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New idea for cheap efficient solar energy storage

A Promising Step Toward Round-the-Clock Solar Power, MIT Technology Review  By Kevin Bullis on September 26, 2014 A simple, cheap device turns sunlight into hydrogen fuel. If solar power is to become a primary source of electricity around the world, we’ll need cheap ways to store energy from the sun when it isn’t shining. A paper published in the journal Science this week reports a major step toward such a system. Researchers have developed a device that cheaply and efficiently converts the energy in sunlight into hydrogen, which can be used as a fuel and is easily stored.

Michael Graetzel, who directs the Laboratory of Photonics and Interfaces at the Ecole Polytechnique in Lausanne, Switzerland, along with colleagues in Korea and Singapore, built a device that uses electricity and catalyst materials to make hydrogen and oxygen from water. This new “water splitter,” as such devices are known, is highly efficient, uses cheap and abundant materials, and is easy to make……..http://www.technologyreview.com/news/531141/a-promising-step-toward-round-the-clock-solar-power/

September 29, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | general