The Way Humans Get Electricity Is About to Change

Re:The Way Humans Get Electricity Is About to Change by rplst8 on Tuesday June 23, 2015 @12:42PM (#9765815)

I'd argue that making solar and storage cheaper is not engineering. Currently, their efficiency and capacity do not warrant widespread use. More research should be done before money is wasted deploying half-baked technology.

You can try to engineer cost savings and efficiency out of the current solutions, but using all that brain power on something that might yield single digit percent gains is a massive waste of talent IMO.

The minds that are working on those problems would be much better utilized working on solar and storage research as well as more long term solutions like nuclear fusion (NIF, ITEF).

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Re:The Way Humans Get Electricity Is About to Change by rplst8 on Wednesday June 24, 2015 @07:04AM (#9770796)

Not sure why I got down voted on this.

Without the government subsidies, the market for current gen PVs and batteries would be infinitesimally small.

Wouldn't it be better to spend those subsidies on research for better PVs and batteries?

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Re:The Way Humans Get Electricity Is About to Change by elektromekatron on Wednesday June 24, 2015 @12:09PM (#9772552)

Without subsidies, civilian nuclear would not exist and we'd have a lot less oil and gas supplies. Exploration subsidies for oil and gas have doubled in the last five years in the US.

edit - energy production is always subsidised in wealthy countries, as energy security is key to national security, so it would be stupid not to.

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Re:The Way Humans Get Electricity Is About to Change by elektromekatron on Tuesday June 23, 2015 @12:56PM (#9765909)

I'd argue that making solar and storage cheaper is not engineering.

You could, but I don't think it makes a lot of sense as an argument.

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