Why do we care about residential?

Unless you have to do it anyway.

They'll test the batteries? Wonder if they'll ship them charged? Wonder if there might be lots of storage available if the answers are yes and no respectively.

RTFA. They are building batteries.

So, gas is trading around $4/MMBTU and you get about 175 kWh of electricity from that $4 with a good combined cycle gas plant. So, the fuel cost is about 2.5 cents per kWh, about the same as delivered wind power. For a peaker plant, competing with solar, the fuel cost would be over 5 cents per kWh. That is just the fuel cost. So, why pay more?

Wind is going for 2.5 cents per kWh http://www.greentechmedia.com/... and solar is going for 5 cents a kWh http://www.greentechmedia.com/... Why would you pay more?

In a lot of ways, consensus in science is what is lacking in both controversy and ignorance. It is what goes into text books. If a subject is controversial then some people know somethings about it but the details have not been worked out and agreed upon. If a subject has had no study, for example is there DNA under the ice on Europa? Then that is a subject of ignorance and perhaps speculation but not subject to consensus.

So consensus forms on topics that feel like they have pretty much been studied to death. It should be noted though that contrarians may remain active even when a consensus exists. That may look like controversy, but really the contrarian's arguments have all been addressed to everyone's satisfaction except the contrarian's. So, basically, the contrarian is the guy who does not get it. The faster a field moves, the more likely a contrarian will still be professionally active.

The reviewer will still know who the authors are by the work described. Most of the work will already have been presented at conferences and the peer may well have reviewed the original grant proposal as well. Hiding who the authors are is impracticable if the reviewer is indeed a peer.

NASA, for example, does not allow grant funding to be used to write grants. So, this preliminary data thing sounds like a different model. Where did the money come from to obtain the preliminary data? With regard to NASA, grants can cover administrative overhead. And, most institutions have support for new grant writing efforts. Doubtless, some NASA grant money that goes to overhead ends up providing support for that kind of effort so new grants do get written. It is just murky.

In any case, all that work to find out if an idea is technically feasible enough to make a good grant proposal gets paid for somehow to persuade peers that a proposal is viable. So, really, the originality of new grant proposals has something to do with how well faculty are supported in exploring new ideas. That would seem to be the place to ensure that peer reviews get to see exciting and not just competent proposals. Are the institutions hiring the most creative postdocs, for example? Are junior faculty getting good seed money? Is there time set aside for use of laboratories for pursuit of hunches? So, if granting institutions want to see more creative proposals, they'll have to look at the institutional culture grant overhead supports.

I suspect that a slow subcritcal accelerator catalyzed reactor can be used for this and other transuranics. The subsequent fission products may in some cases be handled in the same reactor, in some cases using laser transmutation, and is some cases may be targeted with tritium to try to get past a low single neutron cross section.