Reply To: T-shirt designers unite and take over

[Breakable]

Rematog,
While I admire your faith in focus fusion I still don’t believe solar cells or wind power is doomed as soon as focus fusion emerges with a usable prototype.

Regarding the efficiency, yes I believe currently it is about ~14% for production solar cells and ~40% for laboratory models. Focus fusion has an estimated efficiency of 80%, but only if their energy conversion methods work. They have not proven yet, while solar cells are. And most likely will improve in the near future,

Another factor to think about is the transmission lines. The current centralized infrastructure is about 30% efficient. I don’t think anyone will want to replace it if the energy will be cheap and plenty. Even if Sweden did that a decade ago. Although I would love to see local power generation.

Solar and Wind power can in many cases be installed at home and in suburbia cases can supply all the required power even with the current technology. If you have extra – feed back to the grid. So thats almost 0% power loss. If there is no wind and cloudy – well thats where the grid power comes in, and guess what I see at the end of the power line in this case? Fusion power actually, but for now its coal.

There is one more interesting idea about the utilities. As I believe they are not very efficient in management of funds. The numbers I quote will be taken from the clouds but let me tell them nevertheless. I heard that it costs a nuclear power plant to produce one kilowatt-hour 1 cent of imaginary currency, while at the end of the line it is sold to consumers at 30 cents. Thats where the “cheap” part sinks…

PS:How long will it take for any superior technology to overtake this huge world, with its barriers, different cultures, fear and politics?

Please don’t misunderstand me, I am just trying to be a pessimist in short term, so I could be optimistic about the long run.
Regards,
Breakable