MIT Energy Storage Discovery Could Lead to “Unlimited” Solar Power
Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have discovered a new way of storing energy from sunlight that could lead to “unlimited” solar power.
The process, loosely based on plant photosynthesis, uses solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. When needed, the gases can then be recombined in a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity whether the sun is shining or not.
According to project leader Prof. Daniel Nocera, “This is the nirvana of what we’ve been talking about for years. Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now, we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon.”
Nocera has also explained that the process (video) uses natural materials, is inexpensive to conduct and is easy to set up. “That’s why I know this is going to work. It’s so easy to implement,” he said.
Other prominent scientists in the field have rushed to highlight the revolutionary potential of the new process. According to James Barber, biochemistry professor at Imperial College London, this research is a “giant leap” toward generating clean, carbon-free energy on as massive scale. In a statement, he also said:
“This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind. The importance of their discovery cannot be overstated since it opens up the door for developing new technologies for energy production, thus reducing our dependence for fossil fuels and addressing the global climate change problem.”
No news has yet been released of a predicted timescale to commericial development or mainstream adoption. However, Nocera has said that he’s hopeful that within 10 years homes will no longer be powered using electricity-by-wire from a central source. Instead, homeowners will be able to harness solar power during daylight hours and use this new energy storage method for electricity at night.
Woohoo! I was happy when I stumbled across this story (this is why I said “Friar, check your email” on that other post) – my heart hopes this is the one that works. That it is from MIT gives me some confidence in it.
-Brett
Brett Legree’s last blog post..viking fridays – tears in the rain.
I hope so, too! I want to believe in stuff like this. Too often breakthroughs are made and then “mysteriously” killed.
Steph,
what a great idea for a site. We all do need good news. I especially liked this post–maybe it will shift the ground under the nuclear debate. There are so many people who say we “need” nuclear power, and I just hate it! We shouldn’t be creating that kind of waste if we can avoid it.
You should definitely check out Yes! magazine–it’s along the same lines, and I really enjoy reading it.
Beth Partin’s last blog post..MonHaibun: Where I Haven’t Been
Hi Beth,
(putting on nuclear engineer hat and flame retardant clothing)
I am a nuclear engineer by trade, chemical engineer by training, and a writer by passion (how’s that for confused?) – as someone who works in the industry, we have made a lot of mistakes in the past, for various reasons (some out of self-preservation).
Nuclear power in and of itself is not evil – really, solar and wind energy are (if you think about it) forms of nuclear energy – thermonuclear fusion powers the sun, and without sunshine, there would be no solar energy and no heating of the Earth’s atmosphere to produce wind.
(sort of)
That aside, what we call “nuclear waste” is really only that because nuclear non-proliferation treaties prohibit fuel reprocessing. The current (1950′s era) thinking only allows a “once-through” fuel cycle which extracts perhaps 4 percent of the energy in the nuclear fuel.
Advanced reactor technologies such as the Integral Fast Reactor showed promise of delivering over 99 percent energy extraction and a final waste form that would be completely safe (i.e. make coffee tables out of it) after about 300 years. Very easy to store.
This technology was, of course, canceled by the Bush Administration… when it was showing great promise. I’ll let the reader decide what that means, but it smelled pretty rotten to me.
The pebble bed modular reactor out of South Africa (a German design, actually) also shows many advantages over the current reactor types. China will also be building these pebble bed reactors.
Also, if we use thorium rather than uranium, we have a much larger fuel reserve available (probably 1000 years of power based on current energy requirement estimates).
Finally, the ITER project and the HiPER project are two approaches to controlled fusion reactors that may eventually pave the way for widespread fusion power – with practically no waste and nearly limitless energy.
All of this aside – I’d rather see this man-made photosynthesis take off – generation of power nearer the intended use is a better idea, and it would of course be the way to go as it wouldn’t need large plants and the associated infrastructure.
Please don’t take what I wrote the wrong way!!! I’d sooner see alternatives developed because we will, unfortunately, run out of even conventional nuclear fuels. The sun will last for all intents and purposes forever.
Brett Legree’s last blog post..viking fridays – tears in the rain.
Beth: Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about it to form an opinion of whether it’s good or bad, to tell the truth; I’m just all about alternative methods that seem smarter. Though thanks to Brett, below, I’ve learned something! Whoa!
Cool about the YES mag; I’ll google it!
Brett: I love it when discussion like this ensues! Thanks for putting in your two cents as well as your expertise!
Brett,
thanks for explaining that stuff. I had no idea that reactors didn’t get the maximum energy out of whatever fuel they were using.
If the treaties could be changed, could the “waste” actually produce more energy?
Beth Partin’s last blog post..MonHaibun: Where I Haven’t Been
Steph & Beth,
I hope I didn’t sound like a “know-it-all” as I certainly am not! As Beth surmised, the “waste” as we currently know it has a lot of potential energy remaining within it (I actually work in Waste Management) – but we’re not using it.
The current treaties/laws/politics actually hold us back – and as I sort of alluded to above, it is my belief that the industry is *NOT* using the best technology available to us. I know we can do much better, if we want to do so. But of course, as you know, people can sometimes get into a position of protecting their own interests.
Nuclear power should be clean and safe – if we will let it be that way. It may be the best way to power places like Arctic and Antarctic bases, or that base on the dark side of the moon
and if we can use it wisely until we get really good solar energy like the MIT idea going, it should help us get where we need to go.
But…
If we don’t do it correctly, we could end up with a problem. That’s the scenario most people on the street know about, and the one I dearly hope we avoid.
Brett Legree’s last blog post..viking fridays – tears in the rain.
There’s a limit to how much power you can get out of the sun. I recently read in another book, that we can’t fully depend on solar power for energy. To power the entire earth (based on our energy use), we’d need to cover something like half the surface of the planet with solar cells. And that’s not counting the oceans where we can’t really build.
That being said, it would be NICE to subsidize our existing energy supplies with solar as much as possible.
The more hydrogen we generate by photosynthesis or by hydroelectricity, the less oil and coal we’d have to use.
Hydrogen/solar, combined with Nuclear, should take care of our energy needs for the next thousand years or so (until we figure out fusion power!)
There are only so many reserves of petroleum left…we should keep those to make the polymers that we so badly depedn on (and stop burning them up the stack).
By the way, Brett, that was an excellent comment. I didnt’ even realize all the stuff about pebble reactors and such. We can always depend on you to shed some light on the situation.
Friar’s last blog post..Getting to Know More People in Your NeighborHood.
Friar,
There’s some really great tech out there but our “masters” sometimes don’t want to let the world have it – with billions invested in our 1950′s / 1960′s era technology, they want to get the money back – even if there are designs out there that are safer, more efficient and cheaper. At least, that’s how I see it
Now… solar power – maybe we need to build a Dyson sphere! That would be cool. Or a Ringworld.
Brett Legree’s last blog post..viking fridays – tears in the rain.
@Brett
It’s because gasoline is still very cheap. Its cheaper than milk, it’s cheaper than coke, it’s cheaper than bottled water. There’s no incentive for anyone to improve things.
What we need is a “Crisis”, to get the govts. off their butts and DO something.
WWII resulted in them building an Atomic Bomb in 5 years and developping nucleaer power.
The Cold War resulted in them developing missiles and computers to fly them, and putting a man on the Moon in 7 years.
Just goes to show you what we CAN do, if we want to.
Just wait till oil hits $300 a barrel. And just watch..THEN you’ll start seeing all this fancy technology come out!
Friar’s last blog post..Getting to Know More People in Your NeighborHood.
Also because they can still milk us for all we’re worth, not just because it is cheap. There’s no incentive for *energy* companies to do anything, because they have a plentiful product that we need to buy – and as they’ve learned, we are willing to put up with a tripling of the cost, no problem. Gas was 45 cents a litre when I got my first car…
I’m afraid they might just make us suffer for a bit with oil at $300/barrel before they release the high tech stuff…
Brett Legree’s last blog post..viking fridays – tears in the rain.
Really awesome discussion going on here, guys! I don’t feel I can contribute, I just don’t know enough. But since you guys work in it, I’m learning something!
I suppose the only thing I really notice is that when alternative measures come about, they’re often nixed because large corporations stand to lose money. Remember Tesla?
Of course you can contribute! What you said about losing money is often the root of this stuff (well, almost always the root of it).
A lot of folks don’t want to pay more for cleaner technology, so we have what we have.
Or to go off on a tangent – during an economic downturn, does anyone really need to lose a job due to layoff? Well, perhaps a few, but if companies cared about their employees rather than paying dividends to shareholders, perhaps not many would be out of work. If a self-employed handyman can find work in a recession, why do skilled workers lose jobs?
Greed.
Brett Legree’s last blog post..viking fridays – tears in the rain.
On the subject of employees losing their jobs due to economic downturn, Colin just told me some really neat news yesterday; that at Toyota, they’ve pledged some no-layoff thing (and you know how badly the automotive industry has been hit) and instead they’re sending those employees who have no work right now on training courses and the like. So when work does pick up again, these employees will be even more valuable than they already are.
Kudos to a company that’s turned this situation to their advantage! I love it!!
Steph,
That is good news – I’ve seen something similar years ago with a small steel plant in the USA (can’t remember the name now). It makes me want to buy a Toyota, actually
Brett Legree’s last blog post..viking fridays – tears in the rain.
Steph,
that is good news about Toyota. I love this site!
Friar and Brett–about the solar thing, I think the solution would be to put solar panels on houses. Within reason, of course–some places might be entirely unsuitable. But if we put solar roofs on house or just added a few panels, and remodeled the houses to be more energy efficient, think how much that would help deal with our energy needs and reduce carbon emissions.
I think it would go a long way toward solving our energy needs. And it would create a lot of jobs.
Beth Partin’s last blog post..Speaking of “Grumpy at What I Might Miss”
Beth,
I agree – it might even be possible to do it in places where you might think you cannot. I’ve often heard folks up here in Canada say it isn’t practical in winter because of the snow.
And then I thought, “but what if you used some of the energy from the solar panels to power a heat trace to keep the snow on the roof melted?”
If this MIT thing works, because it stores energy it could run the heat trace even when the sun isn’t shining to keep snow and ice from forming on the panels.
I think the way to move forward with this idea, just like any other, is to say “why not?” when someone says “you can’t do that”. If you ask “why not?” three times you usually know what you have to do.
Brett Legree’s last blog post..viking fridays – tears in the rain.
Yeah, or maybe the solution is to ask, “How can we do this?” instead of “Should we do this?” Because the “how” discussion might lead to action, whereas the “should” discussion leads only to more and more arguments over ideology.
Of course, I’m still waiting for the government to set up a program to do this. I’m not sure how it could be done in the private sector, but maybe we should stop waiting.
All my electricity comes from wind, for which I pay a premium, but it would be cool to get a solar roof. Not really within the budget now, though.
Beth Partin’s last blog post..Speaking of “Grumpy at What I Might Miss”
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