Thoughts on large scale power generation in the US:
- the US must move towards a sustainable and renewable power generation grid
- the US has a lot of work to do to research and develop this renewable power generation
- it will likely require MANY different types of energy sources due to limitations of each technology, mostly number of locations limiting the amount of generation that can practically be generated
- the US needs to put forth policy, provide funding and make sites available to enable commercial development and for building large scale deployments
requirements:
- diverse array of mechanisms
- flexible technologies
- scalable implementation
- pretty cheap
- extremely safe
- sustainable and harmless to land and life
goal:
- hydro
- wind
- solar
- geothermal
- tidal
- safe nuclear
- 3x next generation energy sources (hydrogen fuel, fusion, SBSP)
development sequence:
- develop or discover physics (science)
- small scale feasibility (paper)
- small scale R&D (engineering)
- small scale testing (funded and built)
- small scale deployment (on the grid)
- large scale feasibility (paper)
- large scale R&D (engineering)
- large scale testing (funded and built)
- large scale deployment (on the grid)
- <1% of grid total
- >1% of grid total
- ~10% of grid total
status:
Technologies are developing at different rates; some are far more mature (hydro, wind) and others are barely off the ground.
- [DONE] hydro: very mature; widely deployed
- [DONE] wind: fairly mature; widely deployed
- [DONE] solar: fairly mature; widely deployed
- [WIP] geothermal: fairly mature; but lacks wide scale deployment
- [WIP] tidal: in development; no deployments
- [WIP] safe nuclear: in development; no deployments
- [WIP] hydrogen: very early technology; no deployments
- [WIP] fusion: very early technology; no deployments
- [WIP] SBSP: very early technology; no deployments
conclusion:
- this plan did not look at storage for intermittent sources
- this plan did not look at security or reliability concerns
- each technology will need to supply at least 10% of grid power to completely displace non-renewable sources
- we could reduce our power consumption, although we really want to increase our consumption so this is not realistic
- we could also increase the efficiency of our electrical grid; this technology does not exist but could be worth another 5-50%
- this plan will take decades
- Unless a future technology has a major breakthrough this will not enable the "energy revolution" we were hoping for (e.g. 10x or 100x more available energy could transform our society)
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