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Comment by Thoeu388 | Hacker News Reader

If this is true, I wonder what it does with western corporate green agenda. There are huge money invested in it. Cheap superconductor would change a lot.

Similar situation was when EU banned incandescent light bulbs. Many manufactures (mainly western based) lobbied to have them banned, in favor of fluorescent light bulbs. However cheap LEDs were developed and eat their lunch.

If this superconductor is true, it means major power shift from central government, to local community! Distributed smart electric grids. Electric cars manufactured in a garage...

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> it means major power shift from central government, to local community! Distributed smart electric grids.

It doesnt even go that far. If it leads to cheaper, safer and denser battery tech, so many people will chose to invest in their own homes and not pay the huge fees for electricity and gas. Electric cars only sweeten the deal even further.

Wouldn't it have the opposite effect, of massive centralization?

If you can make a perfectly superconducting electric grid, then it's better to build power plants in a single optimal location (e.g. nuclear power plants in an isolated area with no environmental risks) and deliver to the whole world via superconducting wires.

Energy loses on wires are like 10% per 1000 miles.

But energy bill from central government is bundled with many taxes (like 50%). For example:

- CO2 emission tax

- BBC license (or local equivalent), like paying CNN every year...

- subsidy tax for oil energy complex

- loyalty tax for pensioners

- subsidy tax for current war policy....

Setting aside the fact that things like BBC have nothing to do with energy taxes...

Let's say there are X things government currently funds thanks to energy taxes, and overnight everybody stops paying for energy - do you think government's wouldn't just increase other taxes if they needed to make up for lost revenue?

These seem like completely different problems, and your wishing you paid less taxes doesn't mean the world can't move to better energy systems.

Lobbying by companies who make money under the current system and who aren't best places to react to developments is the biggest roadblock, not government fearing the loss of energy taxes.

In some countries BBC tax is auto bundled into energy bills. You have to optout.

> X things government currently funds thanks to energy taxes

Government can do whatever it wants. That is not my problem, I do not care. But right now they can disconnect me from power grid to enforce their BS.

If I generate my own power grid, have my own sheriffs, my own protection...

Sure buddy, you do that. Hire your own sheriffs and they'll defend you against the mean central government.

Please don't respond by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse.

"Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

No. A superconducting grid will mean the end of nuclear, because you can just put renewables in a really wide geographical area and transfer power arbitrarily. It'll fix the problem with intermittency entirely.

If we move into "light science fiction" area, we can imagine setting up a global grid, so that there's always sun shining over solar panels somewhere in the world. Or maybe allowing countries like Chile to provide energy accumulation services by pumping seawater up the Andes.

Geopolitics would like to have a word, unfortunately.

I would love to have a superconducting energy storage device, where I could store up all the excess summer solar power (60ºN, 20h/day) to feed to the heat pump the rest of the year. But I'd bury it, to contain the damage in case it breaks down. Would it need a Faraday cage too ? So many questions.

Don't understimate the ability of the big energy corporations to find a way to profit from this. Greed always finds a way.

I genuinely can't figure out the point you're trying to make.

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