PT> The institution I attend is The Cooper Union (Manhattan, NY).
My recollection of that place is one of a room full of teletype machines and 
terminals,  and several racks of pdp-11 equipment...     
 PT> The design of this power supply will be based upon a solar 
 PT> energy system that has been under development for years at the 
 PT> school, called 'the Starfuel system' (it's even got some 
 PT> patents).  To be as brief as possible: the system collects 
 PT> solar energy via a normal PV array.  The current is stabalized 
 PT> through an LCB (linear current booster).
What's that all about?
 PT> This current is sent to electrolyzers, which split water into 
 PT> hydrogen and oxygen.  The hydrogen is the important part; it is 
 PT> purified and stored in hydride storage tanks.
As in lithium hydride?  I recall seeing something about storing hydrogen in 
metals this way...
 PT> The energy of the hydrogen is then converted to steady state 
 PT> current using a fuel cell (recombining the hydrogen with oxygen 
 PT> releases energy).  This info and more can be found in publicly 
 PT> available technical papers.
Hmm.
 PT>      Our concern, of course, is the "state of the industry" of 
 PT> currently available 1 kW power supplies.  Of major concern in 
 PT> the demand a customer would put on such a device; does an owner 
 PT> of such a device constantly demand 1 kW or does power use vary 
 PT> during the day??  I suppose an owner of a private home might 
 PT> vary his/her demand, while a filming expedition, for instance, 
 PT> might need to constantly demand 1 kW.
 PT>      Criticisms I've heard from one person on gas powered 1 kW 
 PT> supplies: noisy, fumes, the trouble of transporting gasoline.  
 PT> Our device is ideally quiet, emissionless, and requires nothing 
 PT> but the sun.  Even in cloudy weather, I believe PV arrays can 
 PT> harness some respectable power.
Sounds real interesting.  I'm aware of the application of fuel cell 
technology in the space program to some extent,  but not other than that.  
How easy is it to build such devices?  Are they practical for such as us,  or 
would some sort of serious industrial capacity be required?
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