Good morning, again, on Sunday 8/24/03! Saturday's lead editorial from the
Des Moines Register. Another good energy one!

Lyle


Editorial: So who needs a power grid?

Go ahead and fix it - but move quickly toward a new age of energy.

By Register Editorial Board
08/23/2003
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last week's big blackout focused attention on the need to modernize the
nation's electric-power grid. While we're at it, Americans might also begin
planning for a future when the grid won't be needed anymore.

Those big high-voltage lines carrying electricity across the country could
someday vanish from the landscape, replaced by pipelines carrying hydrogen.
Huge coal and nuclear generating plants could disappear, replaced by
millions of small generating stations in neighborhoods or even in individual
homes.

Some visionaries see such things happening in the not-too-distant future.
The key is the switch to hydrogen and the perfection of fuel-cell
technology.

A fuel cell is a device in which electricity is produced when hydrogen and
oxygen are mixed. This takes place without combustion. Fuel cells are
virtually silent and have no internal moving parts. In theory, they could
last forever without wearing out. The only byproducts are water and a small
amount of heat.

One scenario has a fuel cell in each home. Hydrogen could be piped into
homes - as natural gas is now. Each home could generate its own electricity
and use the waste heat to provide hot water. Another scenario has larger
fuel cells supplying entire neighborhoods with electricity.

Either scenario would have electricity being produced in innumerable fuel
cells close to its point of use, rather than generation taking place in
large, remote power plants with the electricity shipped many miles over
high-voltage lines. This distributed generation would be far less
susceptible to regional blackouts.

Outside the home, fuel cells are widely expected to replace
internal-combustion engines in automobiles. Perhaps you could pull into your
garage after work and refuel your car from the hydrogen pipeline to your
home. Alternatively, you could pull into your garage, plug your car into the
house and use the electricity produced by your car's fuel cell to run the
lights and appliances in your home.

Out in the yard, your garden tractor would have a quiet fuel cell instead of
a noisy gasoline engine. It would be a portable electric power plant. You
could plug your electric hedge trimmer or electric leaf blower directly into
your tractor.

At work, your car could be plugged into a socket in the parking ramp, and
the electricity generated by your car could help supply your company's power
needs. Instead of you paying to park, the parking ramp would pay you.

No one knows whether these things will actually happen. New technology leads
down unpredictable paths. The exact shape of the future cannot be known, but
a few basics seem clear: The internal-combustion engine is nearing
obsolescence in everyday use, hydrogen is the fuel of the future and
distributed generation of electricity would be better than big power plants.

The electric grid will still be around for a while - certainly long enough
to warrant upgrading it to prevent blackouts. So let's do that - and also
get busy ushering in the hydrogen age. Do one for the present and the other
for the future.

*********************

Lyle R. Krewson
Sierra Club Conservation Organizer
6403 Aurora Avenue #3
Des Moines, IA 50322-2862

515/276-8947
515/238-7113 - cel

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