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. 

• 1. An article (never published) written about 1972 during the Nixon administration.

  2. 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.

  3. The only intelligent response I got to this letter, which came from the USSR State Committee For Science and Technology,  in Russian.

  4. My translation of this letter into English.

  5. An op-ed I wrote for the Ann Arbor News which came out in 1988.

  6. A letter I sent near the end of the Reagan administration to Dr. Simon Serfaty at Johns Hopkins University.

  7.  A letter responding to my inquiry (which I have no copy of) to the Stanley Foundation in 1989.

  8. My letter to Yukinori Kuwano in Japan in 1992.

  9. 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