Hydrogen may be a pipe dream, but solar is not - just the present solar method.

An Australian company enviromission (http://www.enviromission.com.au) is looking at constructing a solar tower in northern Victoria - the science behind it is reasonably sound and has been proven to an extent with a smaller scale project in Spain.
The company itself has been having a hard time securing funding and has scaled back their concept and whether they succeed will succeed is debatable, but they plan to begin construction on a demonstration tower early in 2007, so we'll know by 2008 whether they are genuine.

The concept behind the tower is pretty simple - build a large array of solar panels, and let the sun heat them up. The hot air trapped underneath must go somewhere and shoots up the tower, powering turbines along the way.
In some ways, the project is more like hydroelectric than solar in design.

Similarly, other projects are in the works in South Australia relating to water travelling through 'hot rocks' underground. Again, it's going to take a while to see how it pans out.

Yes, this is a common story with renewable energy, but now that global warming is reaching flash point it is looking like a more practical option, provided governments treat it seriously instead of adopting a knee-jerk nuclear reaction.

Forget hydrogen fo vehicles, which is where this discussion started.
The only practicle way of fuelling vehicles is by using electric cars, vans etc and charging them with a combination of wind generators and solar cells.
That is presuming the grid is not avaiulable for whatever reason.

Big catch in this scenario is whether the raw ingedients to build sufficient wind generators and solar cells for each vehicle owner and the technical backup to install and service is available.

Possible alternative; Have large commercial wind farms built large enough to supply the recharge demand, and then charge cars each night via the grid.
Storage solution possibilty;
Use spare power from wind farms to raise multi thousand ton weights in very large frames and when the wind drops the motors become alternators to feed power into the grid as the weights are lowered.
This I believe would have less losses than pumping water uphill as in the Snowy scheme.

Dr Bell was formerly Professor of International Relations and should stick to her own field. She appears to know nothing of basic chemistry. Now that science and engineering and maths are going out of fashion we are being continually misinformed on technical subjects by academics weigh out of their depth. You would not choose a lawyer to operate on your heart or an engineer to represent you in court.