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Hi meta-monkey! I'm making a "meta" comment on the social-financial framework around battery (or any) science. :-)

Just look at the whole "cold fusion" or now "LENR / solid state fusion" controversy and fight over funding and recognition. The idea that a solid-state metal lattice can induce hydrogen atoms (on its surface, in a micro-crevice, or otherwise absorbed somehow) to behave differently than when hydrogen is in a gas is still heresy requiring immediate excommunication after vilification by a mob of virtue-signalling "disciplined minds" whose social standing and, worse, grant funding is threatened by the idea.
http://lenrtoday.com/lenrexpla...
http://www.infinite-energy.com...
"In retrospect, I have concluded that much of the blame for the "cold fusion war" -- and it certainly has been just that -- stems from a vituperative campaign against the field with deep roots at MIT, specifically at the MIT Plasma Fusion Center. Not exclusively in that lab, however."

Ironically, about thirty years later:
http://coldfusionnow.org/cold-...
"The Cold Fusion 101: Introduction to Excess Power in Fleischmann-Pons Experiments course will run again on the campus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) over the IAP winter break Tuesday through Friday Jan. 20-23, 2015."

Fusion via cavitation also falls into that category of heresy (but may be emerging):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://atom-ecology.russgeorge...

As does power via hydrinos (which may also just be LENR in disguise):
http://brilliantlightpower.com...

So, that's a third option to either it works or it does not work -- whether it works or not, your science career gets trashed because you even talked about an idea, let alone seriously tried to do an experiment about it. And your career gets trashed because of the *politics* of science funding. Science is a human enterprise after all, and humans being humans...

See Los Alamos nuclear chemist Ed Storms's peer reviewed paper published in the German counterpart of the British "Nature":

Status of Cold-Fusion (2010)

Ethan Siegel writes: "All good science is repeatable: set up an experiment, tell me how you did it, report your results, and with the proper equipment, I should be able to set up a similar experiment, do the same things you did and get the same results. If I can’t, and others can’t, you didn’t do good science."

Oh yeah?

The preamble to the DoE's 1989 cold fusion review panel's report reads:

"Ordinarily, new scientific discoveries are claimed to be consistent and reproducible; as a result, if the experiments are not complicated, the discovery can usually be confirmed or disproved in a few months. The claims of cold fusion, however, are unusual in that even the strongest proponents of cold fusion assert that the experiments, for unknown reasons, are not consistent and reproducible at the present time. However, even a single short but valid cold fusion period would be revolutionary." --Norman Ramsey

Dr. Norman Ramsey Jr., Nobel laureate and professor of physics at Harvard University was the only person on the the 1989 Department of Energy cold fusion review panel to voice a dissenting opinion. Ramsey insisted on the inclusion of this preamble as an alternative to his resignation from the panel. The committee acquiesed because he was its co-chair and the only Nobel laureate on the committee.

Dr. Ramsey's condition has been fulfilled hundreds of times over the last quarter century and there has been absolutely no acknowledgement by the APS of its crime.

Los Alamos nuclear chemist Ed Storms's peer reviewed paper published in the German counterpart of the British "Nature":

Status of Cold-Fusion (2010)

So Mr. Anonymous doesn't like the fact that I started with the earliest example of scientific misconduct of the authorities. Most likely he dislikes it because it is so damning of his theocracy. I could provide a list of peer reviewed papers, none of which have had even the slightest criticism raised against them in any specific way -- just the blanket condemnation of the rioting mob calling itself the APS.

However, it's probably better to have Los Alamos nuclear chemist Ed Storms's peer reviewed paper published in the German counterpart of the British "Nature" (since, as we have already seen "Nature" is corrupt):

Status of Cold-Fusion (2010)

Great points about the nuances in the details!

I agree that the dynamics of dense cities based on space available are going to be different for grid connection than for rural areas or suburbs or even some more sprawling cities. Dense cities are either going to want dense power locally (some form of safe nuclear fusion) or they are going to pull energy from diffuse sources at a distance like big solar or wind farms via direct lines or from a broader grid.

I think the "global reserve" issue is not significant in the long term, both because we do have storage technologies like compressed air or hydrogen that don't require too many exotic things (even if they have other issues). And also because a good aspect of markets (amidst many bad aspects) is they tend to lower costs when there is a demand either by putting in play new resources (like from new mines) or by finding cheaper substitutes.

A ready backup to solar also for those on a gas grid or who have their own propane storage is gas-fired generators to smooth out interruptions in solar power. Some sort of major advance in hydrogen storage, like via converting it to a liquid fuel or in metal hydrides, could also solve the local storage issue -- and we are seeing innovation in that space.

It is hard to tell what technologies hold in the future. Other possibilities might include centralized production of materials requiring lots of electricity like refined metals such as aluminum or via hydrogen saturated in some metal-hydride complex and then trucking those materials onsite to use for local power by oxidation or some other process, where they are then shipped back when consumed. Then we are using the highways as a "grid". :-) A wired grid may well be much better, but that is an example of how you can change the time constants of buffering in systems by different sorts of engineering.

Neighborhood-scale power with a local grid might make a lot of sense -- perhaps even with trucking of materials of some sort instead of wires? Or, the USA could perhaps do like in Europe and just start burying much of its electrical glid cable to make the grid more reliable (but currently at a greater cost -- but maybe we will see innovation in tunneling robots?)

In any case, your insightful comment points to how the "devil is in the details" and how most real power system (absent "Mr. Fusion" from "Back to the Future") are going to be some mix of options (including energy efficiency and other alternative choices).

But who knows, if LENR pans out, we may indeed have "Mr. Fusion" of a sort even within the decade? Or that may be a scam or self-delusion by dozens (hundreds?) of researchers...
http://coldfusionnow.org/comme...
"The recent 2014 Cold Fusion/LENR/LANR conference from March 21st to March 23rd at Massachusetts Institute of Technology happened to overlap with the 25th anniversary of the announcement of the discovery of cold fusion at the university of Utah. Against all odds, huge strides in understanding the phenomenon were made in the last 25 years. Recently, groups have shown that this is more than a lab curiosity, it can be engineered and harnessed to safely solve the worlds energy problems. This is an overview of some commercial groups which presented at the 2014 MIT conference."

Another company, Defkalion, uses the same technology. They have plans for a public demonstration of their work at NIWeek 2013 this August at National Instruments in Austin, Texas. link. Proof might start getting harder and harder to deny... Don't take it to the bank, but if you're heavily invested in oil stocks, you should be watching the saga.

MIT - NANOR reactor...http://cdn.coldfusionnow.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/HagelsteinPdemonstra.pdf SPaWAR - co-deposition of palladium ... http://www.spawar.navy.mil/sti/publications/pubs/tr/1696/tr1696.pdf Dr. Iraj Parchamazad, Chairman of the Chemistry Department at the University of LaVerne, in LaVerne, California - http://coldfusionnow.org/iraj-parchamazad-lenr-with-zeolites/ Let's continue work on ITER, but not ignore the progress in the lenr/lanr field by opening up federal funding and the us patent office to researchers in this field... The very least this will attract private investors under the protection of patents in which case the scientific establishment can keep denying lenr public funding.