
Green ‘Moon Shot’ Not Possible, Physicist Tells NERC Forum - paulkon
https://www.rtoinsider.com/nerc-reliability-leadership-summit-113060/
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hairytrog
Efficiency of solar or wind doesn't have to come exclusively from improved
conversion efficiency - that is from taking advantage of all the photons and
all the wind. Efficiency gains also come from using less material for the same
harvesting area. He is likely right that once you're in the 50% efficiency
range, you can't get 10x conversion improvements. And when you are already at
tens of micron thicknesses in the key materials, you can't expect to go much
further.

This is not the case for nuclear where energy density is not the problem at
all, and semiconductor magic has yet to be applied in the solid-state power
conversion realm (i.e. generating megawatts via thermionic devices).

