has a downstream effect of more roads being built and maintained, which is far more polluting than the cars themselves.

Surely this is negligable compared to the carbon currently being emitted by ICE cars? The first source I can find says that building and maintaining one lane mile of highway emits 3,500 tons of CO2, whereas the vehicles driving on it will emit 90,000 tons of CO2.

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#180
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we just grew up? There is still plenty we are enthusiastic and positive about here, but discussion sure has become more nuanced.

Cynicism has nothing to do with nuance.

Nor does unbounded positivity and optimism.
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