Sending renewable electricity directly to homes

You are mistaken Robert. Several Northern European countries, including the Netherlands, are already building that very same infrastructure, using the natural gas pipelines and services into homes. I know that your agenda is PCE-based which will eventually hit a brick wall. Your statistics regarding the increase in battery storage is generated from thin air. There are many publications that include your favorite distributed energy supply methods but all recognize that it is only a fraction of what we will be needing. I have neighbors with Tesla batteries and they tell me that these barely furnish enough standby for a few hours. And, if you claim that utility installations have increased five-fold, don't forget to mention that they started from zero. You seem afraid of competing technologies.

Mr. Whitehair, thanks for your proposed solution, but battery storage on a residential scale is still problematic. Mr. Kahl has previously identified the issue of cost and scarce supply issues with toxic batteries. You state battery storage capacity may increase six times more than today, but wouldn’t we just have six times the issues with carbon emissions to mine materials and manufacture batteries? Let’s not forget the six-fold increase in toxic waste disposal.

You feel hydrogen is a pipe dream but isn’t continuing to use fossil-fuel energy to manufacture millions of household batteries (which many households may not elect to install, or have the funds to purchase) also a pipe dream, especially since we will have massive hazardous waste disposal costs for millions upon millions of depleted batteries? Will Recology pick them up if we place these used batteries on top of the black bin, or is it the blue bin?

Robert - good work, appreciate your due diligence. The other two who posted were/are incorrect. [cool]

You are correct that it is more cost efficient to use electricity directly from solar power when it’s available than generating hydrogen with it. But the main point of my letter was we could generate more solar power in summer and store it for use when there is no sun. The cost to do so is far less than very expensive toxic batteries that lose power capacity over time and rely on limited sources of key materials in China and the Congo. Few electric car owners relish using precious car batteries to power their home because it’d reduce the life of their battery. It would also help increase the demand and price for rooftop solar energy.

There is no need to pipe hydrogen since solar electricity can be sent to power plants to make and use hydrogen on-site. Existing natural gas plants can burn a 20%/80% mix of hydrogen and natural gas. Siemens Energy Turbines is developing turbines to burn 100% hydrogen. There is a reason why Saudi Arabia and many other countries are investing heavily in solar/hydrogen power generation.

Addition to my post below - we can store excess solar electricity in the summer by making and storing hydrogen for use when there is no sun. We should build much more solar for this.