"Fusion power has the potential to rewrite trillion-dollar energy markets, but first, startups have to prove their designs will work and won't be too costly. Neither is easy, especially when considering the massive magnets and lasers used in many designs must be installed with millimeter precision or better. Fusion startup Thea Energy says it's pixel-inspired reactor and specialized control software should be able to generate power without requiring the same level of perfection."
""It doesn't have to be as good to begin with," Brian Berzin, co-founder and CEO of Thea Energy, told TechCrunch. "We have a way to tune out imperfections on the back end." That margin of error could give Thea a leg up on the competition. Fusion power plants promise to deliver gigawatts of clean power to the grid, but material and construction costs threaten to make them uncompetitive with cheap solar and wind."
Thea Energy proposes a pixel-inspired stellarator that uses a dozen large magnets and hundreds of smaller ones to form a virtual magnetic confinement geometry. The design couples hardware with specialized control software that tunes out magnetic and alignment imperfections, reducing the need for millimeter-level installation precision. The approach intends to allow iterative software improvements after building a working power plant, potentially lowering material and construction costs that could otherwise make fusion uncompetitive with cheap solar and wind. The company has published design and physics details and plans to build a prototype to validate the concept.
Read at TechCrunch
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