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Understanding Solar Energy

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261 points chmaynard | 2 comments | 20 Mar 25 12:09 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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1970-01-01 ◴[20 Mar 25 14:50 UTC] No.43424256[source]▶
I mentioned this yesterday, but storage is the new holy grail for cheap energy. If humans could focus on building safe and reliable battery tech instead of AI and bitcoin, we will have solved the energy crisis until fusion is ready.
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1. epistasis ◴[20 Mar 25 15:09 UTC] No.43424474[source]▶
We already have safe and reliable battery tech being deployed in massive amounts as is in plentiful evidence in this article.

Solar with IRA subsidies is $30/MWh in the US, without subsidies it's $50/MWh. Current storage prices are probably no more than $60-$70/MWh for storing solar for later. New natural gas is $95/MWh at current gas prices.

Similarly, fusion does not promise cheaper energy, at least I have never seen a numerical argument that could support that. If you have one, I'd love to see it. Fusion is mostly interesting because it doesn't exist so people can project whatever characteristics they want on it.

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2. pfdietz ◴[20 Mar 25 17:03 UTC] No.43425788[source]▶
Helion hasn't released details, but they imply they'd be much cheaper. At this point I can't disprove that, as their scheme does do away entirely with turbines and generators and could have much lower cooling requirements.