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On the other hand, something like liquid batteries (useless for transportation, obviously, but great for fixed installations) have a pretty much unlimited lifespan, as the interfaces are all just immiscible liquids and most everything that kills regular batteries (dentrite formation, crystalization, membrane degradation) are not present. Likewise manufacture should be fairly cheap:

http://www.ambri.com/technolog...

(not promoting this particular company, but they seem to actually be working on it).

Sam

Look at http://www.ambri.com/technolog... [ambri.com] American made. Cheap and effective.

"Cheap" is a relative term. It is interesting that nowhere in their site is a actual cost of an installation.

Look at http://www.ambri.com/technolog... American made. Cheap and effective. You do actually have some pretty smart people over there and they already have the solutions you need. The TED talk is here http://www.ted.com/talks/donal... I believe you might find that you are indeed at a most opportune moment in time for making a shift to renewable power and making a huge difference environmentally speaking

The real problem is batteries. If utilities had liquid metal battery banks scattered around, they could supply wind and solar power, or absorb any generated power.

For the batteries people are working on it like these batteries: http://www.ambri.com/technolog... .

I posted a brief list of some interesting new storage technologies last week:

There have been MANY teams working on this, for several years, with lots of VC/R&D, and several new products are going to hit the market it the next couple of years: liquid metal batteries, sodium ion batteries, compressed air storage, sodium air batteries, artificial leaf, another artificial leaf, flywheels, super-capacitors, etc... Most of these are intended for grid-level storage, but a few are quite suitable for transportation as well. In particular, sodium-air batteries have the advantage of light weight, since one of their reactants (air) is available on the fly. And the two "artificial leaf" technologies can be used to create fuel from sunlight.

[posting as AC here, to preserve mod points]

some hybrids pump engine noise through speakers to appease the driver

They do that for safety too, not just to appease the driver. Domino's Pizza in the Netherlands made a marketing coup with this a few years ago when they switched to electric delivery scooters. They added audio of a guy going "VROOoooooommmmmm! Lecker-lecker-lecker... Vrrrooooommmm!" (Apparently, "lecker" means "yummy" in Dutch.)

invent some better ways to store more energy

There have been MANY teams working on this, for several years, with lots of VC/R&D, and several new products are going to hit the market it the next couple of years: liquid metal batteries, sodium ion batteries, compressed air storage, sodium air batteries, artificial leaf, another artificial leaf, flywheels, super-capacitors, etc... Most of these are intended for grid-level storage, but a few are quite suitable for transportation as well. In particular, sodium-air batteries have the advantage of light weight, since one of their reactants (air) is available on the fly. And the two "artificial leaf" technologies can be used to create fuel from sunlight.

“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”

In case you haven't noticed, you are not sitting around at night in a house illuminated by candles, kerosine, whale oil or burning gas. This is because inventing new useful technology is hard, and takes many trials over a extended period of time.

There are at least two startups with new technology battery systems installing units in the next year or so: Ambri and Aquion .

Anyone with $0.05 shouldn't give it to you because it would be a waste of resources. They should invest it in one of these companies (or competitors) and take a chance on making money and making the future more sustainable.

I have worked with startup companies too. The first started with 1000k for year in a do or die configuration and we eventually made several billion for the parent company.
One of the people who was hired there is now the secret weapon for Micron. Sometimes it is the people and that person in particular was a modest genius, which is rare.
In this case I am not looking to make a company that makes money. I hear about a lot of people who would pay to die on Mars or Europa and wonder what they are smoking. Effective space isn't any more of an engineering challenge than many of the things I have already designed. It is a lack of creativity that haunts space technology, it requires a really profound advance to even be reasonable to try.
I just started going public with information last week and I guess that I expected people to look at what I have put forward and say "Eureka" as I did.
I worked in industrial systems process design using relay logic and ladder diagrams. I saw this future ( computers ) when I saw the first 7400 integrated circuit and then I helped create it. Now I have made something of my own and I see another future where people live in a solar empire on every planet and moon, I just want that one to happen sooner.
Trying to translate that leap to something that can be easily understood by most people is sometimes harder than solving the problem in the first place. Sadoway at MIT combines both skills as a teacher and a creative genius. Rare. I get most of what he teaches, but I really don't understand how he came up with a liquid metal battery Ambri

I am certain that it is available now because I have it and not only can you buy it but make it yourself for material cost. I have been studying this and Sadoway at MIT has developed a liquid metal battery that will store charge cheaply and I have developed a method to collect energy cheaply and store it in that battery. I understand that Jan 2014 is when they will be in production and I will have a production device and DIY instructions to collect solar , and wind energy before that. So leave your number and I will call you , oh maybe that was just a phrase, sorry. Sadoway MIT battery
A video to explain solar thermal and wind collection The video isn't all that technical, but the principle is sound. My only interest is to see that it is known. So you can buy it or DIY for 0$.
I have no idea how costly solar panels are now, but if they can beat 0, I would be very surprised.

Most of Europe (and much of the world) pays more for electricity than the average American. So what? The fact remains that in much of the USA it is already economical to install a solar system. And as time goes by, that trend is going to continue.

But the real game changer will be the advent of affordable, grid-level storage, which is just around the corner. In particular, Khosla Ventures is backing two novel technologies that are expected to hit the market around the end of next year. One is the liquid metal battery that came from a research project at MIT. The other is a new twist on compressed air storage that uses a type of water carburetor to achieve isothermal compression. Both of these offer cheap, simple, reliable electricity storage.

As the grid becomes more distributed and "islandable" it will naturally be more robust. And storage is a key enabler to make that happen.

I stand corrected, thanks. Perhaps I got an over-optimistic impression from the recent progress in liquid-metal batteries.

Absolutely. If you haven't already, you should check out Sadow's liquid metal batteries. Development appears to be coming along nicely. They are designed for cheap grid-level storage.