[ExI] The silent PV revolution

[Ben Zaiboc]

Alfio Puglisi <alfio.puglisi at gmail.com> asked:

On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 8:54 AM, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:

>> Large scale electrochemical storage is coming.


> What is the form of this storage? I thought that batteries (li-ion or
> whatever) couldn't be scaled up enough.



I'd have thought it should be fairly obvious that PV energy would be best turned into hydrocarbons as soon as possible.  We have the technology and infrastructure for using them in so many ways, all we need to do is recycle the CO2 produced by burning them, back into fuel using whatever energy sources we end up using, be that PV, nuclear, or whatever.

Seems stupid to me to abandon a mature, effective (and highly energy-dense - probably still the densest we know of) storage medium, that we're all fully geared up to use, on a global scale.  Plus they're the raw material for probably about 75% of the things you see if you look around you right now, and an even greater %age of the device you're reading this on.

Hydrocarbons aren't going away any time soon (if ever).  Of course, if someone finds away to make metallic monatomic hydrogen stable at STP, I'll happily eat my words.


Ben Zaiboc