[Marxism] "Major Discovery" From MIT Primed to Unleash Solar Revolution II

[David Walters]

Les, the issue of 'storage' is *as important* as production of power. 
Literally 50% of the issues...the problems we have today.

I noted in my previous message that there is no "hydrogen economy" nor 
any safe way or storing the hydrogen. It's why the hydrogen economy 
advocates have always been a little bit goofy in my opinion. But half 
all "energy issues" are transportation fuels. We could, say, have super 
abundant energy from some miracle source, say an ability to use 
geothermal power everywhere and anywhere. But, we can't convert that 
power to usable transportation fuel without either a) making it into a 
fluid (liquid or gas) fuel or b) storing the electricity in some sort of 
battery.

If this process works...and the implication is that it uses far less 
electrical power to produce the hydrogen than previous methods, and it 
could be done fairly locally, say a fillup station, then it doesn't 
matter WHAT source of power is used, we could actually transition to a 
hydrogen economy *without* a actual infrastructure (tanker trucks fuel 
of compressed hydogen, pipelines, etc.) It would/should/could make 'on 
demand' hydrogen or almost on demand, a reality.

The process is using solar is a foil to discuss the actual source of 
energy for a consumer market (which will do no good in New England, say, 
or anywhere north of Kansas). The real benefit is the grid, and it's the 
grid that needs to be converted from it's coal/fossil base to non-carbon 
sources of electricity. If one were to "overbuild" Concentrated Solar 
Power (CSP) such as the small plants they are building now in the Mojave 
and in Spain, then one could, if this method holds, build enough of CSP 
to make it available 24/7, 365 a year. The intermittent issue with solar 
and wind could, in theory (a big 'could' here folks) solve it's second 
biggest weakness (the first being that regardless of this new 
technology, the solar costs way too much right now to seriously rely on it).

David