Solar energy without storage
To see the documents mentioned in this letter, click on the appropriate link at the bottom of this page.
To the editor of the Atlantiic:
Vauhini Yara’s interesting article about “The Energy Interstate” says that “over the past couple of years, researchers have come across another [alternative to storage] potential solution, one that seems almost too simple. The wind is usually blowing somewhere, and the sun is usually shining somewhere. If we could just connect the whole country to a special grid …. wouldn’t that get rid of—or at least lessen—the reliability problem.”
This is a great idea, but it is not a recent discovery. Beginning during the Nixon administration I tried to promote discussion of exactly this idea, not just for the U.S. but for the whole world (with a connection between East and West at the Bering Strait). And I have tried to promote the idea several times since then.
I am attaching scans of 9 documents indicating my attempts to get this idea studied.
An article (never published) written about 1972 during the Nixon administration.
A letter in both English and Russian I sent in 1986 to all members of the U.S. Senate, the major TV networks, leading U.S. newspapers, and several top Soviet leaders.
The only intelligent response I got to this letter, which came from the USSR State Committee For Science and Technology, in Russian.
My translation of this letter into English.
An op-ed I wrote for the Ann Arbor News which came out in 1988.
A letter I sent near the end of the Reagan administration to Dr. Simon Serfaty at Johns Hopkins University.
A letter responding to my inquiry (which I have no copy of) to the Stanley Foundation in 1989.
My letter to Yukinori Kuwano in Japan in 1992.
Mr. Kuwano’s response to my letter in 1992.
I have done nothing with this idea since 1992. Apparently I was a bit too far ahead of my time, and I had other fish to fry.
Paul F. deLespinasse, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Computer Science
Adrian College
Adrian, Michigan 49221
Now living in Corvallis, Oregon
May 2016