this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2026
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still waiting for someone to demonstrate a more efficient power transfer solution
Solar cells, technically.
boiling water systems have a thermal efficiency of ~40% Solar cells are closer to 45% efficient
Doesn't seem particularly efficient to me... The sun burns hundreds of millions of tons of hydrogen every second. The amount of released energy we actually put to use is indistinguishable from zero, not 45%.
If we put it like that, every other energy source on earth begins that way and adds at least one conversion step.
... except for fusion of course.
Exactly.
Nuclear plants are probably the least efficient, because they required all that fusion energy inside earlier stars to build hydrogen into uranium, and we can only extract a tiny portion of that trapped fusion energy through fission.