this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2024
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I think solar will just drop in price so significantly that energy storage will be possible by pure scale. If you get paid to use electricity (which already happens during the day in summer), it doesn't matter if your efficiency is terrible. It's not elegant but it'll get us close to net zero. Unless we blow all of our energy on stupid shit like generative "AI"
Yes, but where you will be storing the excess energy?
Either electro-chemically in batteries, but they might not get energy dense enough for seasonal storage.
Or chemically by creating Hydrogen, Methane or Ammonia. Those are very energy dense and except for Hydrogen easy to store with existing infrastructure. Currently it is just prohibitively expensive, because the net efficiency is bad, especially for Methane and Ammonia.
So without an Oracle I can't say which it will be, but one or more of those will work if the world is committed to net zero.
Yes, exactly, today we don't have a viable solution for large scale energy storage, perhaps we'll find something useful and economically viable (though price shouldn't be the factor since we are talking about devastating future if we continue the way we are) in future.