I’m trying to frame it so that it’s completely obvious that energy and power are not fungible by picking a very unequal example. Many people are confused on this point.
Energy is not power. Power is not energy. Just because two things are equal in energy terms does not mean they are equal in power terms.
The relevance of this idea is that it’s fundamentally the same idea that’s baked into the accounting around the green energy transition or other similar ideas. Basically its that “if we had enough horses, we’d have a locomotive” is a clear fallacy.
I think right now we are using 400 years worth of sunlight energy every year in fossil fuels. So yes, If you could make solar panels that are more efficient than photosynthesis, it might make efficiency sense from an engineering standpoint to cover farm fields in solar panels… Like plants are less efficient…
But the bigger question is whether we are even within an order of magnitude on the power side. Like, we are focusing on a very weird metric as if that’s a goal. The REAL goal is the power we need. We need that energy to be delivered as fast as fossil fuels delivers it and converts to work
I should have said, “produce the work energy”
I’m trying to frame it so that it’s completely obvious that energy and power are not fungible by picking a very unequal example. Many people are confused on this point.
Energy is not power. Power is not energy. Just because two things are equal in energy terms does not mean they are equal in power terms.
The relevance of this idea is that it’s fundamentally the same idea that’s baked into the accounting around the green energy transition or other similar ideas. Basically its that “if we had enough horses, we’d have a locomotive” is a clear fallacy.
I think right now we are using 400 years worth of sunlight energy every year in fossil fuels. So yes, If you could make solar panels that are more efficient than photosynthesis, it might make efficiency sense from an engineering standpoint to cover farm fields in solar panels… Like plants are less efficient…
But the bigger question is whether we are even within an order of magnitude on the power side. Like, we are focusing on a very weird metric as if that’s a goal. The REAL goal is the power we need. We need that energy to be delivered as fast as fossil fuels delivers it and converts to work