New way to save solar electricity....

Today’s post: Wednesday, 8-6-2008

In an article in the journal Science, published on Thursday, 7-31, 2008 & which was reported in several places in the online news yesterday, Daniel Nocera, an MIT professor of energy, said that he has worked out a less expensive & more manageable way to break down water into Hydrogen and Oxygen with electricity generated by solar that can be turned back into electricity later using a fuel cell.

He explained that this research project was important because this method can be used to allow solar generated electricity which is collected during the day, to be used at night. And, having a cost-effective way to do that will make solar a much more useful & competitive way to generate electricity.

1. The article I saw suggested using this technology for homes.

This may well be possible and even cost competitive someday. But, for homes, I suspect using electricity from the grid as is done now, &/or storing electricity in super capacitors for some applications & in lithium ion batteries will be more doable and far safer.

It may change at some point if new & reliable ways are also developed to save the hydrogen generated; but hydrogen is tricky to handle and can be unsafe, even explosive, if mishandled.

It’s likely possible to use the air to store the oxygen since you can get oxygen from air for the fuel cells when you want to use the hydrogen to generate electricity. But oxygen is also dangerous enough due to the extreme fire danger it can create that releasing it safely might be challenging to do in home use.

Further, most fuel cells now sold are made for larger, commercial applications.

That said, the potential economics for home use apparently look good to Daniel Nocera. And, more smaller scale fuel cells and a safe way to save the hydrogen and release the oxygen may be found that make this process work for home use.

2. To me, the more likely potential use for this technology would be in large photovoltaic locations such as those set up by utilities, governments, & large companies.

The photovoltaic power generation using vacant lots near cities using their thin film solar cells that Nanosolar makes would be one such application.

In such applications, the fuel cells already made for commercial use would work. And, the expertise, money, people, and management systems needed to safely manage hydrogen and release oxygen would be available and likely to be reliable. In home use that would be a good bit more challenging to arrange.

(That having been said, it may someday be usable in home applications if the needed systems to allow safe home use and smaller fuel cells are made & become commercially available.)

3. The third area where this might be viable is in providing fuel for plug in hybrid vehicles that use fuel cells instead of diesel or gasoline or biofuels to generate electricity above the amount stored in the vehicle’s batteries etc.

This depends on that market developing more than now looks likely to me.

But, the second half of Arthur C Clarke’s 10 year rule is that where technology that otherwise could happen but now looks quite unlikely is concerned, experts and scientists who say it won’t happen at all or do so within 10 years are often proved wrong by technology breakthroughs that come online within the 10 years that are unknown by these forecasters or which simply haven’t yet occurred.

That’s my take on the three potential uses of this new technology at this time. But it definitely looks interesting. And, it adds another way to run our economy 24/7 using mostly solar generated electricity which is not available at night.

Other potential solutions to that problem that do not burn fossil fuels include solar thermal electricity generation, nuclear, geothermal, and wind. (If it stands up to the climate changes from global warming, hydroelectric power would also work.)