Energy economics and rocket science with Casey Handmer
complexsystemspodcast.com
Energy economics and rocket science with Casey Handmer
1–10 of 45 posts
Re: Energy economics and rocket science with Casey Handmer
#2Listened to this yesterday. Super enjoyable. Made the point that electricity in the future will be consumed much closer geographically to where it is generated than today - and so we probably don’t need huge interconnects - but much less close in time (because batteries).
Re: Energy economics and rocket science with Casey Handmer
#3[dead]
Re: Energy economics and rocket science with Casey Handmer
#4Casey Handmer's company is creating synthetic hydrocarbons from renewable energy. Here is a good video where he gives a tour of the company and talks about its goals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NngCHTImH1g.
Curious what people think about the idea of synthetic hydrocarbons? It is a seemingly obvious idea that I hadn't heard about until recently, as long as you can use energy efficiently to create the synthetic hydrocarbons.
Re: Energy economics and rocket science with Casey Handmer
#5Casey Handmer's company is creating synthetic hydrocarbons from renewable energy. Here is a good video where he gives a tour of the company and talks about its goals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NngCHTImH1g . Curious what people think about the idea of synthetic hydrocarbons? It is a seemingly obvious idea that I hadn't heard about until recently, as long as you can use energy efficiently to create the synthetic…
Synthetic hydrocarbons will likely fail, simply because of the same reasons vertical farming failed. Once you're spending money on infrastructure to capture solar energy, losing 80% to inefficiency, before piping into your vertical farm via LEDs (losing another 50% to 80%), a farmer who draws free sunshine will outcompete you because he's using free energy while you're spending millions to power a small factory sized farm; energy isn't free.
Likewise, Casey's idea (Terraform Industries) requires solar energy to convert air and water to natural gas. It'll cost 10x the price of the gas Qatar & Saudi Arabia pump out of the ground essentially for free. These technologies won't be viable until humanity is pressed harder and prices (for food or fuel) climb.
Re: Energy economics and rocket science with Casey Handmer
#6Casey Handmer's company is creating synthetic hydrocarbons from renewable energy. Here is a good video where he gives a tour of the company and talks about its goals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NngCHTImH1g . Curious what people think about the idea of synthetic hydrocarbons? It is a seemingly obvious idea that I hadn't heard about until recently, as long as you can use energy efficiently to create the synthetic…
The problem with synthetic hydrocarbons isn’t energy abstractly its capital vs energy costs. The more hours per month of electricity you want the more you end up paying on a per kWh basis.
So if you’re fine turning all the equipment off most the of time you can get really cheap power, but having a 1 billion dollar facility including its workforce doing nothing 70% of the time is expensive. On the flip side if you want 24/7 operation you end up with much higher per kWh rates.
Re: Energy economics and rocket science with Casey Handmer
#7Casey is awesome!!!
Re: Energy economics and rocket science with Casey Handmer
#8Casey Handmer's company is creating synthetic hydrocarbons from renewable energy. Here is a good video where he gives a tour of the company and talks about its goals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NngCHTImH1g . Curious what people think about the idea of synthetic hydrocarbons? It is a seemingly obvious idea that I hadn't heard about until recently, as long as you can use energy efficiently to create the synthetic…
The problem with synthetic hydrocarbons isn’t energy abstractly its capital vs energy costs. The more hours per month of electricity you want the more you end up paying on a per kWh basis. So if you’re fine turning all the equipment off most the of time you can get really cheap power, but having a 1 billion dollar facility including its workforce doing nothing 70% of the time is expensive. On the flip side if you wan…
> having a 1 billion dollar facility including its workforce doing nothing 70% of the time is expensive
We work normally only about 33% of a day.
Re: Energy economics and rocket science with Casey Handmer
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with synthetic hydrocarbons isn’t energy abstractly its capital vs energy costs. The more hours per month of electricity you want the more you end up paying on a per kWh basis. So if you’re fine turning all the equipment off most the of time you can get really cheap power, but having a 1 billion dollar facility including its workforce doing nothing 70% of the time is expensive. On the flip side if you wan…
> having a 1 billion dollar facility including its workforce doing nothing 70% of the time is expensive We work normally only about 33% of a day.
Very expensive industrial facilities don't.
Re: Energy economics and rocket science with Casey Handmer
#10Casey Handmer's company is creating synthetic hydrocarbons from renewable energy. Here is a good video where he gives a tour of the company and talks about its goals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NngCHTImH1g . Curious what people think about the idea of synthetic hydrocarbons? It is a seemingly obvious idea that I hadn't heard about until recently, as long as you can use energy efficiently to create the synthetic…
There are a few companies doing it.
Prometheus Fuels is another, they have been on HN previously :
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31264388
They have a cool website :
There are some companies that want to use nuclear power , Valar Atomics is one :
The cost estimates seem to be 4-10 times as expensive as fossil fuels.