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If you read the report slowly you will see it says practical concept has yet to be proven, then a demonstrator built, then slowly roll into development and production. So many years away yet. Technology evolves, steam engine manufacturers switched to petrol engines, then to gas engines then to diesel now moving back to gas, even hydrogen. AFC may even be building these fusion reactors under licence one day to open up a more diverse product portfolio.
Thanks for that Sprog, excellent read that I hadn't come across yet. Personally, even with this latest discovery, I can't see fusion becoming mainstream for maybe 30 years, and by mainstream I mean begin to be commercially attractive in any sense, just my guess. We're talking about 20 PetaWatt lasers, and people are looking at 200 PetaWatts in the near future, truly mind boggling, we may even skip this latest discovery and move in to nuclear photonics for fusion.
We digress, the future from my perspective is hydrogen, future being minimum 50 years. As public opinion sways on the subject of hydrogen and governments back more and more projects, the buzz word becomes more buzzing. Here is a link to an article suggesting "fuel cell market size worth $33.09 Billion By 2027", quite promising: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/press-release/global-fuel-cell-market
And here are some people predicting the future from 1989: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qStTIX86mhE
No mention of hydrogen sadly, and I find it hard to believe they thought the voice recognition system would approve of his mispronunciation of "Bach".
SprogBarnes, whether they charge in an hour or in seconds, you're still pumping 100s of kW through a system designed for houses with an average of maybe 5 and a peak of 10 to 20. The distribution network would be even more stressed needing a buffer locally that charges slowly at say 50kw, and discharges at 500kw. But this then needs to be massively oversized so there's always fuel in the tank.
From research announced 2 days ago.
"Stationary Fuel Cell Systems Market Projected to be Resilient During 2017 to 2026"
https://www.instanttechnews.com/technology-news/2020/02/21/stationary-fuel-cell-systems-market-projected-to-be-resilient-during-2017-to-2026/
Who cares?
By the time anything turns up, AFC will be a Billion Pound company, and we'll have sold our shares (and many of us quit work because we're now millionaires).
Haggis - I'm not knocking AFC, I'm heavily invested. I'm just pointing out that, as far as I understand it, clean fusion is the holy grail of energy production and it's now been demonstrated. Irrespectively, someone more erudite pointed out that hydrogen would still play a part in clean energy storage mechanism and distribution which is possibility true and good news for us. That said, battery technology and energy production is evolving rapidly and unlike the combustion engine, alkaline fuel cells may not have a window of opportunity lasting 100 years, it may only be 50, 20, 10... who knows, but technological evolution is faster than its ever been so common sense suggests that alternative solutions to AFC's will present themselves sooner rather than later.
(https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pocket-lint.com/gadgets/news/130380-future-batteries-coming-soon-charge-in-seconds-last-months-and-power-over-the-air.amphtml)
" AFC have a window of opportunity that's becoming narrower"
Absolute rubbish.
If anything the window is getting massively wider by the week.
Pay attention to the Hydrogen Economy and EV Charging issues, not irrelevant baseload power generation.
You'll still need to produce and store e as demand increases and decreases so you need medium to store something and convert it back to e. You also still have the problem that whilst this might fix generation it doesn't fix distribution which is where the problem lies, and world require ripping up most of the streets in the UK to fix. I see no problem here.
Thanks BB, good to know it some way off and that clean fusion is possible. It also reiterates that AFC have a window of opportunity that's becoming narrower.
This could scupper our long term future... an interesting read and good for the world - https://newatlas.com/energy/hb11-hydrogen-boron-fusion-clean-energy/