No wonder all commercial efforts have failed

In one of those places(Congo), I once asked why they did not buy solar cells, it would be much cheaper than buying gas for the generator. The answer was that the security situation was such that they would be broken or stolen in short order.

> I agree things aren't looking great right now, but just giving up doesn't seem like a good idea either.

Things are looking great from a purely technical/economical perspective, batteries plus solar is the cheapest power you can get in most of the world. A full transition to renewables is technically easily within reach. Politically, not so much.

Yet they are trying where commercial efforts evidently have failed multiple times already.

> No, hobbyist setups aren't going to take over the world. But if you can make an open-source flow battery setup that works with commercially available materials

They seem to be finding out that it can't be done, is my point. Why would hobbyists have an advantage if the materials are commercially available? Industrial scale producers can buy those in bulk and even negotiate quite significant rebates, which Joe Public simple can't.

> that's a huge deal for the large parts of the world where a commercial flow battery sales person is never going to go (i.e. large parts of Africa).

One of the preconditions seems to be a 3D-Printer including the right raw materials. Lots of those in Africa I guess. :p

> As an element vanadium is as common as zinc in the Earth's crust, more common than copper, though not as easily available in concentrated ores.

And therein lies the rub. And it is already in demand because of steel alloys for high quality tools, e.g. Chrome-Vanadium-Steel wrenches. Additional demand at scale will drive the prices up. But this was only one example taken from their slides. Other materials will have the same problem though. Plus, how much energy goes into making them, cradle to cradle, if we include recycling, of course? People keep forgetting that money is a flawed measure. The laws of Physics know no dollar signs.

> I agree things aren't looking great right now, but just giving up doesn't seem like a good idea either.

My point is more about these kinds of pseudo-solutions to give false hope to Star Trek victims, hence my dig about "teching out of the problem". Some writer once spilled the beans on how to write Star Trek episodes, roughly like so: "write a run of the mill ordinary story and when it comes to a head we will tech our way out of it - enter Geordi La Forge". That's basically the modern equivalent of "Deus Ex Machina" in ancient Greek dramas: humans are at an impasse and the "God from the Machine" intervenes.

And if we *keep* falling for this kind of "solution" we may as well call it quits and have one big demolition party. There is a great skit from German TV suggesting just that, but I have not found an English equivalent; it's called "50 awesome years - the long demolition party" - spoiler alert: "Anyone still procreating is an asshole" (for putting their children through this). By extension, anyone suggesting that we can tech our way out of this, without even considering reducing our energy/resource demand footprint, is an asshole as well, or just an idiot or both.