Is fusion power an option?

In his TED talk plasma physicist Michel Laberge talks about the state of the art of energy production by nuclear fusion and presents an idea for a new type of nuclear reactor that could produce cheap energy.


There are two types of energy production by nuclear power, fusion and fission. All current productive nuclear power plants are based on the fission technology, which comes with the risk of thermal runaway meltdown and lots of health risks from nuclear waste.
The other type, fusion, is worth a look though. Currently there are no fusion power plants that gain more energy than is used for running the process. However, since fusion processes only take place under high temperatures, a fusion process would stop under a breach of the containment field which makes it less dangerous than fission - at least if you are not in the immediate vicinity of the reactor when this happens. Fusion power will also produce more short-term radioactive material, which will be dangerous for "only" 300 years. In contrast, current nuclear fission power plants produce material that is active for thousands of years.
Still too dangerous? Then let's have the fusion reactor installed 150 million kilometers away in space. It's called the sun.

Should we convert our electrical energy to methane?

At night between 11 PM and 4 AM there is an overcapacity of electrical energy. With the installation of wind energy, this overcapacity will even increase, since the is no merit in not using the wind to produce energy. In a smart grid, we will have time-of-use pricing for electrical energy and smart appliances being able to pick an economically good time to use energy. However, most appliances will still need to run during daytime or evening. Since electrical energy cannot be easily stored, we are in need for profound ideas to solve this issue.

Synthetic methane production

One possibilty could be the use of electrical energy to create methane, which can then be stored and used later for heating, cooking, or driving. In this process, first an electrolysis is performed to split water (HO2) into its components hydrogen(H) and oxygene(O). The hydrogen is then used to create methane or other gaseous fuels. Therefore, CO2 is added to produce methane (CH4). The produced methane is greenhouse-neutral since the amount of CO2 creation when being burned is exactly balanced by the amount of CO2 used in the production.
The biggest disadvantage of the approach is the limited efficiency of the method (about 50% of the energy is lost in the creation process, in total the efficiency is around 20-30%) and the comparably low price of natural methane sources. However, as soon as Russia is going to rise the gas prices, I'm gonna start my electrolyzer.

The smart grid challenge

The transformation of our energy system from fossil fuel resources to sustainable resources is one of the great challenges of our time, but opens also a great chance for establishing a more efficient and robust distribution of energy to the benefit of all its users. A way to do this is the intelligent integration of the behavior of all users (generators and consumers) of an electricity grid to optimize the operation of the system, e.g., by balancing energy consumption based on availability and demand.

In order to achieve this goal, we need to define innovative products and services together with intelligent monitoring, control, communication, and self-healing technologies: Electrical devices, generators, and energy storages will be integrated with local intelligence and a network interface. These smart meters will form a network that dynamically adapts pricing and distribution based on demand, supply, and network load. The emerging network will be a self-organizing smart grid which efficiently maintains existing services, allows for prediction of future energy and network requirements.

However, the challenge is not a mere technical one. A main characteristic of the smart grid is that it will allow consumers and suppliers to play an active role in optimizing the system. While this is a very positive aspect, it leads to new challenges such as social aspects like fairness and acceptance, economic aspects such as market stability and resilience against speculation attacks, and legal issues such as warranty, data security and privacy. Last but not least, the smart grid forms a complex system of interacting agents, which will require new models similar to those from physics, biology or economics.

The goals of the smart grid are ambitious. But considering the importance of energy to our society, there is no other chance than to work on it in a global cooperative effort. There is no time to wait.