Casey Handmer

1 month ago | lesswrong.com | Brian Potter |Casey Handmer

Solar has an average capacity factor in the US of about 25%. Naively, you might think that to turn this into a highly-available power source, you just need to have 4x the solar panels, plus enough batteries to store 75% of a day’s worth of power. E.g., for each continuous megawatt you want to supply, you need 4 MW of solar panels, and 18 MWh of batteries. During the day, you supply 1 MW from the panels and use the other 3 MW to charge the batteries.

1 month ago | newsletter.rootsofprogress.org | Jason Crawford |Brian Potter |Casey Handmer

Solar has an average capacity factor in the US of about 25%. Naively, you might think that to turn this into a highly-available power source, you just need to have 4x the solar panels, plus enough batteries to store 75% of a day’s worth of power. E.g., for each continuous megawatt you want to supply, you need 4 MW of solar panels, and 18 MWh of batteries. During the day, you supply 1 MW from the panels and use the other 3 MW to charge the batteries.

Nov 20, 2024 | economist.com | Casey Handmer

The World Ahead | By Invitation: Science & technology in 2025Large-scale production of synthetic fuel is now feasible, argues the founder of Terraform IndustriesBy Casey Handmer, founder of Terraform IndustriesWhat if we could make cheap fuel out of thin air? For more than a century, a bewildering variety of methods has been attempted to make drop-in replacements for fossil fuels.

Oct 18, 2024 | palladiummag.com | Casey Handmer

With the recent SpaceX Starship orbital flight tests, it is time to commit to building the largest physically possible space telescope. Such a telescope would peer deeper into the universe than any before it, answering fundamental questions: are we alone? What do Earth-like exoplanets around other stars look like? How did we get here? What weird stuff awaits discovery? Where is the limit on human ambition to know what is in our universe? The Monster Scope answers these questions.

May 31, 2024 | notboring.co | Casey Handmer |Daniel McCormick

Hi friends 👋,Happy Friday and welcome back to our 96th Weekly Dose of Optimism. The verdict is in. The jury found us guilty on all 34 counts
 😔 
 of being too optimistic about the dope stuff humans keep pulling off 😄 Lock us up!Anywho
 the best thing about long weekends is short work weeks. This one went by quickly, but thankfully was still jammed packed with some optimistic news. Let’s get to it.