I am not a Cornicopian but I think everyone needs to get off the cool-aid.

Technology is always going to be limited to the laws of diminishing returns, substitution and as such we have greater threats which will require a great deal of thought as time marches on.

For all you optimists, I recommend this as essential reading:

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-09-18/you-call-this-progress

Good luck with that battery power!

“I think there is a worldwide market for maybe five computers,” Ken Olsen. Great call a bit like some of the posters.

"We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature's inexhaustible sources of energy--sun, wind and tide. I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that."
Thomas A. Edison (1847-1931)

Tombee your phone is smaller does more and lasts longer then your phone from the 1990.

Bestiality beats battery driven any day http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17709 what?

Not sure I agree with your claim that nothing new has been invented over the last 45 years. The “origins” of new inventions often go back decades but the technology enabling their expression in completely new applications is often very recent. Light emitting diodes were first described over 100 year ago but it is only recently that LED lighting has been developed and the technology for using LED light to transmit data is still being developed.

The principles of Magnetic Levitation were first described in Germany a century ago, but Maglev trains only came into existence in 1979.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Generation 4 Nuclear Reactors, the Internet, 3D Printing, Digital Cameras, USB Flash technology, LED light bulbs and Flat Televisions are but a few of the inventions made over the last 45 years. Most can trace their origins back to prior discoveries. However, those prior discoveries bear no resemblance to these innovations – just as future technology will enable use of graphene in ways now unimagined – but can anyone claim that the technology producing these things was not developed over the last 45 years?

Likewise, a high density, durable, rapidly rechaging storage device able to store sufficient energy to back-up a commercial power station or a power drill has its origins in the 18th century but is now a vastly different thing and will continue to be developed, until replaced by something far better.

JF Aus, re your replacement problem.
I suggest you look into Nickle Iron cells. There is a company in
South Australia who supplies them. They last at least thirty years and
are very robust and can be mistreated in ways other cells would be written off.
I do not know how they compare for cost but their 30 yrs plus would
offset a lot of that.

The 15 minute 80% recharge would worry me. The heat generated in the
battery would be damaging for their lifetime I would think.
To have recharging stations on highways able to recharge several cars
would require very large electricity supply. Must work that out, hmm.

The Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi have 30kwhr batteries.
One car, 30kwhr battery, would need 88amp three phase supply for a
one hour charge or 352 amp 3 phase supply, for each car for 15 min charge.
If say 10 cars were being charged at once a 3.5 Megawatt supply would be needed.
The cars with 500 km range will have larger batteries so the above
figures will need to be increased by 500/150 to tripple them.
11.666 megawatt charging stations on highways, hmmm.
No, that will require a rethink. Someone rework my figures please.

Bazz, the dead batteries I have are in Solomon Islands and there are many others dead there too. Some lead acid, others gel. Most others were supplied by development aid to replace kerosene lights. Now cost of new batteries is beyond reach of most people. I am often asked to fix solar units but the problem is worn out or faulty (from manufacture) batteries.

Truth about sustainable energy (and) batteries needs to be told.
But I don't know enough to be doing the telling.
Then there is the problem that the flat earth CO2 society does not want to know.