There is this 20 kw storage battery, predicted to cost $2000 and last for 10 years of daily cycling, currently being tested in Utah:

http://www.naturalnews.com/028557_batteries_home_power.html

I think that the adoption of new technology is more a matter of economics than political will. The truth is that the dominance of coal fired power stations has been the ability to deliver electricity at a lower cost than other options. With technology like Ceramatec's battery, baseload power from renewables is conceivable, but the cost of keeping the grid would add over ten cents per kwh to the cost of electricity currently.

There is still a long way for renewables to go to obviate the economic incentive for developing fourth generation reactors.

Fester - the prime reason that coal fired plants are cost effective is that the community picks up the externalities. If all power plants operated on the basis that they had to factor in the costs of the externalities into their operation then I think you will find that renewables would win hands down.

"If all power plants operated on the basis that they had to factor in the costs of the externalities into their operation then I think you will find that renewables would win hands down."

Yes, but against that you would have to weigh the benefit from cheap electricity.

The only way I can see renewables winning is by obviating the distribution grid. At over two thirds the cost of electricity, it is the dearest component of the current system. Yet when I read claims that we can meet Australia's electricity demand with renewables, it is in the context of a national grid. In much of Australia, it might be the case within twenty years that it is cheaper to have a combination of solar cells, solar hot water, an efficient storage battery, and a backup generator fueled by biodiesel. If this were the case, there would not be a great economic advantage in building fourth generation reactors.

Fester - I agree with your observation regarding the distribution costs. I have often wondered how the industrial revolution would have unfolded had Faraday predated the steam engine. Steam engines were only practical in large factories so when electricity became a reality there was a need to generate sufficient power to drive the machines in the factories. Electricity for domestic consumption was merely a collateral benefit.
In an ideal world we would be looking at developing the technologies that are firstly more efficient so that our needs can be met with an average energy demand of 5kwh per day. There are a number of homes which have been designed so that they generate that amount of energy.
We are in a transition process - regardless of what people believe about climate change or peak oil the reality is that in the next twenty years or so we will have to reinvent the way we live or find that the world will collapse around our ears. You can either see it as an exiting opportunity or as a threat.

Fester is spot on with the issue of distribution costs. The new battery that he linked to could help tremendously with this.

The distribution costs are due to the cost of installing and maintaining equipment, and are considerably higher for small demands (or supplies)

For example, the average cost of actually generating power is about 2c /kWhr, and a large factory consumer near the grid will buy it for about 4c, whilst a small concern will pay 10c, and a domestic user 25-30c.

The same would apply for generation. A good example of this some decades ago in Cape Town the city's need for power was growing rapidly, and with no local coal or gas the two options it faced were either the installation of massive new lines 1400km to the new power stations, or the construction of a nuclear station in the city. The cost of tbe lines, the impedance and losses easily justified the Koeburg plant.

Nuclear plants could be built in the Latrobe valleys next to the worst emitting brown coal stations such as Hazelwood, and commissioned with no additional distribution costs.

The renewable generation would be built far from the cities, and the cost of distribution would far exceed that of the generation itself.

"One reason for making the choice of hard-path vs. soft-path as
explicit as I have is that it focuses our minds on the choice. We
haven't really thought enough about energy—just as we haven't
about water, the next resource crunch."

Amory Lovins, 1976

See http://www.rmi.org/cms/Download.aspx?id=1400&file=Energy+Strategy+-+The+Road+Not+Taken+(Reprint+from+Foreign+Affairs%2c+1976).pdf
or
http://tinyurl.com/Energy-Strategy-the-Road-Not

Amory Lovins and HT Odum will be remembered as the key energy policy analysts and activists of the late 20th century.

For Odum's legacy, see (for example):

[PDF] EMERGY EVALUATION Howard T. Odum Environmental Engineering ... File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View
by HT Odum - Cited by 22 - Related articles

Odum, H.T. 1996. Environmental Accounting, Emergy and Decision Making. ..... 5 Odum, H.T. and N Petersen. 1995. Simulation and evaluation with energy ...
www.epa.gov/aed/html/.../emergycourse/.../EmergyEval.pdf - Similar

Environmental Accounting Using Emergy: Evaluation of the State of ...
and tools are used in Emergy Analysis (Odum 1996,. Odum 1994) but these are ...
www.epa.gov/nheerl/publications/files/wvevaluationposted.pdf

Emergy Short Course Syllabus | Atlantic Ecology Division (AED ...
EPA/600/R-05/006. Brown, M.T. and T.R. McClanahan 1992. Emergy ...
www.epa.gov/aed/html/collaboration/emergycourse/.../syllabus.html
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