I explained this to my oldest when he learned about the steam engine and how cool it was. When I told him it was the peak in power he was like "but we have nuclear and gas" and I told him that nuclear power is basically just a super charged steam engine, and nuclear rods boil water better than coal or gasoline, but it's basically a steam engine. I went over how gasoline in cars was basically the same, but instead of steam, it used tiny explosions. We watched a few how it's made type videos.

We're honestly almost past that at this point. Solar is devouring the world. Total global electricity production capacity is about 10 TW. China is currently producing 1 TW of panels annually. And the panels are still getting better and the prices are still dropping. We will quickly reach the point where the vast majority of global electricity production is solar, and everything else is a rounding error.

There just isn't going to be any reason to build fusion plants. Maybe in the distant future colonies in the outer solar system and beyond will use them. But for anything inward of Mars, solar is the way to go. Solar+batteries is already, in 2026, the cheapest form of baseload power available. Material limitations are not a problem with modern battery chemistries. Daily swings in power demand will be solved by batteries. And we simply won't have to worry about seasonal power swings. We'll build enough solar panels to meet all our winter needs. We'll build enough to power our cities during the coldest, cloudiest months. And then the rest of they year we'll have super-abundant dirt cheap power.

The future is one of vast energy abundance. We're going to find all sorts of ways to use energy that we've never even dreamed of before - mostly to take advantage of the abundance of dirt cheap energy we'll have during all but the coldest months.

The days the steam engine are numbered. With the exception of remote polar outposts, everything's going solar. It's simply the cheapest most abundant form of energy we've ever discovered. Nothing can match it.

Turns out heat engines are like... pretty good at turning arbitrary energy sources into useful work! Who knew!

Why do I have an overwhelming urge to climb that

Better solar power extractor.

Its even more metal they heat salt that heats water to spin the turbine. This keeps the power generation well after sun down.

Although they're falling out of use these days, both because they're not very environmentally friendly on account of being instant bird death-rays, and also because regular solar panels are cheap enough that it's not worth it to make a big thermosolar plant.

Ahkshually, those tend to boil salt...which is later used to boil water.

Link with description for those who are unaware of this like me

https://cleantechnica.com/2026/01/01/china-built-a-supercritical-co%E2%82%82-generator-that-doesnt-mean-it-will-last/

Heat pumps are the next evolution of the "it's just steam again isn't it?" meme.

All that yet microwaves still leave my burrito frozen in the center.

BOY TO I HAVE NEWS FOR YOU!

And then use the solar panels to power a water boiler.

People are essentially internal combustion engines that burn food. Trying to capture that energy in ways that increases the load on us just causes us to need more calories. That's counter productive as you could just burn said food itself to get energy, and agriculture is an energy and environmentally intensive industry to begin with.