Battery Boost - Surprise

Yet another fascinating article. Let's hope this becomes a reality.

One more promising technology.

Why is it that these things always seem to disappear into the ether?

All I want to do, is to be able to afford to get completely off the grid. It's almost like someone doesn't want me to.

I think many feel the same way and would embrace some minor life changes to go "off grid". I would go off grid if costs were equivalent or cheaper.

For my specific location, insolation and wind energy are weak and off-grid hardware is just too costly (for now) to justify.

Many of these "news worthy" laboratory curiosities never make it out of the lab because they cannot be scaled (size-up & costs-down) to real world applications.
One hopes for success and progress from some single breakthrough, or perhaps a creative combination of several of the otherwise unworkable ideas.

Back when 500MB was a HUGE hard drive, I remember reading about the IBM work on the Giant Magneto-Resistance effect and how it could make computer hard drives that store hundreds of GB up to TB of data. Inconceivable!

News blurbs said TB hard drives would be "here next year". Of course the prediction was far too optimistic (typical). However, GMR was real and it (combined with advances in circuitry and signal processing) DID give us affordable multi-GB hard drives within 5 years AND multi-TB hard drives a couple years later. Few seem to remember that we had 10 MB HDDs in the 1980s and 200MB HDDs in the 1990s. Now we expect a new computer to come with at least a 1 TB HDD.

My point here is that these lab discoveries ARE interesting. Alone, or combined with other advances, they may eventually be developed into new useful products. The reporters (and/or researchers) optimistic predictions should be viewed with a hefty dose of cynicism. They are usually "spinning" the story to get more readers or more funding.

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I believe that there is a lot of existing technology that could be scaled down, mass produced, and sold to individual homeowners at an affordable cost.

These include solar, methane capture, wind, alcohol and biofuel powered mini-turbines, etc.

I also think that this won't be allowed to happen, and that all attempts will be made, (by the government/utility coalitions), to keep people on the grid, and keep the money flowing.

If I had the money, I could get off the grid; but the cost of doing it isn't worth it. I think it's intentionally kept that way.

Why can you not get off the grid?...... Because the BBC article does not tell the story correctly......"Even though the Vanderbilt capacitor was better than almost any other currently on the market it was not as energy-dense as a battery. There is still more work to be done. But by it's a big step to demonstrate that this energy storage works in silicon because once improved, it could easily be incorporated into the chip-manufacturing process." From DISCOVERY.com....... I have been working this issue from both the USE side and Investment side for over twenty six years. The porous 'lead foam' battery is the closest to market and will be more than competitive with the Li battery group from weight-power and density as well as free from secondary heat control systems. Q1/2 2014 should be a real thrill for your ability to get off line.... more then. I will be applying them to the solar electric 40 foot boat shown on my website.

If it works, this could be a major technology shift. I can remember reading in disbelief when IBM came up with a breakthrough in hard disk storage. They invented GMR. I remember reading with incredulity that hard disk storage would reach a gigabyte in a year. It only took 9 months. In 12 months you could buy 1.5 G disks. I hope this technology is as real as GMR hard disks. I was surprised that mjb1962853 saw the same technology as analogous.

I read this information from a different source, basically it's another fine example of of the promise that a material a single atom thick can achieve. graphene is some pretty cool stuff