[ExI] The silent PV revolution

[Eugen Leitl]

On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 01:12:41PM +0100, BillK wrote:

> Siemens says 'Hydrogen Storage'.
> <http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/40001/>

It is one of the possibilities. The article completely ignores
the aspect of *not* using the rather wasteful 
electricity-hydrogen-electricity cycle but the storage 
and distribution aspect, as well as directly using
the hydrogen (I can't be the only one who used to reduce
metal oxides to metal with hydrogen as a kid, can't I?).

E.g. instead of using a fuel cell to make electricity to
run your oven you could use a gas burner or catalytic burner
(hydrogen can react with air without a flame). If you want
to http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Oil-Gas-Methanol-Economy/dp/3527324224/
including C1 feedstock chemistry then methane and hydrogen 
are gateway drugs to that.

Of course these are pretty alien concepts to most people,
as natural science knowledge suffered even more than the
the rest of the rather abysmal state of public education 
we have now. If the public is clueless, so are of course 
their political representatives. Very frustrating for 
the few engineer types who still get it.