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Science Daily: MIT researchers develop new way to store solar power
By MB-BigB | August 2, 2008
One of the drawbacks of solar cells is that they only work when the sun is shining, and current methods to store the power produced by the cells for non-sunny periods are extremely expensive and very inefficient. Now, MIT researchers are claiming a breakthrough in power storage that will allow for inexpensive and efficient method for storing solar energy.
The researchers, led by MIT’s Daniel Nocera and Matthew Kanan, have come up with a process that efficiently splits water into hydrogen and oxygen gas which can be stored for use in a fuel cell. A house using this system would use the solar cells for power generation during the day and then would use the fuel cell at night. The MIT process uses a newly developed catalyst consisting of cobalt metal and produce the oxygen. Other catalysts, such as platinum, produces the hydrogen. According to Nocera, the new catalyst works at room temperature, in neutral pH water, and is very easy to setup.
“James Barber, a leader in the study of photosynthesis who was not involved in this research, called the discovery by Nocera and Kanan a “giant leap” toward generating clean, carbon-free energy on a massive scale.”
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Topics: Fuel Cells, Solar Power |
2 Responses to “Science Daily: MIT researchers develop new way to store solar power”
Comments
August 8th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Aren’t fuel cells much more expensive than batteries? Plus, are they reliable? Plus you have to store the hydrogen.
I must be missing something.
August 8th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
sure - lots more work needs to be done before fuel cells are cost competitive. I haven’t heard about issues with reliability, but there too, that will have to be rock solid before widespread acceptance. As far as storing the hydrogen, this setup would be for a house unit, so you could certainly have a small storage tank to store the hydrogen produced each day. I’m sure it would be compressed to a certain extent.