Wow, just found your stack but already appreciate the math here. Realistic numbers are important for these assessments. I don't think in history it's ever been more obvious that we should have doubled down on Nuclear and then tackled the "green" alternatives.
That being said, hyperbole aside, ridiculous claims are exactly what drive future production. You won't find any successful company that didn't claim it could do something deemed impossible at the time. Setting ultra high expectations often results in eventual solutions. I realize I don't need to tell you this, you most certainly have a strong grasp on the limitations of technology. The advancements are often quite astounding and unexpected. Tesla is also counting on the continued expansion of the EV industry to propel innovation. Early on Elon open sourced the Tesla stack to drive that competition and quite literally create a market for him to win in. It wouldn't surprise me in a decade if the energy sector looks quite different.
At times scientists and engineers develop a solution and then look for a problem to solve. This obsession with transitioning to “green” technologies is based on what problem requiring solving?
Religion has conditioned humans to believe absurdity in order to prove their faith so as to obtain salvation. Give me a break -- like some sanctimonious can grant me salvation -- what the f**k is salvation but the ultimate con? In other words, we are genetically designed to love emotional memes and to hate actual facts.
BTW, I have a machine which will tap into all the energy you need as it uses a worm hole to the 6th dimensions where energy is limitless. Believe me, some angel told me this secret and wrote it out on gold tablet or was it on a rock from some mountain? Yo olvidi. Just give me your money and then salvation, er I mean, the energy tapping device is yours.
I've tried to have this conversation with electrical engineers. Even there, with the electrical engineers who didn't have a background in the corner of electrical engineering involved in power generation and the grid, most could not grasp the enormous gap in the amount of energy generated from burning fossil fuels, and that from wind and solar.
Smil is my go-to antidote to all the futuristic crap that I come across every day. And I'm always depressed by the credulity of general media reporters and editors, who seem to have abandoned the skepticism drilled into me as a mainstream reporter some 50 years ago.
The worlds battery production has been doubling every 2 to 3 years for the last 20 years. Today Tesla makes more batteries in a single day then was made by the human race from batteries inception to year 2000. These are world numbers and while Tesla is one of the biggest battery manufacturers in the world they are by no means the only one. I live in Ontario I can keep up with how many battery factories have been announced in the last year and all of them are going to be huge. This is a moon shot task it’s not going to be easy but if we all work towards the goal it’s not impossible just really hard. Cleaning up the air in our cities and on our roads plus hopefully helping the environment in the process is worth it.
"Although the paper doesn’t give exact projections, it uses a “20-year horizon” and claims that building the infrastructure for a “sustainable energy economy will cost $10 trillion” while continuing to rely on hydrocarbons will cost, they claim, about $14 trillion."
How can the transition to renewables and electric transportation be accomplished without using conventional vehicles that rely on hydrocarbons?
"Although the paper doesn’t give exact projections, it uses a “20-year horizon” and claims that building the infrastructure for a “sustainable energy economy will cost $10 trillion” while continuing to rely on hydrocarbons will cost, they claim, about $14 trillion."
How can the transition to renewables and electric transportation be accomplished without using conventional vehicles that rely on hydrocarbons?
I can't believe that we've made it this far chasing unicorn farts and pixie dust. None of these goals are staked in any kind of reality, but we are plowing trillions into achieving them. The all green fantasy has to be one of the biggest grifts in the history of civilization.
Exponential growth can be a hard thing for some people to wrap their heads around. The Photovoltaic industry has kept up an average 38% year on year growth rate over the last two decades, meaning in 2022 it produced 660 times more PV than it did in 2002. Apply that growth rate to the 2022 world battery production of 700 GWh and you get enough production to do a master plan every 6 months. Linear thinkers get surprised by the future every time.
There is an interesting debate on this article in the FaceBook forum Renewable vs Nuclear Debate. Basic innumeracy even from solar advocates who claim to be engineers.
It's all about scale. I often ask people to estimate how many days a billion seconds is after telling them a million seconds is roughly 11days. They are gobsmacked at the answer. People seem to think that FF can be replaced in the background with zero disruption by regressive renewables mainly because, IMO, they have zero understanding of scale.
It’s a fair analysis if Tesla were the only OEM of batteries in the world. But we all know that’s not the case. There are dozens of such OEMs. Your main takeaway / calculation is, therefore, meaningless at best. Recommend you do a little extra work to estimate current and expected total battery manufacturing capacity across all OEMs and then re-calculate your number. Perhaps you’d be better served by focusing on feedstock material shortages instead?
Wow, just found your stack but already appreciate the math here. Realistic numbers are important for these assessments. I don't think in history it's ever been more obvious that we should have doubled down on Nuclear and then tackled the "green" alternatives.
That being said, hyperbole aside, ridiculous claims are exactly what drive future production. You won't find any successful company that didn't claim it could do something deemed impossible at the time. Setting ultra high expectations often results in eventual solutions. I realize I don't need to tell you this, you most certainly have a strong grasp on the limitations of technology. The advancements are often quite astounding and unexpected. Tesla is also counting on the continued expansion of the EV industry to propel innovation. Early on Elon open sourced the Tesla stack to drive that competition and quite literally create a market for him to win in. It wouldn't surprise me in a decade if the energy sector looks quite different.
At times scientists and engineers develop a solution and then look for a problem to solve. This obsession with transitioning to “green” technologies is based on what problem requiring solving?
Religion has conditioned humans to believe absurdity in order to prove their faith so as to obtain salvation. Give me a break -- like some sanctimonious can grant me salvation -- what the f**k is salvation but the ultimate con? In other words, we are genetically designed to love emotional memes and to hate actual facts.
BTW, I have a machine which will tap into all the energy you need as it uses a worm hole to the 6th dimensions where energy is limitless. Believe me, some angel told me this secret and wrote it out on gold tablet or was it on a rock from some mountain? Yo olvidi. Just give me your money and then salvation, er I mean, the energy tapping device is yours.
A huckster is gonna huck, and the rube bait is gonna be rubed.
But the clarity and integrity of the Bryce’s of the world are exposing the fraud. Thank you!
I've tried to have this conversation with electrical engineers. Even there, with the electrical engineers who didn't have a background in the corner of electrical engineering involved in power generation and the grid, most could not grasp the enormous gap in the amount of energy generated from burning fossil fuels, and that from wind and solar.
Smil is my go-to antidote to all the futuristic crap that I come across every day. And I'm always depressed by the credulity of general media reporters and editors, who seem to have abandoned the skepticism drilled into me as a mainstream reporter some 50 years ago.
The worlds battery production has been doubling every 2 to 3 years for the last 20 years. Today Tesla makes more batteries in a single day then was made by the human race from batteries inception to year 2000. These are world numbers and while Tesla is one of the biggest battery manufacturers in the world they are by no means the only one. I live in Ontario I can keep up with how many battery factories have been announced in the last year and all of them are going to be huge. This is a moon shot task it’s not going to be easy but if we all work towards the goal it’s not impossible just really hard. Cleaning up the air in our cities and on our roads plus hopefully helping the environment in the process is worth it.
"Tesla's "Master Plan" for weather-dependent renewables will require 960 years of Gigafactory battery output. "
Probably not, because wind and solar won't be the winning strategy. Closed loop geothermal is about to explode (figuratively).
"Although the paper doesn’t give exact projections, it uses a “20-year horizon” and claims that building the infrastructure for a “sustainable energy economy will cost $10 trillion” while continuing to rely on hydrocarbons will cost, they claim, about $14 trillion."
How can the transition to renewables and electric transportation be accomplished without using conventional vehicles that rely on hydrocarbons?
"Although the paper doesn’t give exact projections, it uses a “20-year horizon” and claims that building the infrastructure for a “sustainable energy economy will cost $10 trillion” while continuing to rely on hydrocarbons will cost, they claim, about $14 trillion."
How can the transition to renewables and electric transportation be accomplished without using conventional vehicles that rely on hydrocarbons?
I can't believe that we've made it this far chasing unicorn farts and pixie dust. None of these goals are staked in any kind of reality, but we are plowing trillions into achieving them. The all green fantasy has to be one of the biggest grifts in the history of civilization.
This is all a dream, none of it will happen. The world economy will crash due to this stupid “transition that isn’t “.
Exponential growth can be a hard thing for some people to wrap their heads around. The Photovoltaic industry has kept up an average 38% year on year growth rate over the last two decades, meaning in 2022 it produced 660 times more PV than it did in 2002. Apply that growth rate to the 2022 world battery production of 700 GWh and you get enough production to do a master plan every 6 months. Linear thinkers get surprised by the future every time.
There is an interesting debate on this article in the FaceBook forum Renewable vs Nuclear Debate. Basic innumeracy even from solar advocates who claim to be engineers.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2081763568746983/posts/3449479285308731/
It's all about scale. I often ask people to estimate how many days a billion seconds is after telling them a million seconds is roughly 11days. They are gobsmacked at the answer. People seem to think that FF can be replaced in the background with zero disruption by regressive renewables mainly because, IMO, they have zero understanding of scale.
It’s a fair analysis if Tesla were the only OEM of batteries in the world. But we all know that’s not the case. There are dozens of such OEMs. Your main takeaway / calculation is, therefore, meaningless at best. Recommend you do a little extra work to estimate current and expected total battery manufacturing capacity across all OEMs and then re-calculate your number. Perhaps you’d be better served by focusing on feedstock material shortages instead?