matt7810

matt7810 t1_j7l65p2 wrote

The US has about 1143GW of total generating capacity and about 4.12 trillion kWh of net generation per year. Each GW of solar energy capacity produces about 1.753×10^9 kWh of electricity per year based on an average capacity factor of 20%.

My personal guess is that coal production will continue to fall while natural gas generation will stay approximately the same because of the demand in 5, 15 minute markets but increasing prices leading to less new projects.

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matt7810 t1_j3h1uf7 wrote

Because if covid is going to be around for a long time, it would be incredibly helpful to have a generic drug help avoid deaths. HCQ is a promising candidate (as stated in the article) and not every country has 5.3 billion dollars to get free paxlovid for their population.

Unfortunately, they don't seem to work but devoting a relatively small amount of funding to check seems fair to me.

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matt7810 t1_j1ahrh8 wrote

Part of the reason D-T fusion is the primary candidate is that it occurs at temperatures and pressures orders of magnitude lower than He-3 based fusions. This makes Helions approach more difficult from a materials, heating, and magnetic field perspective.

I do research tangential research and one thing I've heard (take with a grain of salt) is that they don't publish nearly as many results as other fusion companies. This may not mean anything, or it could mean they don't have favorable results thus far.

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matt7810 t1_ir8p5gr wrote

I don't think it's that surprising. As long as nat gas prices are this high, I think renewables will outcompete fossil fuels/nuclear in many parts of the world. Also many governments are pushing for the shutdown of other types of plants such as coal and subsidizing renewables at the same time.

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matt7810 t1_ir8ojh4 wrote

Honest question, how does a decentralized grid make the grid more resilient?

IMO It's more resilient if a single power source is knocked offline, but I would think that clean energy usually comes with unpredictability and a lack of spinning reserves. Also, even distributed resources have correlated outages if an area is hit with a natural disaster that would knock out a larger power source.

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matt7810 t1_ir8nxjv wrote

I have to disagree. Of course it depends on many factors, but you have to remember that power schedules are created by a separate entity than the utilities and cover a large area. Adding complexity to their job doesn't necessarily increase resilience. Also replacing plants that can provide spinning reserves (frequency stability) and ramping of generation with renewables doesn't necessarily provide resilience. Finally, transmission losses are relatively small compared to other efficiency losses. Rooftop solar is less efficient economically than utility scale, even though rooftop solar is attached to the house using most of the electricity.

Renewables and distributed grids are great for many other reasons, but there are many factors and I disagree with both your efficiency and resilience statements.

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