Reply To: The North Atlantic Current

[Brian H]

Breakable wrote: While $3.35 or 3.2¢ is quite high it should continue to fall as technology improves. And for FF we still need to see it in action to know all the actual costs. Of course I agree that currently the margin seems to be pretty high.
One thing what I am concerned about FF in comparison to renewable energy sources is that it makes military technology cheaper and more advanced. I just hope this will not lead to more rounds of cold war, so that all the economical advantages would be negated as result.

It’s still just a boiling-water-turbine heat source. That hardware alone locks it in the high-cost bracket, since that stage of electric generation is about 30% efficient after a couple of centuries of highly motivated technological effort. And storing the heat in molten salt overnight etc. is NEVER going to get truly inexpensive. And yet further, the locales on Earth where the sun is intense enough are remote from the bulk of the population, and transmission is a BIG deal for sun-to-socket costing.