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goobster  ·  2899 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Coal is dead, because nobody wants to build coal-fired power plants.

Well, you don't make money off power itself, you make money off making the power available, and on maintaining the lines between privately owned properties.

Same business model as cell phones. You don't charge per call, you charge for access to the network, and then how much of the network you use.

The problem with power is that there is a monopoly in place currently, that controls all the wires and the sources.

If you look back at the Bell Telephone System that i grew up with, it was the same thing. All phones came from one company. If you wanted a telephone in your home, you called Ma Bell, and she installed it and charged you for it.

But the Federal Government broke up Bell into a bunch of different competing companies, and the prices for telephone service plummeted.

Technology then came alone and untethered the phone from the wall, and boom... cell phones, t-mobile, verizon, orange, vodaphone, etc, etc, etc.

There will be a confluence of factors that come together (probably due to Elon Musk grabbing the two things and dragging them near enough to each other that other companies see the opportunity and jump on it), but it is going to be a while because it involves infrastructure costs... materials, holes dug in the ground, and government permits.

It'll happen. It has to.