alt Hacker NewsChinese also have battery manufacturing, whose rapidly falling cost-curve is what is missing to enable 24/7 solar.
American empire ruled with the petrodollar. Chinese will rule with the solaryuan if we don't get our shit together.
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BLKNSLVR • today at 9:13 PM
Even if the US gets it's shit together it's already lost the solar and battery fight. It will have to win the next one - which it might do with AI.
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You just slightly missed the crux of the issue here.
The big "problem" with renewables like solar is that once you've installed enough for yourself you are done for like 30 years. There is no monthly sun fee you need to keep paying. There is no solardollar, because there's nothing that needs to be extracted, transported, and sold every single day. A lot of billionaires are in an existential crisis over a world where fossil fuels are no longer the driving force of the economy. That's why we have incessant propaganda against renewable energy.
Even the solar panel market is self defeating. Once there is enough installed power the demand will drop off sharply as the refresh cycle is too long. The feedback loop of capitalism means we are likely to reach that point sooner than you would expect.
That said, don't think I'm like the nuclear power guys of the 50s who claimed that electricity would be so abundant that we wouldn't even bother to meter it. There are still costs with maintenance, repair, administration, debt servicing, and profits. If you look at your power bill today it will probably list generation, distribution, and taxes. Renewables only eliminate the generation costs, which are usually about half of the bill.