Increasing energy efficiency is a win win since it also saves you $$. :tup:

Fusion is much more efficient than fission but hasn’t been scalable up beyond the lab yet, we really need to push that since the waste is so much vastly reduced. Iirc, South Korea is leading the world in nuclear fusion development which is bs, USA should be working way harder on this.

Longer term a hydrogen powered economy is the real sustainable solution that won’t handicap amount of power production but again, we need to figure out how to produce hydrogen on a large scale w/o still using fossil fuels.

Solar is definitely a great addition in certain areas and like hotrodz said, eventually in the south west and Florida, every roof should have it. We also need technological breakthroughs regarding solar panel efficiency as well.

Basically we just have engineering and tech barriers which I’m bullish our country can overcome within the next decade or two.

In the meantime, we have plenty of oil and especially natural gas to bridge the gap without resorting to a omg, the sky is falling mentality, looking at you lefties. :shakes head::shakes head:

stay warm boys and girls, its mucho frio in much of the country.

:iagree::icon17:

I just couldn't pass it up especially since my motor has to come out anyway. And the good thing is, my sc kit is already sold as soon as I pull it out of the car. I had guys that wanted to pick it up today and/or give me a deposit to hold it for them

You service the women dude. WTH!!!!

Don't hold your breath on fusion. It won't happened in our life time. Take too much energy to produce it. You put more in then what you get out. My reading on it. They say 2025, then turn around and then say 2030, then 2035. :icon14:

Think hydrogen is closer. It's the prefect fuel. Hydrogen and oxygen, and you get water for the by product. The problem now is that it still takes more energy to produce it. They are working on hydrogen generators to produce it cheap enough. The one draw back is when it burns. You can't see the flame. You could walk into it and not know it until you feel the heat and burn. We used it at the power plant to cool the generators. Talk about safety precautions. :eek:

Solar, you HAVE to keep the panels clean. If they are in a dusty area. You will have maintenance people that their only job is to keep the panels clean. Anything on the panels WILL cut down their output a lot.

I thought I was doing something wrong :eek:

My research came to the same conclusions re. hydrogen and fusion. I agree that hydrogen as a viable answer is probably 10-20 years out and is our best bet. :tup::tup:

Fusion is going to be essential for Mars and asteroid belt colonization though. We can’t talk about large scale power production in those environments or reliability powering deeper space craft (getting too far from the sun) without it.

Since there are 100s of trillions of dollars to be made in this space, I’m confident the technical hurdles will get cracked. :tup:

Never underestimate greed. It’s the not so secret sauce to our (capitalism’s) greatness.

Still alive here. We made it thru the sub-teen temps but lost power last night around 8p. Thankfully it’s been reasonable, hovered between 28-35* today. Power came back around 6p today. Think they are rolling blackouts to give everyone a little warmth in the house.

Really sucks to take PTO to sit here with no power.

Damn. Stay safe I’m thinking warm thoughts for ya. :tup:

I guess I got it good on that part. Work will bring me a portable 35kw if need be. No PTO taking for me either. Had to do it several years ago after a hurricane. They took care of all of us.

The initial rolling blackout was announced to be 15-45 min each round....but that literally became hours at a time within 24hrs Texans were warned. Now we are told to conserve water (don't do long hot shower, dishes, laundry) and natural gas....wtf like we going back to stone age...

On the flip side, I got to demonstrate to the wife driving on snow vs dry, then snow vs ice, in the family sedan. She's never driven on snow or ice before. The family car still has RE11's on (didn't switch to all-season this winter) the most mundane driving became the utmost difficult task.

Now the wifey knows.

That's why I have a small generator, 55 gal drum of gas, and 2 kerosene heaters with 25 gals of kerosene. Plus 6 oil lamps and big candles. :tup:

get me a FI kit duude.:rofl2:

damn dude, hang in there bud.