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On February 16th 2024 Wendy and I set-forth on a 20 day trip, revisiting old haunts in SE Asia.
From Hong Kong we made a brief side-trip to Shenzhen in China then embarked on a Cruise, sailing down the east coast, south, to Singapore where we spent a few days, before returning home: [Hong Kong; Ha Long Bay/Hanoi; Hoi An; Ho Chi Min City (Saigon); Bangkok; Ko Samui; Singapore]
In June 2018 we travelled to China before joining an organised tour in Central Asia that, except for a sojourn in the mountains of Tajikistan, followed in the footsteps of Marco Polo along the Great Silk Road.
Several times past I've begun to read Moby Dick. It's one of the classic books I freely downloaded to my Kindle from 'Project Gutenberg'. Yet, each time, soon after reading: "Call me Ishmael" I put it down in frustration: at the flowery language and depressing imagery of the opening chapters. It's not Treasure Island.
As the energy is essentially free, renewable electricity costs, like those of nuclear electricity, are almost entirely dependent on the up-front construction costs and the method of financing these. Minimising the initial investment, relative to the expected energy yield, is critical to commercial viability. But revenue is also dependent on when, and where, the energy can be delivered to meet the demand patterns of energy consumers.
For example, if it requires four times the capital investment in equipment to extract one megawatt hour (1 MWh) of useable electricity from sunlight, as compared to extracting it from wind, engineers need to find ways of quartering the cost of solar capture and conversion equipment; or increasing the energy converted to electricity fourfold; to make solar directly competitive.
