True, but the most vocal advocates view humanity as a parasite, and believe that there should be far, far fewer humans. The events required in getting from here to there isn’t something they discuss loudly in public.

Not in a desert. Gotta have water in the first place to move.

The method you describe is called gravity storage and it maxes out at 20% recovery i.e. for every hundred watts you put in, you get 20 watts back. In order to make this a viable system you first have to generate extra electricity to store overnight and for extended periods. So you have to start out with 3 to 4 times as much energy as eventually consume. Then you need to quintuple that to account for loses in storage.

So, to get 100 kilowatts out of the system reliably you would need to put in something like 2000 kilowatts into it. Oh, and since this system only works in specific locations you have to figure in up to 50% losses in transmission. So make that more like 4,000 kilowatts in to get 100 kilowatts to the consumer.

It won’t work.

…nuclear power is a vital bridge between here and truly renewable energy (enhanced geothermal, solar with utility scale storage, large-scale bioenergy).

I don’t think it will be a bridge. I think that if we develop nuclear we’ll abandon other sources altogether. In the history of technology, energy technology progress down a gradient of increasing power density and availability. Why jump through massive hoops for “renewable” (read fixed and restricted) when you can get the more power when and where you want it for less investment in resources?

Unless humans want to go with the dieoff.org crowd (and Pelosi, Boxer, Salazar,etc), and eliminate at least 90% of their populations worldwide, nuclear power is a vital bridge between here and truly renewable energy (enhanced geothermal, solar with utility scale storage, large-scale bioenergy).

Want real security, you have to provide it for yourself. And it works in the city too.

I commend your independent spirit but your self-reliant life style simply isn’t a realistic solution for the vast majority of people. There simply isn’t enough land for everyone to make do in the country. People in the city cannot harvest energy from the environment because the population is two dense. For example, if you covered every hard surface in New York city, including roads with solar panels, you could harvest only about 40% of the power the city needs. In the real world, you can’t even get close.

More importantly, your family might be well protected against emergencies but you still rely on the broader planetary economy for critical supplies. I doubt you manufacture your own solar cells, windmill gears, smelt your own aluminum or manufacture your own antibiotics. Long term you need the vast industrial system that relies on abundant, reliable energy. If the plant that manufactures your photovoltaic cells was itself powered by solar power, you wouldn’t be able to afford them. The same holds true for all other manufacturing.

Powering houses is trivial. Powering factories and transportations systems over the entire planet is a problem of a much larger magnitude.

If the sun isn’t shining then the wind is surely blowing, and water runs 24/7 producing power for our home.

There are only a few locations (relative to the size of the entire country) where you can use a low-head water generator. Even then, droughts can take them offline. I saw that happen back in the 70′s when Texas suffered a massive 7 year long drought. Not even giant hydroelectric systems can produce power reliably due to variation in rainfall.

Energy sources are like breathing. You can live for years breathing fine but if a freak event shuts off your breathing for just a few minutes you’re dead. Natural source energy systems run the same risk. It might be a very rare event that all your energy sources get knocked offline at the same time but when it does happen (and if it happened for everybody) the effects would be disastrous.

The marketing hype is just that, hype caused by people who don’t really understand renewable energy, just want to sell a book. Make sure you are dealing with an expert , not just a copy cat copyright thief, who reads a book, rewrites it and publishes it as their own.

Want real security, you have to provide it for yourself. And it works in the city too.

All the best,
Les and Jane

That is where real change happens, not at the industrial or government level, but at the family level. One family, one voice creating a pattern of change for others to follow.
Not one person comes to our home without a better grasp on changing the things that they can change.
The fastest way to start, find a piece of property where you can control your own destiny instead of leaving it in the hands of bureaucrats and industry, build a wind generator, if you need help just give me a shout,
Use the contact form on our website, we will help you. And if that 50 year old woman in Detroit is listening, she can have all of the information resources we have put together for the past 15 years to make a change in her life.
But, you have to provide the initiative.
For more info
http://www.homemade-wind-generator.com

All the best,
Les and Jane

Will we hit rolling blackouts during this time?

How much will all those home diesel units cost? and how much fuel will they use? How far will they set us back on air pollution and C02?

Why is it impossible to find a way to store solar? Not now, maybe, not in five years. Not better or cheaper now than drilling nor than these mini-reactors. I’m not saying don’t look at those, but why not look at solar as well?

It’s not impossible its just that the laws of physics make it unlikely we’ll get anything with the power density and flexibility of fossil fuels much less nuclear. You’ve got to jump through a lot of hoops to end up with just a hypothetical system.

Thermal solar gives you a mediocre plant that only operates in a narrow geographical region and only under certain weather conditions. It certainly won’t work in Michigan in the winter.

I suspect it’s kinda like how the Soviet Union never made any breakthrough substitutes for wheat no matter how much energy they spent denouncing kulacks.

The whole idea that there is a unique set of “green-job skills” seems to me highly questionable..but I’m sure it could be very profitable to a whole set of political entrepreneurs.

I believe there was a comment here about a month ago regarding storing solar electricity in some sort of salt.

As David Foster pointed out, it is solar thermal that can take advantage of molten salts to store energy, because that energy is simple heat, something we know how to store quite cheaply and efficiently. Compare a thermos to a battery.

Solar thermal plants use mirrors to concentrate the sun’s rays from a large land area onto a tiny spot, where the heat can be used to turn water to steam, to turn a turbine, to generate electricity.

This is in contrast to what most people consider “real” solar panels, or photovoltaics, which turn solar radiation into electricity more directly.

There has also been some work done on compressed air storage for wind power. Here’s a blog entry by a GE researcher who is working on this. Again, it’s not clear how long it will be feasible/economical to provides storage for.

I think what is most likely to happen is that natural gas will become even more dominant than it is now as the source of electricity…and this, together with growing uses for transporation and heating, will drive the prices up.

Just semantics but why can’t we begin lumping nuclear in with the phrase “alternative energy”? Windmills are thought to have been in existence as far back as 200 B.C. Nuclear still only produces 20% of our electricity, so I’d consider it just as alternative as wind and solar.

As for Dan’s comment about salt, see:

http://cleantechnica.com/2008/06/29/molten-salt-may-be-solution-to-solar-energy-storage/

I love the thought of those mini-reactors – so much, I made each class this morning read a short description while I took roll. (A lot of their papers argue for opening ANWR or drilling off shore.) Optimism about their futures is good to encourage.

Why is it impossible to find a way to store solar? Not now, maybe, not in five years. Not better or cheaper now than drilling nor than these mini-reactors. I’m not saying don’t look at those, but why not look at solar as well?

Winds die down after dark. Have to eat early. No TV after dark.

Need to invent environmentally safe battery. No harmful metals, gasses or cancerous plastics. Until then, Ban batteries.

Raise carbon tax high enough to force users to shut down.

A clean environment is a happy environment.

Until alternate power arrives, we just have to do as the Chinese president advises: Scale back our consumption.

Soon everyday will be a holiday and we can name them after the Change Bringer. Obama Day.

Obama should appoint an Invention Czar who will invent these things we need. Real quick.