Related posts

Economics writer; author of the Noahpinion newsletter.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  China scaled solar and batteries when America refused to because the CCP got scared of climate change.

  solarChinaAmerica

  Their words

  China scaled solar and batteries when America refused to, because the CCP got scared of climate change.

  @Noahpinion on Xx.com

Writer and climate campaigner; wrote The End of Nature in 1989, founded 350.org and Third Act, and writes The Crucial Years.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Rapidly building out cheap solar, wind and battery capacity is currently the one climate action the world knows how to execute at scale.

  solar

  Their words

  there is actually one thing we do know how to do, and that is build out lots of cheap solar, wind, and batteries.

  Facts on the groundbillmckibben.substack.com

Economics writer; author of the Noahpinion newsletter.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Solar power combined with batteries has surpassed nuclear power as the superior energy technology for most uses.

  solarenergy

  Their words

  Because solar has, broadly speaking, won the technological race. Intermittency was the last big problem, and batteries have gotten good and cheap enough to make solar reliable.

  Why you won’t get a flying carnoahpinion.blog

Founded SpaceX in 2002, joined Tesla's board in 2004 and became its chief executive in 2008; later founded Neuralink, The Boring Company and xAI. Bought Twitter in 2022 and renamed it X, where he now posts many times a day.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The binding constraint on AI is not chips but the physical plant around them — power, transformers, cooling and networking.

  Their words

  Consensus estimate is that ~15GW of AI compute produced in 2027 cannot be turned on in 2027. This is harder than just finding power, as you also need to build out all the transformers, wiring, liquid-cooling, (massive) chillers & complex networking.

  @elonmusk on Xx.com

Writer and climate campaigner; wrote The End of Nature in 1989, founded 350.org and Third Act, and writes The Crucial Years.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Battery storage is becoming the defining transformative energy technology of the second half of the 2020s, as solar and wind were of the first half.

  solarenergy

  Their words

  Batteries are the transformative technology for the second half of this decade, as sun and wind were for the first half

  Fun with numbersbillmckibben.substack.com

Founder and chief analyst of SemiAnalysis; reports on semiconductor supply chains, AI datacentre economics and what the chip export controls actually do.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  About a fifth of the US grid could be freed for data centres just by covering the yearly peak with batteries or peaker plants.

  data centers

  Their words

  Then all of a sudden, you've unlocked 20% of the US grid for data centers because most of the times that capacity is sitting idle and it's really only there for that peak, right? Which is a day or two, right?

  youtube.com

Founder of Terraform Industries and formerly a physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory; writes about energy, space and manufacturing.

• Our reading nowkorrents.com

  Batteries will replace transmission as the cheapest way to keep the lights on, and the grid will shrink rather than grow.

  energy

  Their words, before

  we will see batteries aggressively displace transmission as the most cost-effective way to ensure continuity of electricity supply, leading to an eventual pruning of the grid and drastic reduction in the average distance that power travels between production and consumption, even as the average time that power is stored increases.

  Their words now

  Do we need to drastically expand the grid in order to metabolize renewables? No.

Founder of Terraform Industries and formerly a physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory; writes about energy, space and manufacturing.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Batteries will replace transmission as the cheapest way to keep the lights on, and the grid will shrink rather than grow.

  energy

  Their words

  Do we need to drastically expand the grid in order to metabolize renewables? No.

  Energy Predictions 2025caseyhandmer.wordpress.com

Mac and iOS developer at the Iconfactory, where he has worked on apps including Twitterrific and Tot. He writes about development at furbo.org.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A major new interface redesign takes roughly a year of refinement before it looks presentable.

  Their words

  Liquid Glass is currently in a barely presentable state on iOS. It's going to be like iOS 7 and take another year to sand down the rough edges.

  One Size Does Not Fit Allfurbo.org

Founder of Terraform Industries and formerly a physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory; writes about energy, space and manufacturing.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Nobody will finance new gas turbine factories, because paying one off takes twenty years of a market that solar and batteries will already have taken.

  solar

  Their words

  You you also don't know like in order to make that money back, you have to then operate that plant at that capacity for 20 years, right? And if I was looking at the same charts as they're looking at right now, I'd say what are the odds that in 25 years time we can produce gas turbines at a price that is relevant in a world where solar is already at its current price and batteries at a price where they're already like you cannot win.

  youtube.com

Co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, and a 2024 Nobel laureate in Chemistry for the protein-structure work behind AlphaFold.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Fusion and solar are the two energy sources worth betting on, and solar's limiting problem is batteries and transmission.

  solarenergy

  Their words

  I think fusion and solar are the two that I would bet on. Solar, I mean it's the fusion reactor in the sky of course, and I think really the problem there is batteries and transmission.

  youtube.com

Data scientist at Our World in Data and author of Not the End of the World. Writes By the Numbers, working through energy and climate questions with the numbers in front of them, and revising in public when they say something unexpected.

From one piece Why are solar panels and batteries from China so cheap? 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  High electricity prices are what is killing European industrial competitiveness.

  energyEurope

  Their words

  Another factor that is killing Europe’s competitiveness — not just for batteries but for many industrial products — is the high electricity costs.

  sustainabilitybynumbers.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Chinese solar panels and batteries are cheap because of automation and a honed supply chain, not because of cheap labour.

  solarChina

  Their words

  But, China mainly dominates these markets because it has produced a long-term industrial strategy for these technologies and has honed an optimised, modern supply chain as a result.

  sustainabilitybynumbers.com

Founder of Terraform Industries and formerly a physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory; writes about energy, space and manufacturing.

From one piece Solar and batteries for generic use cases 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Below about a thousand dollars a kilowatt of capital cost, the right way to run a plant is intermittently on raw solar with no batteries at all.

  solar

  Their words

  For loads below $1000/kW, intermittent operation with some modest solar array oversizing is the winning strategy. Above $1000/kW, we charge and discharge batteries daily to run them.

  Solar and batteries for generic use casescaseyhandmer.wordpress.com

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Past a point it is cheaper to overbuild solar than to add batteries, because a battery kept for the rare bad day is barely used.

  solar

  Their words

  A battery that’s discharging every day gets great utilization, but one that’s only there in case the sun doesn’t come up for two days in a row, barely gets used.

  Solar and batteries for generic use casescaseyhandmer.wordpress.com

Structural engineer and senior infrastructure fellow at the Institute for Progress; writes Construction Physics on why physical things cost what they cost.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Air cooling has run out of headroom for AI racks, so liquid cooling is now a requirement rather than an upgrade.

  Their words

  Conventional air cooling is likely limited to around 20 to 30 kilowatt racks, perhaps 50 kilowatts if rear heat exchangers are used.

  How to Build an AI Data Centerconstruction-physics.com

Engineer writing about the physical economy — oil and gas, manufacturing, batteries, drones and what it costs to build things.

From one piece How to Make Off Grid Data Centers Affordable 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Air cooling has run out of headroom for AI racks, so liquid cooling is now a requirement rather than an upgrade.

  Their words

  AI servers bring new challenges because many require liquid cooling.

  How to Make Off Grid Data Centers Affordableaustinvernon.site

• Our readingkorrents.com

  A data centre powered by solar and batteries alone needs an array so oversized that the design is not worth building.

  solardata centers

  Their words

  The solar array sizes under these assumptions are prohibitively large.

  How to Make Off Grid Data Centers Affordableaustinvernon.site

Semiconductor analyst; writes Fabricated Knowledge on the chip industry and the companies in it.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  Air cooling has run out of headroom for AI racks, so liquid cooling is now a requirement rather than an upgrade.

  Their words

  The critical change that makes this all possible is liquid cooling.

  fabricatedknowledge.com

Writer and researcher on China, technology and industry; author of Breakneck, research fellow at Stanford, known for a widely read annual letter.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  China's industrial lead was manufactured by deliberate state industrial policy rather than by market forces alone.

  China

  Their words

  The foundations of China’s success in EVs were built a decade ago, when the state decided to bet on batteries, and then bought up a lot of the mines for these metals.

  2023 letterdanwang.co

Aeronautical engineer and former fighter pilot; analyses aircraft design and airline economics at Leeham News.

• Our readingkorrents.com

  The multicopter air taxi is energy-intensive by construction, which holds its range to about twenty miles however good the batteries get.

  energy

  Their words

  The drone-like architecture of the multicopters is simple, but as the rotors are responsible for keeping the unit at a constant altitude with hover power, they represent an energy-intensive version of VTOLs. Their range is, therefore, short, typically less than 20 miles.

  leehamnews.com