I can't believe we aren't building Nuclear Power plants as fast as we possibility can.

Tesla Powerwall storage battery books $800m in first week orders

Financial Review May 10 2015

Tesla is already building a 5- million-square-foot battery factory. It's not big enough.

SOLD OUT UNTIL MID-2016

There's also no way for Tesla to keep up with the level of demand reflected by the early reservations. The company is sold out of storage batteries until mid-2016. Musk claimed the production of storage batteries alone could "easily" take up the entire capacity of Tesla's $US5 billion factory in Nevada, which is scheduled to open next year.

developed countries are going to have to lower their standards of living. Only logical choice.

You have quite ill logic.

As if developing countries (aka colonies) will be forced to lower their standards it could keep or even rise standards in ruling countries.

From "Death spiral begins for Australian electricity companies" -ABC Australia

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/death-spiral-begins-for-australian-electricity-companies/5443136

Australian electricity prices have doubled over recent years leaving consumers paying some of the highest prices in the developed world...

This makes alternatives such as solar power increasingly attractive, leaving fewer consumers of grid electricity paying the price for a policy built on false projections.

What happens next in the death spiral is this: The power companies only get revenue by selling kilowatt-hours. With each consumer who converts to solar, the only way the company can react and continue to repay their infrastructure debt is to increase the price of each kilowatt-hour to be paid by the remaining consumers, meaning each remaining consumer receives a bigger electricity bill and so so even more make the move to solar. And the so the power company's death-spiral continues.

Until now, consumers have stayed on-grid for their overnight power - until this happened:

The power companies, in attempt to stop the death-spiral, threaten to stop raising the KWh price- and instead impose a Daily rate just for people to be connected to the grid at all.

People like me, in country areas, have been preparing to go off-grid for some time, in order to kiss goodbye to the inevitable daily charge. In the last month I've retired my small fridge and got a digital inverter one (draws less current at startup, runs slow instead of continually turning off-on); I've also retired my gorgeous but inefficient Viera TV in favour of a six-energy-star model. My evaporative air-conditioner, however, poses a problem: it runs at a constant 80-watt but draws more VA at start-up than the current deep-cycle batteries can provide. But Li-ion batteries will throw all the power at my air con it wants for those 5 seconds at start-up.

Around me, at the bush cattle stations, there's a similar problem: starting a 2 horsepower electric pump water at 60 meters underground needs a system of capacitors to provide temporary power - and they fail too often, requiring an expensive visit from a technician up to 600 km away. Cattle station managers are lining up for Li-ion batteries.

I read in my TV and fridge manuals that these appliances are being sold in places like Africa and India where grids are non-existent or unreliable.

This is a long-awaited innovation. It won't be driven at first by city-dwellers, but by those of us for whom it's either cheaper or else the only choice.

Whether it's Tesla or one of the hundred other companies, it's an idea whose time has come. For power companies who stay coal-power-only, there'll be no getting the toothpaste back into the tube.

Tesla’s New Battery Will Make Lithium Ion the Next AA Meanwhile, companies like Fuji Pigment are working on aluminium-air batteries, for example, that could be cheaper and far more efficient than lithium-ion batteries.

http://www.wired.com/2015/05/tesla-powerwall-will-make-batteries-commodities/

Rivals abound but key challenge will be driving down price of home battery packs So far the market for electricity storage remains small, though growing quickly; last year about $128 million worth of such batteries were installed around the country, mostly at utilities..

http://www.wsj.com/articles/will-teslas-newest-battery-pan-out-1430522030

Maybe it's because I'm really under the influence of my country (France) and despite the fact I hope for clean energy, I'm still believing a lot into Nuclear power plant IF all precautions have been taken to ensure it's safe. I landed on an article recently:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/08/how-much-uranium-is-in-solar-system.html

Do you think it would be interesting to harvest Asteroids' minerals in the belt. I'm not suggesting right now but maybe in a long shot in about a century or two in the future? I kinda smiled at the estimation saying there's about 100 billion $ for each people on earth, I wonder what future corporations wealth will be like if space conquest happen.

@goanna

Well, this thing is costly. Is dangerous (for home use). Recharge cycles is same as in any other Li-Ion battery. Real capacity will drop quite fast, and also drops rapidly in low temperature.

@goanna

Well, it is mostly PR thing. As they have no idea if they could actually make it and sell at any good quantities.

One country to put on the energy watch-list may well be France.

On yesterday's news they covered the issue of rising electricity prices: in part due to the need for France to replace its now-aging nuclear reactors. Having benefited from high-wattage assets (like, for example, all those years of fast electric trains and over-production of electricity leading to the exporting of some of the excess), France's reactors are getting old just as the country itself is facing competition in each of its sectors.

Meanwhile, people are demonstrating against any more wind-farming. The Chinese are dumping solar panels into Europe.

Will the need for economic survival be enough for France to innovate in nuclear power research? Watch this space.

@eyenorth

From what Australia's Doctor Karl said recently in response to a question about lack of research into thorium reactor technology, it simply comes down to a lack of investment. Money is conservative and quite often risk-averse. The reason why we're stuck with uranium & fission is the same reason we seem not to have looked hard enough beyond combustion engines. As a race, we tend to stick with what works.

Innovative solar cell structure stores and supplies energy simultaneously

In a quest for a smaller, more self-sustaining solar power source, a UW-Madison electrical engineer has proposed a design for solar panels that can simultaneously generate power from sunlight and store power reserves for later, all within a single device. ... ..He and his students developed the technology as an offshoot of a National Institutes of Health grant to design a self-focusing contact lens

"You could have one solar panel installed that will store the energy the system might need through nights and cloudy days," says Jiang.

From Phys.org June 7, 2013

green means cold and soon dirty too, the same deputy planned the same plot for water ...

OK, I promised to post some solar-type pics from today's road trip:

1) An old (1985) Microwave tower, powered by solar;

2)Two station hands who work for my 89-year-old neighbour. He's too old to change from the old diesel-driven water pumps for his cattle. In today's 41 deg heat, these guys had to drive this barely roadworthy P-Plated vehicle over dangerous, isolated tracks to refill and re-start the pumps. ("P" is for "Pastoral" - some of these vehicles don't even have doors!)

If the old guy'd go solar, he'd water his cows using a button in his air-con office and count them all at the water hole via web-cam like everybody else.

3) Lastly, An old Optical Fibre phone relay station. Note the blank spots where the old panels have been removed. The newer panels are so much more powerful they don't need so many these days.

I wanted to take pics of the multi-megawatt solar power station in town but by the time I arrived it was dark.

(all pics taken with Sigma Foveon Dp1)