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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (1061402)	3/21/2018 2:52:44 PM
From: RetiredNow	1 Recommendation Recommended By Mick Mørmøny Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575583

I've always been in favor of that MIT study that said we could build a 10mi squared solar power plant in our US Western deserts, where no one but the Sun lives and once connected to the Grid would provide 100% of US power needs. Wouldn't that be cool? They estimated it would cost $100B. We just gave the military $117B more per year in their annual budget. Imagine if we had used that to invest in our renewable infrastructure instead? Even without a subsidy like that, I think the march of renewables has already reached a tipping point. Entrepreneurs will keep improving the tech and getting innovative on how to make money. The more the technology gets distributed, the more this will outpace fossil fuels. Speaking of distributed, this very well may be the killer feature of renewables. If our Grid was modern and was two-way, everywhere, just like the Internet, then renewables would rule. Individuals all over the US could figure out how to become energy independent, especially in homes where they plan to live in for a long time. I did the analysis on my home and I can break even in 7 years. And that's without state or local subsidies (I live in a very conservative state). Can you imagine me trying to build a fossil fuel or nuclear plant on my house to do the same thing? Not possible. Fossil fuels simply can't compete in that way. Fossil fuels will always be centralized, whereas, renewable fuels are perfect for a decentralized model, just like the Internet. In the end, that might be the deciding factor on which one wins in the long run. BTW, I'm for a free market in energy. I do not believe in restrictions on where we can drill, although I do believe in penalties and legislation to force energy companies to clean up messes they create. I also do not believe in subsidies either for fossil fuel companies or renewable energy companies, or for ethanol producers on corn farms. I believe in ZERO subsidies and a level playing field for new tech to emerge and compete. Having said all that, I do think we need to rebuild our electric grid to modernize it with state of the art security, hardened against solar storms, lower energy loss over long distances, two way electricity enabling a distributed, decentralized model where homeowners can make their own energy and net it out from consumption before billing, and protections from predatory incumbents.