BIG STORY from MIT today. From Anne Trafton, MIT News: “In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn’t shine. Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today’s announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.” Read about it here: “Major Discovery” From MIT Primed to Unleash Solar Revolution.”
“Sunlight has the greatest potential of any power source to solve the world’s energy problems,” said MIT’s David Nocera. “In one hour, enough sunlight strikes the Earth to provide the entire plant’s energy needs for one year.”
“This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind,” says James Barber, a leader in the study of photosynthesis, who was not involved in this research. He called these developments a “Giant Leap” for generating clean, carbon-free energy on a massive scale.” Read MORE AND SEE NOCERA INTERVIEW….
THis is neat. However. You knew there would be an “however’ didn’t you?
Once we have the Hydrogen and Oxygen split ans isolated, we must store the gasses. They must be compressed to make that space efficient. This compression and cooling is highly inefficient and takes piles of energy. It will take more energy to compress and cool the gasses than it did to produce them in the first place. Not to mention the energy needed to manufacture the tanks, vessels and compressors needed for the process. The expense will be substantial and these sort of sites will require a lot of room.
I think this is a neat piece of research and may one day have some economic use. But not for a long time and not in our current economy. The costs will be prohibitive and the energy derived will be small.
Research must be economically driven, not paid for by government. Universities are notorious for doing useless research to satisfy bureaucrats handing out money for stylish projects.
Curiosity driven research commonly leads to exciting new scientific discoveries. At the time of discovery the results of basic research may be of interest only to a limited few -those scientists working towards increasing our knowledge base in some “seemingly obscure ” area. Commonly, and history bears this out, the results of this “useless research” profoundly impacts mankind in both positive and negative ways (e.g., the discovery of radioactive decay). What is more important is that curiosity driven research is a very powerful motivator for learning. I fear that we have suppressed curiosity in our children, in favor of other methods to drive learning, to the point that now very few young people in this country want to become scientists and engineers. Without future scientist populating our universities where will the next esoteric discovery that eventually changes the world come from? And if we are to rely on economically driven research than can we will have to live with short term transient success for a few at the expense of many (e.g., the latest boom-bust in the housing and mortgage industry). I put my trust in the scientists and the country will do well to do the same by supporting basic scientific research and education. The benefits are long term, help many, and are lasting.
This is a great step toward moving to domestic, private solar systems.
I believe that the future of solar system, is not in large solar panels farms, that will require enormous facilities, destroy the view, and need long power lines.
systems like this will make it possible to everyone to use solar power at home.