@jkr2: It's not just simple electrolysis. They're using catalysts from basic components, which hasn't been commonly done before. (Platinum is not used as a catalyst; you're thinking of fuel cells)

This is good news indeed.

ripfire

@funkenstein: Yes, but this is a more energy efficient storage medium so that you get more actual energy production out of it.

Technogen

They've already stored solar energy for nighttime use. During the day they use the excess solar energy to pump water into a reservoir. Then at night they drain the water into a lower reservoir and capture the energy with a hydroelectric generator. No dangerous gasses or other materials.

funkenstein

Damn you, MIT. Always making me look bad.

justhesh

i only use my laptop in the dark.

nonsucky

Dang, I really liked MIT too! Now the oil companies will make them disappear. =/

dagamer34

@electrikecho: this is electrolysis, the ARS article is better written and more informative [arstechnica.com] . This has nothing to do w/ solar energy specifically, this is a means of using electricity to separate water into elemental hydrogen and elemental oxygen. Currently excess electrical energy produced during off peak hours is stored in flywheels or by pumping water uphill to later be used to derive electricity back out. The bottom line here is that platinum isn't used, and thus the production cost for an electrolysis mechanism is greatly reduced. That is the only point. This does however mean that hydrogen cars just got a big boost.

jkr2

Screw the solar powered laptop, how about a solar powered car that doesn't suck? I'm not talking about a roadster or anything but something to get around the city in would be a dream.

oilers84

@Emiat: Kind of like that guy that made an engine than ran off of 'HHO gas' which was effectively just water? Yeah, never heard about that one again..

rockntrumpet

@Technogen: A storage solution is still a solution in the end, if it improves how Solar Energy is stored then it's just improving the Solar Energy solution overall.

But like I said before it will probably disappear to not be heard from again.

Emiat

Just to let you know sports fans but cobalt isn't so healthy nor is it extremely cheap either. Sure it's cheaper than a noble metal like platinum but you don't want to accidentally come into contact with it should, say your photosyn tank, spring a leak...

rockntrumpet

I wonder what the efficiency gains are from using this catalyst vs. industrial electrolysis, which is inefficient and not suited for energy storage from water. Odds are that it's still not enough for this to be a solution any time soon.

electrikecho

Unfortunately, they do not really address the energy loss in this storage mechanism versus traditional methods. I assume this is a giant leap forward although, from my experience, pseudo-electrolysis systems are not efficient. I could not dig into the detail in this link other than some exciting new "catalyst" that they found. I think it is called "snake oil", but if anyone has a better explanation, I would love to hear it.

Monty

@Emiat: This isnt a new energy solution, its a new storage solution, that's a big dif, this wont go away any time soon.

Technogen

@saych: Not at all, its got almost no practical use as a car charger, only a building charger, which doesn't touch their profits at all. Even electric cars wouldn't threaten them enough to matter because it'd take something like 10 years for a public product change from gas to power to effect gas profits. Remember, gotta have oil for all that plastic. (Now that's something they fear, a plastic substitute.)

Technogen

Nothing will come of it in the end, it seems each week a handful of new "green" energy solutions appear and then rapidly disappear to never be heard from again.

Emiat

FINALLY

A lot of people don't realize that the real question isn't energy generation, but energy storage. Petroleum fuel itself is really just a method of chemical energy storage- like a compact liquid battery. Unfortunately, our actual electrical and chemical battery technology really sucks- its bulky, expensive, often toxic, inefficient, has limited life spans, etc. One of the main reasons most of the world isn't running on solar power right now is because storing solar power (to use, say, at night, or when its foggy out) would require giant banks of expensive and inefficient energy storage systems, whether they be electrochemical batteries or giant flywheels.

Solar/wind/tidal + efficient energy storage = major win.

I Think We're Property

and the oil companies would do anything to stop this from actually happening in near future (until all oil runs out)

saych

@rockntrumpet:

Cobalt isn't poisonous nor toxic, in fact every living thing has some cobalt in their system in some amounts, much like potassium and sodium. And it sure as hell is cheaper than platinium.

Fused7

@ripfire:
"It's not just simple electrolysis. They're using catalysts from basic components, which hasn't been commonly done before. (Platinum is not used as a catalyst; you're thinking of fuel cells)"
I know it's not simple electrolysis (most of my posts are put in laymen terms for understandability, I usually speak in a similar manner too). Yes I am thinking of fuel cells, so were these scientists, considering that they are replacing platinum as the catalyst w/ cheaper more abundant elements. From your post it looks like you thought I was implying that platinum is being used in this new method, I'm not nor did I at anytime imply that.

jkr2

though it's still too early to say when you'll have what you want: a solar powered laptop.

lol no. i use my laptop at night alot too...no i want it on a massive scale...solar farms. i want my house running on solar power and not the nuclear or coal or gas or whatever they use to generate power for the masses around here.

anyway, i'll look forward to it.

jrghoull

@crazydave_w: Sorry, the catalyst breaks down when there is no current applied, but reforms when it is restored. Apparently.

Catalysis was one of my poorer marks in university....

crazydave_w

They've coated an electrode with a cobalt and phosphate film to reduce H20 to O2 and H. The H2 is formed at a platinum electrode.

Hydrolysis is a violent reaction, and typically, catalysts breakdown after a short time. Its the same story here, but they found that by briefly applying a charge to the electrode, the cobalt-phosphate film reforms.

crazydave_w

I haven't read the article yet (saving it for tomorrow) but that sounds like absolute genius! I'm currently wondering why I didn't think of this.

Eric1285

From what I've read elsewhere, they're not doing simple electrolysis.

What they're doing is using a catylyst to create an acid, which releases oxygen. Then the acid can be easily stored unlike hydrogen gas, and at a later time, using a different catylyst, recombined with oxygen, releasing the stored energy. (In the form of electricity presumably.)

Also, the conversion process is highly efficient unlike traditional electrolysis, and doesn't require difficult to maintain and expensive equipment.

Elliuotatar

Wow! A limitless supply of clean energy is available?

Oh yeah... it's been available for years.

While this may be a breakthrough method for electrolysis, it isn't dependent on solar energy. Any source of electricity can be converted to chemical energy with electrolysis. I understand that storing solar energy is a great application for it, but there are other important applications for this technology, like storing wind energy, or generating hydrogen for fuel cell vehicles or devices.

streamingeagle

has anyone noticed that the more solar energy (the desert) the less water? And the other way around?

altus

I've read a few more articles (and now the one referenced from this article), now I'm not sure what exactly the story is. A few articles say they still need to use platinum to extract hydrogen. We need some more light shed on this process, because oxygen being as plentiful as it is in our atmosphere is not what we are after for energy storage.
[web.mit.edu]

jkr2

If it was April, I'd say this is an April fool joke. What's new? The same regurgitated doodah about the wonderful efficiency when everyone knows that the problem is not the efficiency with which the hydrogen is made, but the environmental cleanliness of the process and the essential low cost and high efficiency of the conversion back into electricity after you've spent all that money getting it to the point of use. After all, the end to end efficiency of a coal or gas fired generating station(bearing in mind the energy which is generated but not used) is woeful. Obviously storing the energy between generation and consumption is the way out, but every hydrogen generating plant so far carries with it environmental costs which are unthinkable.

drg40

Isn't the real issue here the need more efficient solar cells?

What good would it do to store 100% of a 30% efficient system? Most people's roofs don;t have enough square meters to power their homes even in direct sunlight with the current solar cell technology - so there is no excess energy to store.

squishyalt

Ok - not sure why the Wired thing didn't post...the rest of the wired URL is .../wired/archive/8.05/flywheel.html maybe this'll get thru.

That's www + wired + com + /wired/archive/8.05/flywheel + html.

squishyalt

O come on people! Get a clue already!!!

Governments don't WANT to solve the energy crisis or global warming or the pollution problem. It'd cut out too many bribes and fat government contracts.

Case in point.... This article speaks to energy storage and acts as if there has never been an efficient way to store energy before this MIT concept (keyword being *concept*).

While flywheel storage systems have been around for more than 50 years.

Want efficient storage? Want electric vehicles that travel 200-300 miles per charge? Want to charge them overnight at home with no special charging stations?

Then ask your government why they haven't pushed electromechanical batteries (fancy term for flywheels) like mentioned in Wired in May of 2000 - [www.wired.com]

Anything that simplifies cuts out intermediate steps. Anything that cuts intermediate steps cuts expenses and TAXES. Your government is NOT going to give up your taxes that easily.

squishyalt

@saych:

Thats a dumb comment on so many lvls...
Even if they perfected the technology, it would take years to spread, and by the time it has, all the Oil Cos would have to do is buy the biggest companies making these systems, and they would keep on holding the market.

Rustabout

@Monty:

A little more detail about the make -up of the catalyst from New Scientist:

"To create the new electrode Nocera and colleague Matthew Kanan deposited cobalt and phosphate on top of an indium-tin-oxide electrode, a combination of chemicals that appear to catalyse the water-splitting reaction. Although the results achieved by the electrode are clear cut, Nocera is as yet unsure of the exact chemical mechanism".

davecw

@squishyalt: Wrong. Why do you people spread such BS? I have a 3 story house with a relatively small roof, and for the 8 months I've had my 27 solar panels, they've produced more electricity than my household (including a home-based business) has consumed. You either are an anti-solar nut, or you simply have no idea what you are talking about. So shut up. We're in a fucking world energy crisis, and we don't need your blatant disinformation regarding solar discouraging anyone.

liquidsoapdispenser

@Technogen: No, this is a "fuel" solution. It creates a fuel from sunlight and stores it. A fuel cell then converts it to electricity, therefore it is a "fuel" from the solar resource. I do agree that it is not a threat to gasoline. Those threats are any storage system that uses electric utility power as a vehicle's fuel source. Plug-in hybrids are the first shot in the true war of transportation fuels. Up until now, the ONLY way to fuel your car was through the pump. Plug-Ins allow their owners to fuel their vehicles through the existing electric infrastructure. As the plug-ins getter upgraded batteries, each vehicle will be able to go farther each day on electricity and less on gas. THIS is the battle. And, in this type of battle, the electric utilities are fat and lazy in their regulated monopolies and will likely get slaughtered again, as they did in the mid-90s.

Poon

A fucking world energy crisis? What? And a discouraging word will change the facts? What? Oh, because then you would have to stop fucking.

Such intelligent, mature, positive discussions...

JDisnidiet

Hey tecnogen, the only real threat to big oil is Hemp. everything can be produced from it fuel plastic clothing the list gose on and on.

klamathrvrat

@jonpluc: True, but I will bet you a large-scale solar power plant that in 2010, they won't say that.

Poon

@liquidsoapdispenser: Whoa, slow down. You paid a lot of money for those panels. You and Squishy both not quite right. The ROI (return on investment) for your solar panels today hardly makes them a good investment even after heavy subsidy. Having said that, Solar Systems are very cool and they can, on the annual net, provide all the energy a house uses in a year. Squishy, you are wrong in that although a house can't run at night on solar, it can "bank" the extra energy it makes during the day into the grid and then take it at night. It's called "net-metering" and the overall effect is really the same as banking that energy in your basement with a bunch of batteries but it's a lot cheaper. Provided the US gov't doesn't hamstring the solar industry through inaction on renewing these heavy subsidies, the breakthrough in cost is just around the corner. We just need another 5-years of nurturing in my guesstimate and solar won't need subsidy.

Poon

In the 1970s, scientists told us that efficient solar power was only a decade away. In the 1980s, scientists told us that efficient solar power was only a decade away. In the 1990s, scientists told us that efficient solar power was only a decade away. In the 2000s Scientists are saying efficient solar power is only a decade away.....

jonpluc

Tecnogen: Start thinking about renewable energy it is here now and it is clean.(very cheap)

klamathrvrat

Or you can use the sun to heat the water and store the hot water for later. I'm always for more ways to generate and store power however, so this sounds interesting if overly complicated.

Xenocide

an almost limitless supply of clean energy might be just a few years away.......

wish i had a dollar every time that was put into text or words

Denver80203

@Fused7: Perhaps I wasn't clear when I said cobalt was bad for you if your photosyn tank SPRUNG A LEAK.. Take a look here. ([www.atsdr.cdc.gov]) Seems that you would be exposed to a whole lot more cobalt than you are supposed to be if there was a leak. (I'll concede the price point)

rockntrumpet

@klamathrvrat: You hippies will never win! Think of the consequences, if we used up all the hemp for purposes like that, there would be a serious hemp necklace shortage at music festivals and county fairs across the country.

MilktruckHeist

@saych: exactly these guys had better be careful the last guy that had a good idea for alternate near limitless fuel was killed right before his final product was revealed.

lilaliendog

The one thing they did not mention in the article was the cost ($) of the additives used in the water.

Near 100% efficiency is really great. But, there's a reason they didn't mention the actual (or even estimated) cost in comparison to current alternatives.

squishyalt

@Poon: The cost effictiveness of solar is complicated because the cost and payback depend on a lot of variables (where you live, how much your electricity costs now, how much your electricity will cost in the future, what kind of subsidy program is in effect, what the local and federal tax credits are, how much do the panels increase the value of your home, etc.). But bottom line, there are definitely some locations where solar is cost effect, and many places where it is not cost effective for the individual.

But I get really steamed when people erroneously claim as fact that PV systems aren't efficient enough to power one's home. Such comments discouraged me from going solar for awhile, and made me think solar was just some hippie B.S. But sure enough, during the 8 months I've had my system, it has generated an average of 7kWh of excess electricity every day.

liquidsoapdispenser

oh, and anybody who's installed a solar system knows that your meter runs backwards during the day, and at night you just run off the grid (which gives a net electrical bill od $0). No need to store the power, unless you want to go greener.

jkr2

I've been looking into solar, but just can't justify spending a little over $2000 for a kilowatt system when I don't know that my roof gets enough sun to even use it.

Con Seannery

@Con Seannery:
don't look into the solar, you will burn your eyes out!!!!

oh, you mean energy, not the sun?

carry on, then

godwhacker

So, wait, wait. Check it out! They separate the water's H and O and then, get this, put them back together again!

Umm, why don't they just leave the poor water alone? There has to be easier ways to get water into a fuel cell, no? Why go to all that trouble. Am I missing something?

FritzLaurel

@saych: Either that, or the oil companies will just buy out all the fuel cell companies, develop the tech behind closed doors, and then hit us with it when we need it to gain maximum profits.

Blah8

My question is what is actually preventing us from using more solar? Is it the cost? Is it the storage? To me any opportunity to use free energy even for a few hours out of the day would be a win. For buildings and homes, use traditional power at night and use solar power during the day. Forget all this talk about storage. Just take advantage of the sun when it's up. No more trying to run home appliances after 7pm. But rather run all appliances whenever the sun is up for free.

RupertMiskeen

Let's stop the oil companies holding everything back tinfoil conspiracy.

The international oil companies (Shell, BP, Exxon, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, etc) control less then 2-3% of the world's oil reserves. Although they are making record profits, they are hardly in a position to hold promising development back.

financeguy500

.
The importance of MIT's discovery is not explained by Gizmodo's post so it's not surprising that many of the previous comments are completely unrelated to the field of MIT's discovery. Their discovery and its context is this:

-> Electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen normally generates a lot of heat.
-> This heat is wasted energy which dramatically cuts the overall efficiency. I've heard it can be as low as 30% (energy captured as hydrogen divided by electrical energy in)
-> The new catalyst allows electrolysis with less heat generation and therefore greater efficiency.

If it pans out this will be a HUGE improvement over current technology. How important it eventually turns out to be will depend on development of useful hydrogen storage.

Mike_Scherer

While very interesting, this will do nothing to eliminate fossil fuel use, or even reduce it by any significant amount in the next 20-40 years. We needed this technology(among many others) about 20 years ago.

Massive pain will be felt(before things get better), but for some reason people think energy and technology is the same thing. it's not. Example. if oil is truly peaking, you can't just say it's ok. We have technology. The different things.

financeguy500

What we need is a solar panel that absorbs ultraviolet and infrared.

jacktaka

I remember when I was a child (about 15 years ago), my Dad told me how someone had discovered a catalyst that lowered the initial energy required to separate Hydrogen and Oxygen. The person supposedly vanished into thin air along with his patent. I wonder if this isn't some urban legend that resurfaces every so often. Or did the oil conglomerates stop paying this person to be silent?

moomoochoo

Someone made this comment: "Unfortunately, our actual electrical and chemical battery technology really sucks- its bulky, expensive, often toxic, inefficient, has limited life spans, etc." There has recently been a development which could make current battery technology obsolete -- it's been called a super capacitor. It stores energy much like the current battery, yet takes a very short time to charge. Dragon

ZinanDeuce