>Another little known or understood fact about the transmission of power is that for maximum transfer of power the impedence of the load must match the impedence of the power source.

Impedance is measured in Ohms; your later comments refer to MW (power units).

> Therefore, for a 100 MW power plant to supply 100MW to the consumer it must dissipate 100 MW of heat to the environment and consume a total of 200 MW of energy from coal, etc... This does not consider line losses, which will subtract from the 100MW pumped out to the consumer. Most transmission lines are around 94-96% efficient, so only about 94-96 MW makes it to the 110v outlet in the consumer's home, enough for about 19,000 homes if they have 5KVA transformers. Most of this energy is generated by combusting fossil fuels. Fossil fuels (oil, coal, shale) turn out to be our major resource for plastics and medicines. This is why we need to switch to a Hyrdogen economy ASAP!

Hydrogen could be used for storage (as in a battery). But let's not forget that the energy has to come from somewhere in the first place. Nuclear energy would be perfectly acceptable, provided the nuclear reactor is far enough from the consumers (say, 150 million kilometers / 93 million miles).

Hilmar.