creativforce

Smart Grid's Enabler - Alternative Energy Storage

Again a great article! But I wonder if all this energy investment money is going to disappear along with the TARP money. I am getting fed up waiting for the smart grid to start happening. I've been reading about the need for it since the 80's and have lost money every time I have tried to invest in it. I remember a Buckminster Fuller lecture I attended in '82 where he predicted that the smart grid would end the cold war because solar power would flow around a global grid from countries in daylight to countries in darkness.

The trouble as I see it is the Homer Simpson effect. Once your home plugs into the grid, they have you by the short hairs for life. Homer gets a paycheck no matter how much he charges, no matter how short sighted he is, and no matter how much he screws up. If we could deregulate energy like we did the phone companies, then cool stuff would start happening. If AXPW sold their batteries at Home Depot, I'd buy a windmill and enough batteries to disconnect. The off-grid battery systems available today are dangerous, require constant maintenance and have very short life spans. But the incredible life span of these batteries you have written about here make it seem like you could count on them for decades like you do your furnace. If they could develop a turn-key home energy system for under $30,000, it would be the biggest revolution since the PC.

I like Fuller's utopian dream of sharing free energy, but since that ain't gonna happen, I want my own.