What are we going to do with abundant, free, renewable energy? “[By 2030] solar power will be absolutely and reliably free during the sunny parts of the day for much of the year ‘pretty much everywhere.’”
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Comments 4
Thank you for this! I hadn't seen it elsewhere (yet). I had never considered the idea of extremely long transmission lines that would constantly pipe electricity from light places to dark places as the globe spins.
I love a concept that provokes enough thought that I find myself daydreaming mid-workday. I am left just thinking about all the untapped infrastructure in place to mount more panels like the flat roof of every giant warehouse, warehouse store, office building. If we can scale like this, does it make sense to install them at home at this point or have we reached an inflection point where it is more cost effective and environmentally responsible to wait for it to be provided to me for basically the cost of transmission ?
I was wondering the same thing. My dad was recently looking at getting them installed on his roof in Texas but the breakeven point for the investment was quoted at 6-8 years which puts us close to this timeline where it'll be essentially free, and he won't need to figure out energy storage for his house.
This is staggering. My best friend is in South Sudan right now with the UN, providing that amount of energy to a place like Sudan/South Sudan would be transformational to people, it could be the thing that brings entire nations out of poverty.
I really wish in the US we had our shit together in any way because being able to provide that kind of humanitarian relief/diplomacy is the type of things we need to be doing to make the world safer and more secure.
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