[Riddil]

~_0

I sense some hostility. History of bad blood? Without knowing any of the history, I do think UG has a respectable point. You look at the history of "power" and it's always driven not necessarily by concentration, but by peak output. It's just that the two have gone hand-in-hand for the greater part of history. We went from wood-burning steam-power, to coal, to gas, to refined gas, on and on to nuke-u-lar power.

But you also look at history of power development... the primary focus has never been about efficiency so much as raw output. But just as with computer processing power we're starting to reach the right wall, and in order to continue making advancement we're learning about novel ideas like efficiency. The biggest reason that cell phones can go for 3-4 days w/o a recharge as opposed to 8 hours like phones just 10 years ago isn't primarily because of battery improvements, but b/c we've gotten a lot more clever in power usage / consumption of the devices.

They've got "high efficiency" homes in CA that actually input power BACK to the power grid b/c they collect more than enough to run the home off of a small cluster of solar panels... power high-efficiency devices in the home. The theme here is if we cand find ways to be more efficient but accomplish the same tasks, then we'll be able to move back to lower-output energy, without loss of convenience.

But anyhow. The key to actually GETTING there is having the researchers working to make it happen.

(*apologies in advance for potentially stepping into some sort of forum feud*)