It is clear that Humans are advancing with technology at a faster and faster pace. This has good points and bad. It is what it is. However, there are a few things on the horizon that are pretty cool and they will have a dramatic effect on us. I wanted to put that info on this website for my own notes as well as giving you some search phrases and links to follow.
Electrification
Everybody wants electricity. Electricity magnifies what a human can do like nothing else. The debate is always about how energy is created. The real problem is that energy cannot be stored at scale. Electricity production has to be matched to energy consumption and cannot be allowed to mismatch. Currently, the US electrical grid has baseload producers like coal and nuclear, Intermittent producers like wind and solar, and then it is all balanced with Gas Turbine Generators. These gas turbines work just like your home generator except they are big jet engines that burn natural gas. Since there is no energy storage, the energy producers have to build for peak loads. This will all change once we can store electricity at scale. The good news is that there are many competing methods for this.
- Liquid metal batteries – essentially these work like electroplating machines that can plate metals back and forth.
- liquid air batteries
- grid storage batteries such as powerpacks
- 2 way charging for cars
- gravity energy storage
Long range distribution. There is currently a project to deliver power from Australia to Singapore using high voltage DC for transmission.