Egregoros

@cjd @maxburn Free cells, the ultimate cell price collapse, would be great for power you only need when the sun is shining, unfortunately on average there are 4 hours of usable sunlight / day that are direct enough for full power production, that's worse in the winter when the energy is needed most. Presently we've got between 10-20 minutes of global energy storage, enough to level transient events, not enough to provide power when the Sun is hiding. In a world where everyone wasn't trying to kill each other we could create an intercontinental HVDC supergrid and utilize renewable sources much more effectively but that's not the world we have today.

The fact that you need stable power generation doesn't mean that power is *free* when the sun is shining, so solar still makes value even if it can't be the only source.

Solar + hydroelectric is a great combination because the less hydro you need, the less water you need out of your dam. Furthermore, if you're able to pump water back up into your dam, then you have an ~infinite scale battery.

Pic rel is a simulation of a 22kw system based on real 2025 solar irradiation data where I live (France). I have not started installing this, but pricing out the hardware it looks like it'll be about 8k.

Well sure, but I mean CARS aren't sufficient for reaching all places - there are places only reachable by boat and/or plane. But they're still absolutely dominant.

My take is that this crazy chart is probably NOT going to stop until coal has become marginalized.

I think gas is not going away soon because there's no real mining to do once you complete the well, it just comes out. Also gas power plants are small, efficient, and can be quickly ramped.

Hydro is certainly not going anywhere - but we already have pretty much all the hydro we're going to have. Nuclear will continue to grow, but it's super expensive to build and that cost needs to come down.

Geothermal is a big unknown. If they manage to make it economical it could largely replace nuclear, but it's still not proven...

@cjd @maxburn The thing is your every day existence doesn't require reaching all places, so if your car doesn't get you there it's not the end of the world, but growing food requires fertilizer, ammonia, presently usually ammonia derived from natural gas and nitrogen, farm equipment is required to prepare, plant, maintain, and harvest it, this equipment is powered by diesel, there are industrial processes that can create hydrocarbons of any length from captured CO2 and water and electricity but these do not work well, or at all, with intermittent power, then you also need diesel to get the food to market. My point, we need infrastructure to replace fossil fuels for these functions before we exhaust that which we have and we are closer than people might think because they mistake fossil fuels in the ground from those which are useful and economically recoverable.

I think you're reading things into what I'm saying that I never said.

I don't see oil being disused any time in this century. I also don't believe in Peak Oil because it's like Climate Crisis, it was supposed to happen every decade since the 80s and it still hasn't hit. We still keep making MASSIVE new oil discoveries about once every 2 years.

I do think EVs are going to replace ICEs in most applications - but the reason I think so is because electricity is just cheaper than fuel.