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353 points dmazin | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.01s | source
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jillesvangurp ◴[] No.44518778[source]
The article doesn't mention a technology that deserves some attention because it counters the biggest and most obvious deficiency in solar: the sun doesn't always shine.

That technology is cables. Cables allow us to move energy over long distances. And with HVCD cables that can mean across continents, oceans, time zones, and climate regions. The nice things about cables is that they are currently being underutilized. They are designed to have enough capacity so that the grid continues to function at peak demand. Off peak, there is a lot of under utilized cable capacity. An obvious use for that would be transporting power to wherever batteries need to be re-charged from wherever there is excess solar/wind power. And cables can work both ways. So import when there's a shortage, export when there's a surplus.

And that includes the rapidly growing stock of batteries that are just sitting there with an average charge state close to more or less fully charged most of the time. We're talking terawatt hours of power. All you need to get at that is cables.

Long distance cables will start moving non trivial amounts of renewable power around as we start executing on plans to e.g. connect Moroccan solar with the UK, Australian solar with Singapore, east coast US to Europe, etc. There are lots of cable projects stuck in planning pipelines around the world. Cables can compensate for some of the localized variations in energy productions caused by seasonal effects, weather, or day/night cycles.

For the rest, we have nuclear, geothermal, hydro, and a rapidly growing stock of obsolete gas plants that we might still turn on on a rainy day. I think anyone still investing in gas plants will need a reality check: mothballed gas plant aren't going to be very profitable. But we'll keep some around for decades to come anyway.

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kragen ◴[] No.44518839[source]
Plausible alternatives to cables include ships full of synthetic diesel, ships full of iron, ships full of aluminum, or ships full of magnesium. Inside China HVDC cables are indeed carrying solar power across the continent, but the Netherlands have not managed to erect any yet. Cables provide efficient JIT power delivery, but they're vulnerable to precision-guided missiles, which Ukrainians are 3-D printing in their basements by the million, so the aluminum-air battery may return to commercial use.
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fred_is_fred ◴[] No.44521608[source]
Ukranians are 3d printing millions of missiles in their basements?
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speeder ◴[] No.44521685[source]
They might use rotating wings to fly instead of jet turbines, but yes.

EDIT: To make things clearer, the word Missile is quite old, and predates rockets. missile is any object that is propelled somehow to hit a target. So even a stone launched from a sling by a caveman is already a missile. The other guy mentioned precision guided missiles though... and he is still correct in the word usage there.

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Dylan16807 ◴[] No.44522246{3}[source]
I don't know, I'd say once you reach a certain amount of control over your flight path you stop being a missile. An aircraft isn't really "projected toward" something.
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1. Retric ◴[] No.44522861{4}[source]
Cruse missiles have a great deal of control over their flight. “Kamikaze aircraft were pilot-guided explosive missiles, either purpose-built or converted from conventional aircraft.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze

However, the distinction is usually applied where aircraft become missile’s when the attack can no longer be aborted.

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2. Dylan16807 ◴[] No.44523071[source]
If I look at the number of 90 degree turns a cruise missile can make and compare it to an airplane I wouldn't rate it very highly.

> However, the distinction is usually applied where aircraft become missile’s when the attack can no longer be aborted.

So for a quadcopter that's a pretty negligible amount of time. And not all that much for tiny planes either.

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3. Retric ◴[] No.44523191[source]
The SM-62 Snark had a 10,000km range so presumably thousands of 90 degree turns were possible. What the actual guidance software could do may have limited it.