"The primary argument against fusion power has been that despite decades of work, it still doesn’t exist"
I'd bet on thermal solar, that is proven to work. Also smart energy management with wind and solar are all proven to work. Electric cars have big batteries which are proven to work as energy storage.
It's far safer to not make bets: diversity in power generation is much better. I can't think of a reason why we wouldn't pursue each to the full. That way, a single natural disaster can't bring down the power grid; no hurricane or cloudy month or downed plant.
I know, there are several viable alternatives that would cost much less than the equivalent in fusion. Simply putting solar on most rooftops at about $20K per install would probably create a huge surplus in existing electric generation.
That said, I favor the continued R&D and I hope one of these approaches pans out. Research is rarely wasted.
Depends on the fusion. UW's approach would be cheaper than coal, Helion projects a price of 4 cents/kWh, and focus fusion would be absurdly cheap if it worked out.
This problem is already solved from a technical perspective: It is now possible to buy durable and reliable >10kWh battery packs to install in residential solar setups. The only remaining issue is volume production and cost.
We'll see what happens once Tesla's new battery plant is up and running in a few years, my money is on this being a game-changer.
The biggest solar installation in existence is a 392 Mw plant in the Mojave Desert that cost about $5.00/watt capacity (which works out to $10.00/watt considering that it doesn't work at night).
That's about twice as much per watt as coal.
It produces electricity at a wholesale cost of about 14 cents per kilowatt hour. The average retail cost of electricity in the United States is about 13 cents. It's an interesting experiment, but no, it doesn't make economic sense.
That's for a measly 392 Mw plant. A large coal plant cranks out 5 Gw, and a large hydro plant can be up to 20 Gw. We don't have that many Mojave Deserts, dude. Not to mention what the environmentalists are going to say if we start covering any substantial fraction of the Mojave Desert with solar plants (this one alone covers 3,000 acres of land).
Wind, with or without batteries, involves similar costs, unreliability, and land use problems, and batteries in general are one of the most environmentally nasty technologies we have.
I'd bet on thermal solar, that is proven to work. Also smart energy management with wind and solar are all proven to work. Electric cars have big batteries which are proven to work as energy storage.