Very cool, although it needs to become a lot cheaper if it’s going to be competitive. I see a viable niche for solar in places like California, where the air conditioning needs in the summer cause the peak power to come at a time when the sun is shining brightest. This is rough on the power grid. Solar panels could be very useful for smoothing out the peaks there, if it can be made cheap enough.
Meanwhile, nuclear has a new wave of modular reactors coming. It’s going to get quite a bit cheaper, too, and it’s still nowhere near its full potential, as the LFTR folks can attest.
Anyway, nerding out aside, my point remains that simple arithmetic is necessary and often sufficient to discuss this sort of thing like grown-ups.
Very cool, although it needs to become a lot cheaper if it’s going to be competitive. I see a viable niche for solar in places like California, where the air conditioning needs in the summer cause the peak power to come at a time when the sun is shining brightest. This is rough on the power grid. Solar panels could be very useful for smoothing out the peaks there, if it can be made cheap enough.
Meanwhile, nuclear has a new wave of modular reactors coming. It’s going to get quite a bit cheaper, too, and it’s still nowhere near its full potential, as the LFTR folks can attest.
Anyway, nerding out aside, my point remains that simple arithmetic is necessary and often sufficient to discuss this sort of thing like grown-ups.