Solar breakthrough simplifies storage
Scientists at MIT have made a breakthrough which may solve the biggest hurdle to the mass adoption of solar energy: a more efficient way to store it for later use. Dan Grech reports.
A worker attaches a roll of photovoltaic solar panels onto the roof of a warehouse. (Pascal Guyot/AFP/Getty Images)
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TEXT OF STORY
Kai Ryssdal: Think about this fact for a second as you consider the high price of fossil fuels: Enough sunlight hits this planet every hour to meet its energy needs for an entire year.
Energy crisis solved, right? Not to mention global warming, too. Except it's not that easy. The thing about solar power is that it's inefficient and expensive to store kind of power when the sun's not shining.
Today, a researcher at MIT said he's found a way around the darkness, and that has entrepreneurs knocking at his door.
Marketplace's Dan Grech reports.
Dan Grech: MIT professor Daniel Nocera has discovered an inexpensive way of using the sun's energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. After the sun goes down, the gases can be recombined to create electricity. The process is called electrolysis.
Nocera says until now, electrolysis required expensive transformer boxes.
Daniel Nocera: This looks like the real thing. It's as cheap as you can get, it's easy to manufacture and unlike those big transformer boxes, this works in a glass of water.
MIT has patented the process and is forming a company to develop the technology for market. Nocera also published his discovery in today's issue of the journal "Science."
Nocera: I open-sourced it right away. Because it's easy to do, you'll have the entire community across the world begin working on this.
MIT has already heard from solar firms interested in licensing the technology.
Solar energy is the hottest of the green technologies, which include biofuels and wind power, but right now solar accounts for less than 1 percent of energy use in the U.S.
Monique Hanis is with the Solar Energy Industries Association.
Monique Hanis: We have companies all over the country and labs that are working to bring down the cost of solar all along the supply chain.
More than half a billion dollars in venture capital poured into solar technology last year and investment is on its way to another record in 2008.
I'm Dan Grech for Marketplace.
Comments
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From Santa Barbara, CA, 08/14/2008
Until the oil companies can carve out their unfair share it will be an uphill battle, but one that needs to be fought. The electrolosis is not new, so what is the breakthough? Storage of Hydrogen needs carbon fiber tanks, other than that just infrastructure. Find the benefit for oil companies and we are done.
From Santa Barbara, CA, 08/02/2008
see:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=5&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=Nocera.INNM.&OS=IN/Nocera&RS=IN/Nocera
for details of the patent, including the date of 2002.
From Santa Barbara, CA, 08/02/2008
see:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=5&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=Nocera.INNM.&OS=IN/Nocera&RS=IN/Nocera
for details of the patent, dated 2002.
From Santa Barbara, 08/02/2008
see:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=5&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=Nocera.INNM.&OS=IN/Nocera&RS=IN/Nocera
for details of the patent, dated 2002.
From VA, 08/01/2008
Sure would have likes to hear what the advance was. What makes this any more than the old highschool experiment?
From Tallahassee, FL, 07/31/2008
Wonderful news about the new electrolysis technique.
I have a concept for an ocean wave electrical generator and am looking for some help to create it.
My vision is to see hydrogen farms on the ocean utilizing wave energy to produce electricity to use electrolysis to produce hydrogen and oxygen.
Tankers stop by periodically to pick up the hydrogen harvest.
Seems like a natural adjunct to an oil drilling platform.
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