Energy storage problem
Contents
State of the art
Today (2015) humankind still mainly uses fossile fuel for energy. In europe regenerative energy sources are on the rise and already provide some noticeable fraction of the energy. Regenerative energy faces several problems though. The main one is that current non atomically precise technology isn't capable of storing massive amounts of energy efficiently and durably at any location. Beside that for wind turbine generators currently big amounts of rare earth elements from china are needed Production of solar cells needs agressive chemicaly although organic ones are in development.
Energy management of nature and human (today and tomorrow)
Lets look at how energy is managed by nature how humanity does it today and what would be a desirable state we want to move our energy management to.
Nature
All energy originally stems from nuclear sources either the sun or radioactive decay in the earths core. The suns first converts nuclear to thermal energy (a thermonuclear conversion) and then the termal energy to photonic energy (a photothermal conversion - via Stefan Boltzmanns radiation law). On earth this photonic energy gets either captured by photosynthesis (a photochemical energy conversion - with a little hidden electrical intermediate step) or it gets converted back to heat again (again photothermal). This lower level heat may drive winds via pressure gradients (a thermomechanical conversion) and vaporize water (partially a thermoenrropic conversion). Wind convections may then lift up water vapor and water droplets in clouds (a mechanogravitative conversion). When the water finally rains down and flows down rivers it is converted back to thermal energy that is so much devalutaed that it becomes practically unusable. At the end it is becomes irradiated as infraread light at night into the three kelvin cold space.
