Reply To: Fusion Oil

[HermannH]

I believe the numbers got a bit inflated; actually quite a bit.

According to this the total electricity consumption in 2005 was, on average, 297W per person on the planet.
Multiply this by the world’s population and you have a total consumption of 1.9TW.

One FF unit produces 5MW, so you need a total of 384,000 units to supply the current world demand.
Of course demand is not constant but varies during the day/year so your peak capacity needs to be quite a bit higher, say about 3 times as high. This gives you 1.2 million units.
Further assume that electricity consumption will likely quadruple in the next 10 years: 5 million units.
So for the next ten years we need to build on average 500,000 units. And that rate would probably be about what is needed thereafter to keep up with rapidly increasing demand and replacement of old units.

Now some parts (electrodes) may wear out rather quickly and may need to be replaced/refurbished several times a year. For these parts you could end up with 20 million per year.