Just to make it clear. 80MWh is 80,000 kwh or the same as 800 Tesla Model S P100D. So this is a seriously large battery bank. Tesla will sell many more of these to utilities. Musk say he see growth in this segment to be higher than for batteries for BEVs. It is far less complicated to sell 80MWh battery bank to one utility than 800 different Tesla owners from all over the world with different regulation. The point is that Tesla’s global distribution and services system for battery banks will be far less complex than it is for vehicle sales. Also with regard to service and distribution of battery banks Tesla can use 3rd party local operators to speed up things. This is not possible for vehicles.

EP you are right about what I mean.

I know battery backup can at most handle day to day intermittency from renewables. For seasonal and weekly and monthly intermittencies we need a combination of alternative solutions like 1) renewable hydrogen storage, 2) giant high temp heat sinks, 3) synthetic fuel production in bioreactors using renewable energy, 4) more long-distance transmission lines and 5) smart meters that adjust demand and supply by changing prices minute by minute.

I am all for nuclear power when we can master fusion energy without any radioactive waste. We will get there eventually and we should pour more money into developing that technology than we do today. If we want to expand civilization beyond our solar system (and we should IMO) then fusion power becomes a necessity.

Musk expect electricity to be used to power everything including vehicles and heating so batteries will be needed at countless of electric substations like hundreds of thousands of places in the US in order not to trigger a super costly expansion of the current grid.

EP I know the inner walls of a fusion reactor will be highly radiated and therefore become radioactive itself. However, for what I have read this is not a big problem as the quantity of radioactive material is only a tiny fraction of what it is for fission reactors and it is not as highly radioactive either as some of the stuff that is produced in a fission reactor. We can live with that i.e. dealing with small amounts of low radioactive materials. Also I am getting more confident that fusion energy is not so far away now. We need super fast computers and power electronics that can control the required magnetic fields in the fusion reactor and the laser beams used for starting the fusion and the other machines that eject new hydrogen fuel into the reactor. We did not have that hitherto but now we are getting it enabling much more powerful magnetic fields and laser ignition systems. I will be surprised if we do not have a working fusion reactor by 2035 that produces a large positive amount of net energy and that can be switched on and off like a light ball and only require maintenance once in a few months or even years. I have dreamed about such a machine since I was a 14 years old kid and I will live to see it made.

EP we are not there yet so the quickly decaying inner walls of the current fusion reactor designs is one of the big problems that still needs to be solved. We will figure out how to control the burning plasma and its radiation by using increasingly strong magnetic fields or perhaps new materials that can handle the radiation for longer before it decays. We may also make the reactor volume larger and the quantity of burning hydrogen over time smaller to create more durable inner walls. We definitely have not found an optimal design yet but I am convinced that faster computers and power electronics is key to finding a design that works for practical applications like electricity and heat production.

In space the radiation problem is less of an issue. We could ejecting it into the sun or deep space or create a junk moon with all the stuff we need to be far away from our self. Space X’s work on reusable rockets may fairly soon lead to so low cost for moving stuff into space that we could get permanently rid of the most problematic radioactive waste that way. Off cause some rockets will blow up at or during launch and there should be a system in place that could protect the cargo from leaking even in such cases so it can be rescued and send up and away on another rocket.

I am rather optimistic about making technical solutions for nearly any conceivable problem. We just need to work harder and be more creative. Until the nuclear industry comes up with better ways to deal with radioactive waste I think the least risky alternative is to expand solar and wind power.

Ep I know about neutrons being neutral and have done so since I was 10 years old or so. Neutrons however is not the only reason the inner wall are damaged. All charged particles can be controlled by magnetic field and we are not done on controlling these field so they do zero damage. Moreover, the production of neutrons is a function of how much hydrogen we burn so making a bigger reactor room relative to how much hydrogen we burn will create a more durable wall as more surface will share the beating. However a bigger reactor require stronger magnets. So magnetic fields and neutron decay is related. Don't be a jerk.