MIT is in a twisted, propeller-capped knot this morning heralding a new discovery it says will unleash a solar revolution. However, the "revolutionary leap" inspired by photosynthesis is not on the glamorous front-end of energy collection, rather, it's related to a simple, highly efficient and inexpensive way to store that energy when the sun doesn't shine. "This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years," says Daniel Nocera, MIT neomaxizoomdweebie who with Matthew Kanan developed the unprecedented approach to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases using the sun's energy. The gases can then be recombined later inside a
fuel cell. The key components to the process are a pair of catalysts (one consists of cobalt metal, phosphate, and an electrode; the other, platinum) which produce the O and H gases at room temperature and in neutral pH water (i.e., tap water). While similar solutions exist for industrial use (primarily), these are very expensive and require specialized environments.
"This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind," said James Barber, a leader in the study of photosynthesis at Imperial College in London. "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." Nocera concedes that further engineering is required to commercialize the approach but hopes to see it implemented in household fuel cell systems within the next 10 years. Click through for the video breakdown.
posted Aug 1st 2008 2:13AM
I think it's a great idea, although I get this feeling that it won't be implemented. Although I'd love to see it being used.
Agreed. It's just the cost of it. If I had cash to blow, I probably would do it. Maybe if i win the lottery or something. =/ Oh hell this has a better chance of becoming mainstream, then me winning the lottery, who am I kidding? =( Damn Odds...
These trolls get worse and worse dont they...
@ Macca
Jeez, what's your problem? Big oil backer are ya?
since when is this new technology? this is what hydrogen fuel cells are based on... so they made it solar instead of wired electric? big deal, not new technology at all. plenty of companies already have systems available utilizing hydrogen fuel cells, not to mention numerous cars.
Wow.. Engadget you got this story all wrong. The discovery has nothing to do with solar panels and hydrogen fuel cells. The discovery is of a new cheap catalyst that makes electrolysis cheaper, yet still very efficient. They are using a catalyst that cost hundreds to thousands of times less than platinum for one of the electrodes. This is the step that is taking the process from very specialized expensive industrial applications to putting one in your basement. Yes, anyone with a 9v battery can get some H gas from water; but catalysts make the process work well enough to actually be useful on large scales.
In electrochemistry, a different chemical reaction occurs at each electrode. At one electrode, electrons are forced into molecules, and at the other electrode they are pulled out. For any given "splitting" of water, the hydrogen that is formed at the reducing electrode and the oxygen forming at the oxidizing electrode do not come from the same water molecule. So yes, the kinetics of the half reactions are very important.
The difference in free energy between the 2H20 and 2H2+ O2 is fairly modest. However, the process is path dependent, and your traditional pair of metal electrodes in electrolyte solution connected with a battery is very inefficient, because the molecules have to be forced into high energy transition states in order to overcome the entropic and electronic barriers necessary for reaction. The work required to get over this kinetic barrier is irreversible, and lost as heat.
A catalyst lowers the energy of the transition state, increasing the efficiency by lowering the amount of irreversible work required to complete the reaction. In addition, a good catalyst is durable, and does not undergo side reactions that cause it to lose its effectiveness. Platinum is generally a great catalyst for a variety of reasons, but it is very expensive. What remains to be seen is if the cost that can be saved by using this type of catalyst is enough to overcome the presumably slightly lower efficiency than the exotic metal and polymer catalysts also being developed.
Thanks ds.
What I find funny is that the MIT guy is pushing this as a home power plant using solar power and a fuel cell. First, we all know home solar is no where near cost effective, nothing changes here. Second, we all know fuel cells are not cost effective. How would this system that contains the two be cost effective?
I more see this as a low cost way to make hydrogen from water. They you could use that to say power a car(as long compressing it isn't too expensive). There are currently viable ways to power a vehicle with Hydrogen but the cost to extract it way to high.
Humm.. Hopefully it will power my 2000watt psu on this computer.. ;D
superlame.
Wow. Talk about wasted energy. Have fun with the electricity bill.
It only draws what it needs. And it isnt even possible to build a PC that would draw even close to 2Kw.
A triple SLI, huge OCed, 2x quad core system with 12 HDD's and 8GB of RAM and all voltage settings on max wouldn't even draw more than 1000watts.
When can I buy the kit from Edmund Scientific? ;-) It's easy to get jaded with all vaporware "new energy" announcements, but MIT usually slings less BS than most. We can only hope.
Great idea but he forgot about one thing... capitalism. Capitalism won't let a self-sustaining system like that thrive unless we are paying some big companies lots of money. Electric companies, gas/oil companies definitely won't let that happen.
I don't understand. You don't think there's a single person/company out there that would be willing to commercialize this because it's "self sustaining" (I doubt it is 100% self sustaining, although certainly more renewable than fossil fuels)?
That would be necessary, seeing as how if even 1 company or person decided to develop it, they'd have the market all to themselves.
Yes, socialism has produced so much...
*sigh* Another product of the public skool system that believes "capitalism" is synonymous with "greed."
Capitalism is the very reason a product like this CAN succeed. Capitalism dictates that if there is a system that can do something cheaper and more efficiently, people will buy it.
Capitalism is an economic system and has nothing to do with "corporate greed", "big oil" or any of those other buzzwords you hear thrown around. Please visit your local library (or even Wikipedia, for crying out loud) to learn more.
Capitalism tends to flounder when you're dealing with a captive audience.
Don't speak of capitalism as a single entity, it makes you sound like a Che Guevara clad angsty teenager. You owe your ability to be here to the capitalists at IBM, Sun, Microsoft, and Apple. If it had been up to state controlled economies, computers would probably have remained as research tools only.
A simple business model can be made of this anyway. Simply sell it like a furnace. You sell the initial installation, then come back and check it every 6 months to ensure it is operating efficiently and then replace it every 15 - 20 years. Money can be made from checking the efficiency of the installation once consumer base has reached critical mass. Some money will be made on initial install and on upgrade.
As for capitalism, that will hang around until we realize that wanting to do something for someone else is more satisfying than getting paid to do it.
Cheers
@ dreamscape86
the meaning of capitalism has been corrupted.
governments work to serve their own purpose, not the peoples (wikipedia on economics, look it up)
big oil and other self serving companies can ensure that governments stay in power, so of course they will get whatever they want.
I would love to see this product make it into the market, and it probably will, in a niche. A niche so expensive that the self serving public will never accept it into the mainstream.
People have to accept that we are all here to only serve our own self interest and not the planets. That way we can quickly get back to killing ourselves and save the environment by not being here anymore.
This is not new at all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEdQRVQtffw
The "new" part of this is how efficiently they can convert the water into its elemental parts.
Of course this is not new. The puzzle pieces have been laying around for millenniums. What's exciting (and new) is that we just figured out which pieces fit together (well a couple of them at least!)
Solar powered electrolysis of water? Taking two existing ideas and combining them in an obvious way does not count as originality.
Now combining Solar with some new battery technology that uses no harsh chemicals, wet parts, or moving parts - that would be newsworthy.
This is as good as battery technology and it meets all the requirements you just set as news worthy...
Forget the solar part for a minute, that's old hat and was thrown in to get the off-the-grid greenies pumpin. What wasn't mentioned, is that this is potentially the missing link in attaining that hydrogen infrastructure needed for this new hydrogen economy. H2 really is little more than an energy storage system aka battery technology. In an electric car, the H2 tank + fuel cell can be functionally interchangeable with a big array of batteries, and have the advantage of rapid refueling (much like gasoline) vs slow recharging.
Generating hydrogen is typically an energy intensive, dangerous and expensive process. This new process for generating H2 has the advantage of (relatively) cheap catalytic materials and takes place at room temperature/pressure. This means gas stations can install H2 pumps, tanks and generators (they already have electricity and water). You can even have your own H2 generator in your garage, powered by solar or the grid. Rather than charge your electric car while you sleep, you can make H2 all day and night, and fill'r up when you're ready.
Dan G is right on the money here. This should be seen as a replacement for batteries (or other energy storage like gas). In that light this is a huge deal.
@dndrules
WTF DUDE?! Where did Apple come in on this?
Holy crap.
I'm actually a little amped about this. And I'm the token cynic commenter most of the time. I think when people use the word 'nirvana' I just get excited.
Solar powered electrolysis of water?
Taking two well understood ideas and combining them hardly counts as "ground breaking"
it does when you suddenly make it alot cheaper and more efficient
hey "RoboDan" it's about the catalyst, duh!
Because, you know, $4 per gallon of gasoline is crazy expensive. I'd much rather use solar panels that use PLATINUM as a catalyst?!
We'll have to mine the mouths of moderately successful rappers.
$4 per gallon is a joke. $9.12 is what we paid this morning for the same amount here in Northern Europe.
and I also got the sarcasm a bit too late :D
Ahh Mr H. google catalytic converter - you know the pollution control device fitted on every car!
I'm well aware catalytic converters use platinum. Then again, when were those ever cheap?
As others have mentioned, if anything, this article should be about finding a new way to split water.
I was also poking fun at the idea of powering your entire house on solar energy, and to still have enough left over to power your car and your house at night time! Solar panel technology is really going to have to make a lot of advances for that to be a possibility. Never mind the price of solar panels.
Venezuela's gas is 12 cents a gallon.
The beef everyone has had against hydrogen powered cars is that there isn't an efficient way to get hydrogen gas to replace all the fossil fuels we use. Couldn't the hydrogen gas from this process be pumped right into a car made to run on it? Wouldn't that be more efficient than turning the H2 and O2 back into electricity and pumping that into my car? Also, I think you could get more miles per fill up out of carrying it in gas form. Thoughts?
Ok, it's a little ambiguous at first, but the "revolutionary" thing in this video is that they found a catalyst to efficiently electrolyze water, NOT that they created the system that combines the use of solar power and hydrogen storage (which they obviously didn't).
I'm assuming they just wanted to frame their catalyst discovery in a way that most people can relate to, and putting it in the perspective of powering ones home and car and whatnot appeals to a lot more people than a [more accurate] title of "Efficient, cheap electrolysis catalyst discovered."
This is the truth. It took me a while to read past all the bullshit in the articles.
This is great news though if this new catalyst is as cheap as they say it is. The price of the current method has been the only thing really stopping hydrogen fuel cells from being a major source of power.
I think it's not about the originality of the water electrolysis idea. It's about how "inexpensive" their "major discovery" can make the process.
Yep, I agree that is the most important point, which lots of people seemed to have missed.
But this is just one small step, because even if this does get commercialized, the next part is to make the fuel cells & hydrogen storage tanks cheap enough so most people can afford them, and that part is much harder. Remember people are already reluctant to buy solar panels at system costs in the $10,000s. Even if this electrolysis system was given to you for free, the system cost of a fuel cell with the storage tanks will be in the $100,000s based on current costs (remember even Honda said with mass production they hope to make a hydrogen fuel cell car for ~$88k around a decade into the future, so you can imagine how much it costs now). Maybe hydrogen ICE will be cheaper, but so far it still seems expensive.
Remember recently ITM-power claimed they can make a home electrolyzer system for $4k if mass produced, so the cost is comparatively fairly cheap already.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/09/itm-power-shows-off-in-home-hydrogen-fueling-station/
So I'm interested in how much improvement these new catalysts will bring to the efficiency of electrolysis, b/c that will be important too.
In the end, no, energy crisis is still not solved, but this is a good step.
Because pumping electricity back into the grid is so wasteful!
You have no idea! Pumping it back into the grid very wasteful ...
How on earth is this a new idea??? This has been proposed years ago... I even did a similar project during my university days, where we use both wind and solar power to produce hydrogen during the day and use the hydrogen at night with the fuel cell, plus the wind turbine to produce power. This is no big deal. The main problem with this is cost. From a cost benefit analysis that, this will not be feasible at communities where natural gas is available as we can not produce hydrogen cheaper than natural gas due to the cost of the system based on a 15 year depreciation. Now on the other hand, for remote communities like North Canada or at the middle of America, South America, this will be feasible as the cost of natural gas or petroleum transport will make this system feasible.
Analyze the cost and efficiency of your system, including the materials used for the electrodes and the need to use a very basic (high pH) solution. Now compare against this new system, which uses pH neutral water, cheap electrodes and is very efficient. The difference is the breakthrough. When it comes to something being viable or not, cost and practicality aren't just side issues ... they are at the core.
I understand that the actually hydrogen extraction might be cheaper... but the fuel cell and solar panels are not... So with that in mind, one must not forget about the fact that you need need compare your cost with existing solutions... which include just buying electricity from the grid, or using natural gas to produce power... and after comparing those cost, you will find that using electricity from the grid is the cheapiest solutions if it is available... for remote communities that is not on the grid but have easy ground transportation, natural gas is the best solutions... unless the MIT prof can drastically reduce the price of fuel cell and solar panels, this system will not work. As as someone has pointed out, most solar panels for home used are energy negative, that means they don't produce enough energy for even one house... so never mind producing extra power to run this system. It just doesn't makes sense.
During the 2006 Solar Decathlon Event in Washington, DC, the team from the New York institute of Technology use a very very similar system for storing electricity form their solar panels.
From the article:
"And then there's the hydrogen power system. "From the beginning of this project, we decided to do something very special using a hydrogen fuel cell for energy storage," says energy management student David Schieren. Electricity from a roof-mounted PV system is used to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen through electrolysis; the hydrogen is collected and stored and later used to power a fuel cell. The fuel cell recombines hydrogen with oxygen to produce a household supply of electricity. This system replaces the batteries that are commonly used with stand-alone PV systems to store excess energy. The electric system is very dynamic and allows the monitoring of numerous household circuits. At the competition, this is designed to allow the NYIT team to direct power to the places where it can best be used."
http://www.solardecathlon.org/2005/team_new_york.html
I forgot to mention, the main cost is actually the solar cells / wind turbine required to power the house during the day + make enough energy to produce hydrogen. The amount of cells required, based on a 15 year depreciations and maintanence, you might as well just use natural gas for most of your energy production in your house (if it is available in the area). It just doesn't work.
Also for a in house solar panel the usual amount of excess of energy is negative, or you could say, there aren't such enough energy generated using a (pretty expensive) solar panel in a common house.
there is one thing they need to develop, and that is white color solar panels, if this is going to be wide spread then we would want to avoid the heat absorption, and maybe mimic the effect of the ice caps. just thing about the effect of using industrialized solar panels in the large desserts making huge areas dark color, the heat absorption will be crazy!
I don't think the whole hydrogen thing is going to happen. This is a very nice overview on the technical difficulties: http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-hydrogen-hoax
Somewhere I read that a substance called Toluol could be used as a carrier for hydrogen that's much safer. But getting from electrical power to hydrogen to Toluol must be very wasteful...
They are not proposing it to be used as a fuel for the car but only as energy storage. Therefore most of the negatives mentioned in your link do not apply here.
wow this is like the next generation trend begins
everyone going solar power for everything
This has been done before, but its been done better,smarter and more cost effective! If i had the money, i would for sure invest and bring this in before the so called '10years'. Someone is going to make alot of money if they were to implement this within 3-5years. Specially europe/uk*
http://world.honda.com/FuelCell/HomeEnergyStation/
Wouldn't it be cheaper and more efficient just to burn the hydrogen and generate electricity using the steam? I realize electrolysis is cooler (both literally and figuratively), but surely burning hydrogen to turn a turbine (even a small, home-sized one) is more efficient, and unquestionably cheaper.
No, it wouldn't be.
Yes it will be (Jaimi, sorry that I have to prove you wrong)... In this system , the cost of the fuel cell will cost approximately 35 to 40% of the systems cost and it will make up about 80% of the maintenance cost. The reason the maintenance cost are so high is because the fuel cell membrane will need to be replace very frequently due to the high usage. These membrane are very expensive, take example, to replace a membrane for a fuel cell car, will cost around USD6000 to 8000 dollars, that's for a 480volt system. Now imagine for a house... That's why, if you can take away the fuel cell in the system, it will be a lot cheaper. Unfortunately though, the side effect of burning hydrogen is that the system is not 100% clean and it will produce a small amount of emissions. I guess this is the trade off if someone want to make this systems work.
And all it needs is platinum, one of the rarest, most expensive elements on the planet.
The trick to all of this is, as has been pointed out, that they are doing the electrolysis in a much simpler and less expensive way. Before this, you had to purify the water and pay for a very expensive electrolyzer system.
With this and a hydrogen storage system, you end up with what is effectively a very big rechargeable battery. From there, you can use the gas in whatever way is most efficient, be that making electricity or burning the gas to make heat.
The only part of the whole system they propose that is a real problem is the cost of the fuel cell.
This is way no new. I heard of this idea many many years before.
The Problem is the degree of efficiency. Let's say it's 50% for producing the H2 and 50% for turning it back into electrical energy in the fuelcells. And that's optimistic.
That makes a total degree of efficiency of 25%.
And with solarcells being 25% effective (at the moment) you gonna need a VERY big roof to get enougth energy for your house.
So until we could drastically improve the efficiency this won't solve any energy crisis. Living more economically does the trick.
Of course this isn't an 'invention', its basic Chemistry and its been know for hundred's of years. We were shown the processat school, age 15.
As has been said, producing Hydrogen is easy storing and transporting it is the difficulty. A compressor to liquify hydrogen costs $100K, fuel cell's cost $10,000.
Making Hydrogen simply require water, a couple of electrodes and a DC power source (solar cell or a battery).
For a MIT to talk about a 'discovery' indications he is either lying or is a complete idiot.
I think everyone is missing the fact that this discovery is a more efficient way of converting water into hydrogen and oxygen, and not a way of storing power using fuel cells, an old concept. -_-
Oh god, here come all the armchair engineers and "this isn't new" pundits.
@A.C.E.R: Oh God, unless we get actual numbers about how efficient this new way of electrolysis is, the whole video is pointless.
Put electrodes in a glass of water and you get the exact same diagram; It's just completely stupid given how much energy is lost in the process.
I like to think I'm a pretty bright guy but when a MIT Professor says he's developed a more efficient catalyst I tend to believe him.
I hope this does work but there is one major problem. Big Oil companies wont let this happen. Do you really think a multi billion dollar company will quietly sit back and let this come to market. They can throw so much money at this to make it go away, and i gurantee that is what will happen. Why is it that Big Oil owns the most technology pattents of any corporation, because they buy them and shelve them. All competition gets squashed. Its been happening for 60 years.
watch out, theyre going to kill you now for telling us all.
/sarcasm
Um, if "Big Oil" has been buying up technology patents for 60 years, that means the first 35 years of patents have now expired and are public domain. As in, un-squashable. If there really was anything that wonderful they "squashed", anyone in the world, even you, can simply look it up online and start building it.
I want to give them a hug.
Another tech promising to save humanity...maybe...some time in the future...
Kick Ass
what´s new on this system? i already made 10 years before. a full house system is too expensive and a little bit dangerous.
macca whats your problem u oil backing bastard
From what I understand, this is all about the efficiency of the catalyst. And the catalyst is infinity reusable and non destructive. Meaning, all you have to do is feed water to it. As for the need for liquefying hydrogen, that is not true. You can store hydrogen in a gaseous for just like propane tanks. Though, since hydrogen is more expansive, it will take much larger tanks. But I think the loss of ground space in your back yard is much worth it compared to having an infinite supply of self sustaining energy.
I have five 80 gallon rain barrels set up at my house for my garden, and they easily fill up in one rainstorm. And that is just from the surface area of my roof. I could easily fill up 50 more if I had them setup for a hydrogen/electrolysis system. Just imagine if I can have a energy system that allows me to convert this to storable hydrogen, in a very efficient manner? I could easily power all my home and travel needs. That is where all this is going.
This is good news guys.
Hallo Investors!
We have a revolutionary new technology that will 'save' mankind, but we need major work to commercialize it! It should be selling within 10 years!
Just sign on the dotted line here and we'll take care of your money! *nudge, nudge, wink, wink*
Thank you!
Actually, I am looking at this all wrong. The proposed method of creating energy (at night) is not through the burning of stored hydrogen, but rather through collecting electricity that is created through the combining of the stored hydrogen and oxygen. It almost sounds like a reverse electrolysis. I don't have any experience in this, so I can not comment o it. So, please ignore my previous post. I think this new method is completely different from what I explained above.
It's called a fuel cell but your optimism was well founded. Even if this idea is half as great as it sounds it's still better than a room full of lead acid batteries.
The guy in the video looks like it's one of the Saturday Night Live actors pretending to be a "scientist".
Here's a better write-up at 'New Scientist'
http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn14441-electrode-lights-the-way-to-artificial-photosynthesis.html?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=news9_head_dn14441
This is GREAT! But 10 years until we see it? WHY? They explain it to be so simple of a thing. SO WHY 10 YEARS? Heck, sounds like I could build this in my kitchen.
it's always a 'simple' thing made out of earth-abundant materials that solves 'enormous' problems that is, incidentally, 10 years away... when they want some cash injections.
I must tell you based on the lack of information in the article this really is nothing new. Hydrogen and oxygen bounds are very energy expensive to break apart. It like pumping water uphill to later flow through a hydro electric damn. However if they have found a more efficient way to "break" the bonds of holy matrimony between H on O then that would be a big leap. Now on to the comments about hydrogen cars.....there is way to fuel them. Very available...giving time to build the "hydrogen highway". Its anhydrous ammonia....yep...living here in the midwest we have tanks all over the place. Anhydrous ammonia can be cracked in an fuel cell car to hydrogen. Fueling stations ? We got em all over the place at farm service centers. Pollution ? Way far less than a piston engine. Until hydrogen is in place and plentiful I say we take a smaller step forward with anhydrous ammonia and fuel cells.
you beat me to it. Ammonia is definitely the best choice for the "future fuel". It's easy to manufacture, easy to store, it can be cleanly consumed and it's biodegradable. People have no idea how hard it is to store as much hydrogen to equate to a tank of gasoline. Ammonia isn't as energy dense as gas, but it's a shit load better than hydrogen.
YAY!! Now I get to have explosives stored in my basement and my neighbors'!!!
How 'bout we use this hydrogen to create a safer fuel that's easier to store? Perhaps since we already have created H2 we may just bind it with N2 and get ammonia. It's still flammable but it's a shit load easier to store.
To those who don't get it: this is not some crazy, new technology. Installing a solar panel on your roof isn't a new idea; it's the storage method.
Initially, people would use batteries to store the daytime excess power produced. This is stupid, because:
1. Batteries are insanely expensive
2. Batteries lose energy over time in addition to maximum capacity
3. The production thereof isn't particularly green
Fuel cells are better for this purpose, because they mitigate all 3 problems. However, they are inefficient, for which I worry.
An alternative is simply reselling the excess on the grid (for which the energy company pays you) – someone ends up with the green energy, so in the end, it's all the same.
Again, what's new here is the efficiency of turning excess energy into hydrogen for fuel cell use. High efficiency turns a formerly impractical alternative into a practical one. This would be, for example, more efficient than selling the power back to the power company. There are a lot of losses in that path which are avoided by keeping the energy local for ones own use.
Very cool, but the first thing that came to mind when I looked at the pic was exploding basements.
... he meant, "nadir", didn't he?
Call me when it hits Home Depot.
Old concept is old.
For shame MIT.. For shame..
Hmm.. and now where are they going to find enough Cobalt to save the world? The major source these days is as a byproduct of nickel refining.
*sigh*
This thing is not a solution for storing energy in the home. It's not about solar energy, and it's only potentially about fuel cells.
All this is, is a new, very cheap way to separate hydrogen and oxygen out of water, using electricity from any source you like. For that, it's a wonderful thing, because other methods of collecting hydrogen have either been very expensive, involved oil, or both.
Where will these collected gasses be stored? In big airbags in the attic? It would probably have to be compressed into bottles, which would expend so much of the energy you'd "loosened", that it would hardly be worth the fire risk and financial investment.
This would work, however at much larger scale in an industrial setting. This would provide cannisters of hydrogen and oxygen for our hydrogen and fuel cell cars and home generators.
There's just no way this would work as a home system!
"This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prospAGHHHHH I'VE BEEN SHOT OH MY G
And he was never heard from again.
If every invention was met with scorn and not followed up on, the doubters would step out of their caves in the morn to check the weather rather than turn on their hdtv for the weather report. I was born seventy four years ago and watched the scoffers turn into users and believers.It's difficult to comprehend if you were born to tv and computers atomic energy rather than carbide lamps and hand pumps for water,if you were born in the boonies as I was, without all of the modern conveniences that now exist and watched them all come on line, you would have a tremendous attitude adjustment.I had the pleasure of living through the expansion of technology and say to skeptics, sit back, shut up and give it a chance, you may be pleasantly surprised if not, what did it cost you? For those who profess to know it all, stop talking and show us, blather is cheap. Results gratifying.
And the stock ticker for the company who will mass produce this would be?
T Boone Pickens and MIT ftw
Here's my question. As long as you're able to connect to the electrical grid, why would you want this system -- even if it's (1) free and (2) 100% efficient? Most electric utility customers can sign up for time-of-use rates, and get lower rates during off-peak hours and higher rates during on-peak hours. With a solar installation, most of the electricity will be produced during the on-peak hours, when it's more valuable. So why would you want to reduce the amount of electricity you're producing during the on-peak hours (that you could otherwise use in to reduce purchases from the utility or to sell back to the utility at high rates), and increase the amount of electricity you're producing during the off-peak hours (when the purchases you're offsetting or the power you're selling back is at a lower rate)?
if they didn't mention solar panels at all everyone would be less confused. As people mentioned before the breakthrough is not the combination of solar and hydrogen production, but the catalyst. So why can't the new system just run on regular energy from a power grid?