On Jan 11, 2008 4:24 PM, Doyle Saylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Greetings Economists, > On Jan 11, 2008, at 3:48 PM, Gar Lipow wrote: > > > It is a very hopeful thing, but not > > something you can put an ETA on. > > Doyle; > They demonstrated it could be fabricated using chip techniques.
Yeah, but what they demonstrated is something that can't produce easily usable electricity - not even easily converted electricity. So they what they can fabricate using chip techniques is not a useful product. But it is still very hopeful. The problem does not seem difficult to overcome. From what they said, all they will need to do is build a capacitor into each chip. It just that this is the sort of thing whose outcome is hard to anticipate. Maybe they will solve with no problem; maybe it will be harder than they think and take a decade. Hope, but don't expect too much. That said you are right that a renewalbe grid is possible with todays technology; a combination of wind electricity, solar thermal, and a HVDC lines could provide reliable electricty at a price comparable to that of new nuclear power plants. Solar PV would currently be a bit more expensive -- though some of the stuff in the pipeline makes it look as though the cheap PV that is just around the corner may actually be around the corner. We've heard that song before though. The immediate thing would to put money, and regulation into increasing efficiency massively and quickly. Put in place the long distance DC lines we will need regardless of solution adapted. Put up massive amounts of wind, because that is now a mature technology. Encourage more solar thermal. Start building mass transit; start restoring our freight rail system. Put in place requirements for all new automobiles and light trucks to be able to travel at least the first 50 miles on electricity; require that they use that electricity efficiently. If they are plug hybrids rather than pure electric vehicles require that they meet strong efficiency standards for both the electric and fuel portions. Put money into getting solar PV over the hump. Offer a billion dollar a year purchase for any solar panels (not cells/panels) offered at $1 per watt with a 20 year performance guarantee. Pour money into improving batteries. In the meantime deploy some of the strorage techniques we already know how to do. Yes continue to try and develop hydrogen. But hydrogen (in my opinion) will take a long long time before it makes sense for automobiles - if ever. But it may make sense as a general electricity storage if we develop variable renewable sources that are 2 cents per kWh or lower. If that 80% efficent solar panel proves viable, or if those Flying Electric Generators that are supposed to produce wind electricity for 2 cents per kWh ever prove more than a pipe dream, then hydrogen might make sense just as a way to change cheap variable electricity into moderately priced electricity available when you want it. (With 2 cents per kWh electricity, and some breakthroughs in electrolyzers that seem pretty near term, we could produce hydrogen competitive with natural gas. If we could not produce cheap fuel cells to use that hydrogen we could produce combined cycle turbines similar to those used to burn natural gas. Burning hydrogen in turbines designed to run on natural gas is problematic - but the changes in design are not major ones, mainly a matter of adjusting to the fact that hydrogen contains fewer BTUs per cubic feet than natural gas but more BTUs per pound, and that hydrogen is more corrosive than natural gas -- in other words making certain parts out of other materials, and adapting to the need for a higher volume of gas per unit of output. If you placed those combined cycle turbines in large buildings, dense neighborhoods, or factories where you could put the waste heat to use you could end up with end-use efficiency as great as fuel cells achieve in actual practice. And it makes a lot more sense to transport electricity, and produce hydrogen where it would be used than to put in place a whole new infrastructure of hydrogen pipelines. )