fireofenergy

Will the Audacious Bailouts for Alternative Energy Happen?

Since governments are willing to go green, it DOES make since to spend billions for battery research. Just as with solar PV, the industry is growing despite of past supply issues.

In ten years, oil will be WAY over $100 a barrel (if even available to the increased masses), thus it would be wise to invest in battery mass manufacturing AFTER an initial advanced cost and development plan is completed. In other words, DON'T give that money to failed banks unless they invest in this tech also!

Eventually, carbon laws will also add to the costs of this fossil economy. The way out of that is concentrated solar thermal energy which use lots of mirrors in the deserts to reflect light and heat a reservoir for night time power generation (needed for the charging of e cars).

Alternative Energy Storage: Lithium, Lead or Both?

At first i was skeptical (about advanced sla), but I didn't resaerch. I believe that lugging around a few extra pounds is a good thing if it helps the cause of generating renewable electricity by being far cheaper. Speaking of which, solar thermal storage is better than building lakes on top of high hills, or filling our dried up oil wells with air (that gets hot under pressure and subsequently "self discharges").

Perhaps we should put (overseas) excess cheap oil back into those dried up wells instead??? Since it is not really in excess! (I know, that sounds rather nationalistic...)

Solar thermal storage has a much lower self discharge through heat dissapation but would need a much larger (than required) mirror field in order to maintain baseload. And, of course, it is virtually unlimited in nature if just part of the world's deserts were to be mirrored by ambitious mirror mass production companies. Most countries are large enough to absorb intermittancy from bad weather.

And guess what the other side of the world will export when oil does indeed get too expensive for the masses... synfuels made by solar thermal energy and coal. Yuk! Or even worse yet, become our own desert CSP sources!