Cheap solar at night? MIT may have answer within a decade
Solar energy has been expensive and inefficient to use after dark, said Daniel Nocera, 51, the Henry Dreyfus professor of energy and professor of chemistry at MIT. But in an article published in the July 31 issue of the journal Science, Nocera and other Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers say they have found a simple, inexpensive process for storing solar energy.
"How the heck are you going to build an economy or a business only if the sun is shining?" said Nocera, the senior author. "What you really need to do is when the sun is shining, figure out how to store some of that energy so you can unleash it when the sun isn't shining."
Nocera and the other researchers based their work on a compound made from cobalt and phosphate, both readily available. When the sun is out, electricity from solar panels can be fed to the compound in water, causing the water to split into hydrogen and oxygen. The elements create a chemical fuel that can be recombined to create energy later, when the sun is not shining.
The discovery breaks "the connection between energy and fossil fuels because my energy is coming from water," said Nocera, "unleashing the solar energy, not in real time, but when you want to."
The researchers said the findings open the door for large-scale use of solar energy around the clock - not right away but within 10 years. The next step is engineering the system to create and use the solar power. That task will be part of an engineering design project at MIT during the upcoming semester, Nocera said.
Cost is the biggest challenge facing the solar energy industry, said Monique Hanis, spokeswoman for the Solar Energy Industries Association, an industry trade group in Washington, D.C.
"The industry is trying to cut costs and improve efficiency all along the supply chain," Hanis said. "The cost of solar should be on par with sort of traditional fossil sources in about eight years," based on the rising costs of other forms of energy and the trends the association has seen in cost reductions in solar over the last decade, she said.
Nocera and the MIT research group said they opted to publish their findings to allow the science community to work on the technology.
"The challenges confronting the world in energy are too big to let anybody's single ego or money get in the way," Nocera said. "And we're talking about some really challenging problems."
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- JanforGore
- added this
- added August 01, 2008
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good work jan, you are seting the pace.
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It is the positive attitude that we can meet this challenge and work to do it that will help us do it.
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- JanforGore
- 5 months ago
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This is great. But, I've seen a lot of solar powered home that store power and they aren't in the dark. Couldn't they use these storage batteries on a large scale?
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- shroomfairy
- 5 months ago
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This is tremendous. Any power generating process with water being the waste product, is the kind thing that will save us all.
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- rightbrain
- 5 months ago
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Great to hear they are publishing this information so others can help develop the technology. I really believe if we invest heavily in solar and wind they both could be vastly improved and widely implemented in well under 10 years.
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Hydrogen......Oxygen.......separate..... two volatile forces that can change many of our Current problems........together......the lifeblood of the Universe.........Golden Ruler....Will...........
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- Virtual_Will_Rogers
- 5 months ago
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This would be an excellently beneficial development, especially for the worlds poorest communities. Jumping right into sustainable, renewable energy sources as a way to focus underdeveloped areas to push forward would seem to be the perfect type of incentive for all.
We need household tax credits for solar panels right now. While the price is high, only the richest can possibly afford it, so the tax credit would be an incentive for them to go buy the stuff now. The companies making the panels now will thusly continue to stay in the game: modifying, innovating, and eventually bringing costs down -- when this prototype is ready, the market would then be so ready to kick it up and get going. Night Power = Awesome.
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As Jonny Cochran would say: "If it can not store you are out of power by four"
Hydrogen or some other chemical storage is the answer.
Treat the energy crisis like your hair is on fire!!!!!
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BRILLIANT. I'm so amazed at how much we as a civilization are able to accomplish. Imagine what would be possible without all the corruption and greed that slows this all down?
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I heard about this on NPR just yesterday.
awesome-
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interesting. is there a problem with how mush water is needed for the process? Is the water byproduct clean afterward?
Take all the subsidies away from Nuclear and this kind of thing can be up and running in just a few years vs. 10
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This article is super old! Exhibit A:
http://www.insidetech.com/news/2389-mit-students-develop-solar-dish-hot-enough-to-melt-steel
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- KylieStone
- 5 months ago
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Solar Tech is super old.
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Yes, this is brilliant. Using a compound in water to separate the hydrogen and oxygen to feed the solar cells for whenever you want power. The video at the link posted shows a diagram of how this would work.... you could even power up your electric car as well as your home with this. And on a larger scale, well, this could catapult solar power to the mainstream. Although, i do worry about areas that have droughts, but if the water used to make this power could be recycled through this system instead of wasted it's a win win. Very exciting.
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The developing nations of the world have a right to try and provide the quality of life freely available to the west. The only problem at the moment is that they seem to be making the same mistakes. Hopefully the continuing development in cheap and renewable energy sources will allow a happy equilibrium to exist.
Personally I have reservations about bio fuels as I doubt they can scale, they are after all something that is consumed at great cost. These other sources however need heavy investment in R&D and should be a priority for every developed nation rather than the quick fix solution of offshore drilling.
Keep fighting the fight and stay current!
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As more funds are appropriated for the futher development of innovative solar power we will definitely see ourselves coming out of the darkness and into the light of this NEW AGE of TECHNOLOGY...but solar does not stand alone...we need also to further explore and develope all of the alternative energy possibilities...
Good post, Jan...
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- PlatoTacius
- 5 months ago
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This Earth is super old.....Mankind has nearly destroyed it in 100 years.......all of this knowledge was known at the first of the twentieth century.....I have a small antique wind generator from the twenties....it powered batteries for camping trips......the choice to go with the combustible gasoline engine.....instead of natural forces.....was made....you guessed it......for financial gain.....Henry Ford.....let his workers take one day off so they could shop at his store.....slavery never stopped.....it just took on a larger...more diverse.... group of slaves.......Golden Ruler....Will.............
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- Virtual_Will_Rogers
- 5 months ago
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again and again people are demonstrating that the entrenched scientific community is as usual a reactionary inhibiting force in our society. This time MIT is saying that the scientists who still contend that it takes a large amount energy to produce hydrogen are WRONG!!!
Sadly our politicians are being supported by BIG OIL so we are unlikely to get anything but misinformation and foot dragging from them. Look at the national dialog about off-shore drilling instead of a discussion about the best tack to take towards hydrogen and renewable non-polluting energy.
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im sure indoor plumbing at some piont in history was a costly endevour, but i think we can all agree it was so worth it. plus its the sun people, i mean seriously, like we are going to run out of the sun ever? if we do we will have bigger concerns then energy costs.
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Two of the biggest problems right now, are that we are addicted to oil and that we have been made slaves to debt by the banks...the developement of alternative energies should help us to break the vicious cycle of the addiction and the debt...as the price of oil has risen, so has the price of everything else...
However, both of the problems are rooted, not in the actions of the people, but in how the systems and the people are manipulated by the selfish and greedy egoistic few...
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- PlatoTacius
- 5 months ago
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Both sustainable and emmisions friendly.
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ok, gang, taking electricity and breaking up water into hydrogen and oxygen is called "electrolysis"...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_of_waterit's not new.
if these guys have created an innovation that in some way is more efficient than ever before, that's a GREAT thing, and the compounds they're using should be touted and rewarded as such.
so, now you've got hydrogen and oxygen. now what?
you've got to store it for conversion back to electricity at night. how? compress it? what powers the compressors? electricity? from where? the daylight solar cells?
how efficient are the solar cells? the electrolysis process? the compressors?
now you've got compressed hydrogen and oxygen... or you can vent the O2 if that's the plan and design.
do you run the H2 through a fuel cell to get the night-time electricity out? how efficient or expensive are those fuel cells?
do you run the H2 through an internal combustion engine hooked to a generator? again, efficiency comes in to peck at you.
personally, i think solar is a GREAT IDEA. and i have a sneaky suspicion as to what's going to make it succeed: the same battery chemistry advances that will put electric cars on the road.
i think we're really close now, with the batteries going into the Prius and the Chevy Volt and others in the near future.
when those batteries are REALLY good, take a few of them and bolt them to your garage wall or stick 'em in your basement [where it's cooler...] and charge them during the day with the juice your home isn't using from the solar cells.
then light or heat or whatever your home at night from the batteries through fairly simple inverters. that technology is darned good already. ....... and even charge your electric car "off grid" from the same storage.
welcome back, too, Jan.
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MIT always pumps out some stuff. There is a reason Noam Chomsky works there...
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M.I.T. Thinks that can solve every problem.. They can not.
We've had people in the early 1900 hundreds, that have said;;; We have made a car, that runs on peanut oil.
Hemp Oil
Rape Seed Oil.
Why are we so dependend on Petroleum? -
We need new houses to HAVE to be built with these solar panels avaidable on roof tops. Trust me, it works.
The climate is warmer now, so solar can run all day, sure it costs £20, 000 to install, but it only costs usually £5 per month for the energy to coninue. And you always will have lot's of energy to spare, you can sell it back to energy companies, they collect it and pay you a good amount for it.
I am dissapointed to say my aprent's house was only built in late 2005 and no solar panels wereinstalled, even though you pay enough for that in the large house.
These I believe in new homes should have to be aquired by enforced law. We could really take a large step for the enviroment and energy prices when we do it.
