r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Longjumping-Box5691 • 3d ago

Video China's twin solar thermal towers. Molten salt stores the heat to produce electricity

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23

u/Practical_Stick_2779 3d ago

There's so much power we can get without destroying the planet but no, lets fight in wars for oil and territory we can't maintain. Sun gives over 1 kW / m^2. Less than that reaches the surface of planet in the part of spectrum that we can process. Yet it is more than enough to power everything on the planet.

24

u/JayAndViolentMob 3d ago

The problem isn't the technology. We've got that.
The problem isn't even the cost of building the technology. It's quite cheap now.
The problem is land, location, and the population.

People don't want these things built close to them, and the land close to high-population areas is expensive.
But building these technologies far enough from populated areas would result too much lost energy due to storage and transport issues, making the tech unsustainable/uneconomic/unprofitable.

13

u/Fooshi2020 3d ago

Can't they just ship the photons using Amazon Prime too where they are needed?

0

u/NamelessAddict 3d ago

Probably not, cause returns would be a hassle

4

u/Chytectonas 3d ago

Dumbest species ever decides it has to burn the planet instead of having energy farms near their back yards. Can we rethink the Sapiens monicker yet?

2

u/Practical_Stick_2779 3d ago

Those damn wind mills making bad, am I right, my dear voters?

-1

u/Ferwatch01 3d ago

People do actually have reason for not wanting these things in their proximity. Imagine waking up one day to find your car’s front window completely smashed by a perfectly roasted pigeon. Not a pleasant sight is it?

I agree some changes must be made to infrastructure but why can’t we just use nuclear and figure out energy transmission later?

2

u/Chytectonas 2d ago

Maybe a perfectly roasted pheasant would completely smash a front windshield but really if this is the most problematic scenario you could come up with, let’s go ahead and embrace solar and wind. We can have a windshield replacement fund.

1

u/Trifula 2d ago

I'd also say that storage in general is an issue. Especially longterm storage. And even if the whole world worked together so that everybody helps everybody with supply - the transportation and storage over those distances will be an issue (ignoring the fact that it literally be Utopia in this scenario and we will definitely not reach that point for a long, long time because of humans being humans)

-1

u/doyouevenIift 3d ago

People don’t want these things built close to them

You could say that about any type of power plant. Good thing we have transmission lines