Scenario: Aliens gift humanity some mega power plant that runs off a black hole or some shit. Maybe it’s a quantum time battery or perpetual motion machine, whatever.
If we plopped it somewhere on Earth, could humanity build infrastructure across the globe to provide everyone with near unlimited clean electricity?
Nah we’d boil water to spin turbines on a long steam pipe lol. It’s a proven technology and way less difficult than manufacting superconductors with no defects in bulk and keeping them cold.
That would be an alarmingly large steam pipe but I don’t know enough about steam pipes to say exactly how alarmingly large
Only to spread out the energy for use. Hydraulic and steam power has been routed through cities in the past which is a more complex problem.
I suspect you’d be quite surprised at how much energy you can push through a pipe carrying steam. It’s the fundamental technology behind most powerplants. Steam in a pipe can easily handle Gigawatts in nuclear powerplants.
Getting energy out of anything concentrated is hard, but steam is cheap and holds a lot of energy.