Bio-electricity

[kandrathe]

And once we got there, who knows, but that won't happen in our lifetimes.

I wouldn't bet on it.

There is quite a bit of applied science potential in the hopper due to the past twenty years of research in materials sciences, biology/biochemistry, physics, etc. Revolutionary changes are afoot in applied research just from what I've looked at in molecular biology, not to mention the others.

I guess the gist of what I'm implying is that the "invention" has been made by nature, and we must merely copy it. There is room for improvement, but for all that is going on in us, we are a pretty well honed design. The MIT article that I linked to above made their solar to hydrogen "break though" by better understanding chloroplasts. The solar panel article I linked to above mentioned affordable 30% efficient gallium arsenide cells available now. Sunshine is inconveniently variable, both daily and seasonally. Life needed a way to capture the energy, and efficiently store it in a form that we could sip on through the dark times. Hence, we have sugar, carbohydrates, and lipids. I'm not sure we need to reinvent the wheel here either. There is a good reason our design is based on hydrocarbons.

Then, to the consumption side. You are looking for a way to efficiently consume the energy from its stored state providing useful work. You are looking for a structure that requires minimal maintenance, has a long mean time between failures, or one that self repairs. These are not requirements out of the realm of possible for today's sciences.