We’re honestly almost past that at this point. Solar is devouring the world. Total global electricity production capacity is about 10 TW. China is currently producing 1 TW of panels annually. And the panels are still getting better and the prices are still dropping. We will quickly reach the point where the vast majority of global electricity production is solar, and everything else is a rounding error.
There just isn’t going to be any reason to build fusion plants. Maybe in the distant future colonies in the outer solar system and beyond will use them. But for anything inward of Mars, solar is the way to go. Solar+batteries is already, in 2026, the cheapest form of baseload power available. Material limitations are not a problem with modern battery chemistries. Daily swings in power demand will be solved by batteries. And we simply won’t have to worry about seasonal power swings. We’ll build enough solar panels to meet all our winter needs. We’ll build enough to power our cities during the coldest, cloudiest months. And then the rest of they year we’ll have super-abundant dirt cheap power.
The future is one of vast energy abundance. We’re going to find all sorts of ways to use energy that we’ve never even dreamed of before - mostly to take advantage of the abundance of dirt cheap energy we’ll have during all but the coldest months.
The days the steam engine are numbered. With the exception of remote polar outposts, everything’s going solar. It’s simply the cheapest most abundant form of energy we’ve ever discovered. Nothing can match it.
Not really. Unless there are some breakthroughs in technology that significantly lower capex & opex for grid scale energy storage, they’ll be sticking around for a long time.
There is an asterisk on the 1TW number, and that asterisk is capacity factor. In practice it means that depending on the time of year and location, the effective output of your solar panel will be between 0-40% of label capacity .
In my country for instance, you can expect 0-2% output from a panel in the winter time, which also happens to coincide with the peak demands (heating). Luckily, our politicians had some foresight in the 70s & 80s and built lots of hydro and nuclear power, which has been the backbone of our grid ever since (despite attempts to dismantle it).
you can expect 0-2% output from a panel in the winter time
I can confirm this. My family is off-grid and there have been extended periods the last two winters when it has simply been too dark for too long to depend on the solar without installing 50x more panels.
Also, the problem with having larger battery capacity to span these periods is that if they don’t get fully recharged or cycled properly the batteries get damaged and eventually die. We learnt that the hard way.
Solar is the undisputed champion for 80-90% of the year but needs to be complemented with something else for the remainder, if you want uninterrupted on-demand electricity.
I just hope the timeline you describe can outpace the timeline racing towards neo-feudalism, world war 3, global pandemics and heat waves triggering a new migration period.
We’re honestly almost past that at this point. Solar is devouring the world. Total global electricity production capacity is about 10 TW. China is currently producing 1 TW of panels annually. And the panels are still getting better and the prices are still dropping. We will quickly reach the point where the vast majority of global electricity production is solar, and everything else is a rounding error.
There just isn’t going to be any reason to build fusion plants. Maybe in the distant future colonies in the outer solar system and beyond will use them. But for anything inward of Mars, solar is the way to go. Solar+batteries is already, in 2026, the cheapest form of baseload power available. Material limitations are not a problem with modern battery chemistries. Daily swings in power demand will be solved by batteries. And we simply won’t have to worry about seasonal power swings. We’ll build enough solar panels to meet all our winter needs. We’ll build enough to power our cities during the coldest, cloudiest months. And then the rest of they year we’ll have super-abundant dirt cheap power.
The future is one of vast energy abundance. We’re going to find all sorts of ways to use energy that we’ve never even dreamed of before - mostly to take advantage of the abundance of dirt cheap energy we’ll have during all but the coldest months.
The days the steam engine are numbered. With the exception of remote polar outposts, everything’s going solar. It’s simply the cheapest most abundant form of energy we’ve ever discovered. Nothing can match it.
Not really. Unless there are some breakthroughs in technology that significantly lower capex & opex for grid scale energy storage, they’ll be sticking around for a long time.
There is an asterisk on the 1TW number, and that asterisk is capacity factor. In practice it means that depending on the time of year and location, the effective output of your solar panel will be between 0-40% of label capacity .
In my country for instance, you can expect 0-2% output from a panel in the winter time, which also happens to coincide with the peak demands (heating). Luckily, our politicians had some foresight in the 70s & 80s and built lots of hydro and nuclear power, which has been the backbone of our grid ever since (despite attempts to dismantle it).
I can confirm this. My family is off-grid and there have been extended periods the last two winters when it has simply been too dark for too long to depend on the solar without installing 50x more panels.
Also, the problem with having larger battery capacity to span these periods is that if they don’t get fully recharged or cycled properly the batteries get damaged and eventually die. We learnt that the hard way.
Solar is the undisputed champion for 80-90% of the year but needs to be complemented with something else for the remainder, if you want uninterrupted on-demand electricity.
Wow. Isn’t it amazing that the majority of human history operated under renewable energy?
I just hope the timeline you describe can outpace the timeline racing towards neo-feudalism, world war 3, global pandemics and heat waves triggering a new migration period.