We got plenty of energy just no way to store it

[exxcomm0n]

I agree w/ both gregr and crazy_ewok that efficiency and storage are 2 REALLY big things that can stretch our reserves,

1.) Quit designing as if it'll (power) never run out.

2.) Start building a better battery. We're still using 150yr. old technology for most batteries.

Power plants are always producing over demand to make sure they can meet demand and have room to ramp production to meet reasonable demand increase should it spike.
What if they had a 2 week "buffer" of stored electricity to draw upon (with capacity up to 3 weeks) and therefore could schedule production to meet the exact electricity need without the risk of not meeting demand?

To do that batteries have to become much smaller, lighter, and have a much greater storage capacity and charging efficiency than public technology has right now.

Once this obstacle is overcome the above idea might have a place and  you start having much more compartmentalized electricity draws as more things will use batteries.
The former downfall of present days tech (size and weight) to include batteries a lot of devices that they would make sense in (cars, PC's, radios, cell phones and a lot of energy that is now wasted will actually be put to work (or a battery for a cell phone that lasts 1yr., like a watch battery).

Even with an over-unity device it would be beneficial as it could be the collection buffer that the consumer draws upon that is always being filled, even if it's not @ the rate of the temporary draw, it will compensate with time.

Geothermal is good as a battery, and the capacity is HUGE, but I still wonder what the draw of a century's use might do as we assume the core of our planet is molten from it's 1st formation and cooled to the present state it's in.

What if you hasten that with artificial draw? We already know that humans can have a marked effect on our environment with our present day evidence of the effects of energy production.

Just a way to think that our reliance and use of oil should teach us.

As to the battery, there are a few good threads here that are discussing some new approaches that I'm very interested in experimenting with.

P.S. The beanstalk (space elevator) idea is really cool as panels outside the atmosphere would have a constant production that atmospherics couldn't interfere with, but I think we have to conquer the geosynchronous satellite/ exact earth positioning a bit more before it'd be a possibility.