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Will we ever get fusion power?

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Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#301

Post by aristofun »

defrost wrote: post #294
aristofun wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Utterly ignorant. Renewables are not even close to others in for example energy density. Covering half the country with expensive and costly solar panels is not a scalable option.

Given the U.S. consumes about 4 petawatts hours of electricity per year, It would take about 13,600,000 acres or 21,250 square miles of solar panels to meet the total electricity requirements of the United States for a year. That's roughly the size of Lake Michigan.

> That's roughly the size of Lake Michigan.

You realize that this is ridiculously large, un feasible area, right?

Which proves my point of this shitty energy sources being not scalable.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#302

Post by pfdietz »

aristofun wrote: post #301
defrost wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the U.S. consumes about 4 petawatts hours of electricity per year, It would take about 13,600,000 acres or 21,250 square miles of solar panels to meet the total electricity requirements of the United States for a year. That's roughly the size of Lake Michigan.

> That's roughly the size of Lake Michigan. You realize that this is ridiculously large, un feasible area, right? Which proves my point of this shitty energy sources being not scalable.

It's completely feasible. It's about the same as US acreage currently used to grow corn for ethanol.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#303

Post by nicoburns »

tsimionescu wrote: post #172
nicoburns wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or an expensive battery bank Expensive for now. I'd expect that to be a cheap battery bank in <10 years.

Based on what?

This was just on the front page https://aukehoekstra.substack.com/p/batteries-how-cheap-can-...

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#304

Post by aristofun »

pfdietz wrote: post #302
aristofun wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's roughly the size of Lake Michigan. You realize that this is ridiculously large, un feasible area, right? Which proves my point of this shitty energy sources being not scalable.

It's completely feasible. It's about the same as US acreage currently used to grow corn for ethanol.

Do you see any difference between corn and solar panels?

You sound like a politician - i hope you never get any power.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#305

Post by pfdietz »

aristofun wrote: post #304
pfdietz wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's completely feasible. It's about the same as US acreage currently used to grow corn for ethanol.

Do you see any difference between corn and solar panels? You sound like a politician - i hope you never get any power.

I see you didn't even try to justify your bullshit there.

Of course corn and solar panels are different. For one thing, an acre of solar panels produces vastly more economic value per year than an acre of corn. What the corn observation does is show that the idea that this is too much area is insipid nonsense.

I could have easily compared the area to other things, like golf courses, parking lots, roads, or areas given over to fossil fuel production.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#306

Post by orson2077 »

Mistletoe wrote: post #148
orson2077 wrote: post #10

Fusion is always 50 years away for a reason: https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/5gi9yh/fusion_i... IIRC, the sum total of all fusion research throughout all of history is USD$100-200B. It's obvious governments/industry/humanity doesn't really want it, or they'd go fund it.

You could put teleportation on that bottom squiggle as well. Sometimes you stop funding things because it isn't physically possible or we have better alternatives.

There's no physics basis for teleportation, whereas there is a clear physics basis for fusion. The way you assess things is terribly flawed.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#307

Post by aristofun »

pfdietz wrote: post #305
aristofun wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you see any difference between corn and solar panels? You sound like a politician - i hope you never get any power.

I see you didn't even try to justify your bullshit there. Of course corn and solar panels are different. For one thing, an acre of solar panels produces vastly more economic value per year than an acre of corn. What the corn observation does is show that the idea that this is too much area is insipid nonsense. I could have easily compared the area to other things, like golf courses, parking lots, roads, or areas give…

I am sorry you are ignorant enough to not see how Michigan lake size solar panels field is fundamentally different from a parking lot of same size.

I don’t argue with stupid people, sorry.

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#308

Post by pfdietz »

aristofun wrote: post #307
pfdietz wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see you didn't even try to justify your bullshit there. Of course corn and solar panels are different. For one thing, an acre of solar panels produces vastly more economic value per year than an acre of corn. What the corn observation does is show that the idea that this is too much area is insipid nonsense. I could have easily compared the area to other things, like golf courses, parking lots, roads, or areas give…

I am sorry you are ignorant enough to not see how Michigan lake size solar panels field is fundamentally different from a parking lot of same size. I don’t argue with stupid people, sorry.

You would be surprised at how similar parking lots and PV fields are in cost per unit area. The PV field might even be cheaper!

Re: Will we ever get fusion power?

#309

Post by grecy »

cubefox wrote: post #300
grecy wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last quarter Tesla deployed 4GWh of battery capacity, this quarter it is 9.4GWh. Where do you think that is being deployed?

Yeah, where is it deployed? To balance out the volatility of solar and wind energy?

yes, exactly.
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