"Nature" reports the end of a Google sponsored effort to obtain cold fusion. No fusion has been registered in a highly controlled experiment.
Tullio

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World's Largest Nuclear Fusion Experiment Clears Milestone
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, the world’s first commercial-scale fusion reactor project, is on track to officially launch operations at the end of 2025. After First Plasma, it will take another 10 years until it reaches full deuterium-tritium operations.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/worlds-largest-nuclear-fusion-experiment-clears-milestone/

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Apr 3, 1999 - May 3, 2020

ITER will not produce and electricity, only consume it, provided by the 54 nuclear fission reactors of France. Electricity should be produced by a Demo reactor to be built after ITER.
Tullio

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ITER will not produce and electricity, only consume it, provided by the 54 nuclear fission reactors of France. Electricity should be produced by a Demo reactor to be built after ITER.
Tullio

There is produce energy and then there is capture the energy produced and put it on the grid. Hopefully it will produce more energy than it consumes even if they don't attempt to capture any of it.

Acording to "Nature Energy" of August China in 2018 has reached 175 GW of photovoltaic installed power, surpassing the 115 GW of Europe. How many will China have in 2035?
Tullio

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What is the cost per Kilowatt hour and what do they charge for it. (China and Europe). Also what do they do at night and on cloudy days.

What is the cost per Kilowatt hour and what do they charge for it. (China and Europe). Also what do they do at night and on cloudy days.

I doubt that the Gobi desert has many cloudy days. As to night they do what everyone does and shut off the peaking plants.

There are batteries to store electricity. A friend of mine here in Rodano has a photovoltaic roof and when he does not need the electricity it produces he sells it to the State utility (Enel). You must be connected to a smart grid.
Tullio

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Unfortunately, solar photovoltaic has life expectancy of about 30 years.

Unfortunately, solar photovoltaic has life expectancy of about 30 years.

A nuclear fission reactor too.
Tullio

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Solar panels will require cleaning and the dependence of a grid; or massive batteries (maybe the ones in your electric cars. )

3 kilowatt hours may not cut it if you have electric heat, hot water and stoves.

Since we can't seem to manage very well building Fission Nuclear reactors now due to our own red tape and incompetency , I sincerely doubt that there will ever be commercial fusion reactors in a hundred lifetimes.

I would install photo voltaic shingles on my roof when they become available and look just like ordinary shingles if the added cost would payout in 5 years. How is the legislation going that requires power companies tom pay the highest alternative costs to power sold back to the grid.

Solar panels will require cleaning and the dependence of a grid; or massive batteries (maybe the ones in your electric cars. )

Is there a problem in the US to connect to a grid that not only sell energy to you but also buy energy from you when you have a surplus?
Not being connected to a grid using solar panels doesn't pay off in most part of the world when not being able to sell the surplus and not being able to get energy when there is no sun.
In Sweden most users of solar panels are connected to a grid for obvious reasons.
But the investment cost to install solar panels are quite high and you cannot expect to get break even before 10 years.

To be correct in an economic sense three things must be addressed.
The cost of connecting to the infrastructure, ie the line to your house whether you are only going one way or in and out. that should be a line item on your bill.
You should pay the retail price for the electricity you use from the grid, a second line item.
The utility should pay you the same rate as is the cost of other energy they get, why should they pay more for home generated energy than they do from other sources?

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Strange. Here we don't have any infrastructural problem. No need to build extra lines.
You have to be connected to the concessional electricity grid though but almost everyone is.
"You who produce your own electricity in any form, whether it is solar, wind or hydro energy, are an electricity producer. You are most likely to generate more electricity during periods than you waste. We are happy to buy back your surplus!" says our electrical companies.

There is the issue of what the Utility Company must pay you for kilowatt-hours delivered back to the grid. It used to be --at least in some areas of the U.S.-- that the price was the cost of their most expensive source of energy. This was typically more than the consumer rate per kwh.

Another concern is that in times of outages where men are working on the electric lines there can be no dangerous backloading of the grid from solar or other generators when the assumption is that the lines are dead for repair or down during a wind or ice storm.

In many countries it is a requirement that 'domestic' elwctricity producers have an automtic disconnect which isolates the incoming mains supply from the domestic generator in the event of a mains outage. Local rules will determine the exact timing of breaking and remaking the connection.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

On October 3 the UK Government has announced a plan to build a Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production with an initial financing of 270 million dollars. It should start producing energy in the Forties. It remains to be seen if UK shall go on supporting the ITER project in France, which has already cost 15 billion dollars. Also the fate of JET, the Joint European Torus near Culham, Oxfordshire, which is financed by the European Community, is in doubt after Brexit. I found this news on "Nature" magazine.
Tullio

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Pardon me for being a luddite, but: I feel this money could have been much much better spent on Fast breeder reactor technology. Perhaps it could be spent on developing safe, quick, economical modular fission reactors so that we will have an abundant energy supply for the future where fossil plants and fossil fuel automobiles may be legislated out of existence.

I think that these efforts on Fusion are equivalent to tilting at windmills or searching for the Holy Grail. I feel that reasonable scientists would dismiss fusion just on the face of it being extraordinarily difficult to contain and control. What a sweet gig to be mucking around in the lab for 20 + years drawing a good salary while chasing rainbows and promising results at a time when you won't be around to answer why not.

There was a prototype fast breeder in Detroit, the Enrico Fermi. There is a book on it, "The day we almost lost Detroit". The Superphenix fast breeder in France was shut down because the liquid sodium which was its cooling fluid had corroded the steel pipes. Nobel prize winner Emilio Segre' told me in Como: breeders are a folly. The Italian state utility Enel had spent much money on Superphenix.
Tullio

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Now Great Britain enters the match for fusion with the Spherical Tokamak Energy Producer, announced by the British Gov on October 3. The first financing is 200 million pounds, and it should produce electricity in 2040 if all goes s planned.It is a more compact design than ITER, which has a doughnut shape, and should be 10 meters wide. But 200 million pounds is just to start it. Good luck, Great Britain!
Tullio

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