Wind and solar energy face a distinct hurdle: sometimes the wind don't blow and the sun don't shine. But new research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggests a breakthrough in the intermittency problem. In a study published Friday in Science, researchers demonstrate a photosynthesis-inspired process to use electricity from renewable sources to split regular ol' water into hydrogen and oxygen. The gases can then be stored in a fuel cell that can produce electricity on becalmed, cloudy days. Science wonks who thrill to the words "electrolyzer," "cobalt," and "catalyst" can get the deets in the links below. The rest of us can just get excited that we may be one step closer to a clean energy economy. "Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution," says MIT researcher Daniel Nocera. "Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon."
source: Christian Science Monitor, Earth2Tech, Bloomberg News, Forbes, MIT News
see also, in Grist:MIT researchers demonstrate how your windows could collect solar energy
Denmark’s Hedegaard urges G8 to push ahead on climate talks
Comments View as Flat
Gustavion Posted 4:15 am
01 Aug 2008
Exciting
That is really just incredible. Science and innovation will lead the way in the effort for sustainability.
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WWAGD?! Posted 6:54 am
01 Aug 2008
Wind, Too
This "hydrogen battery" will work just as well for wind too (which can provide the electrolysis same as solor).
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President Lindsay Posted 11:00 am
02 Aug 2008
Keep the funding flowing
If you read the article from MIT's own site, they talk about the millions in funding they've received to pursue this research. But how is what they've supposedly achieved with this amazing breakthrough different from electrolysis that's normally done in a high school chem lab? When I did it in high school you didn't need to make a very basic solution (which they allege was necessary with normal electrolysis and which wouldn't be a deal-breaker anyway). We just used regular water. All you had to do was add anything as an electrolyte, like ordinary table salt. With that and electricity you could collect oxygen and hydrogen, as they talk about doing here. Putting it back together in a fuel cell is the money part: fuel cells are ridiculously expensive. And who has sufficient roof area and sufficient money to buy that many solar panels to both produce all the electricity people need during the day but enough extra to power everything at night. Any way you slice it you lose energy every time you convert, once when doing the electrolysis and once when converting back to electricity with your wildly expensive fuel cell.
I think part of the reason for excitement here is because they have to keep their money flowing. To me this looks like plain old electrolysis. The bottom line is still this: there's just so much photonic energy that falls on a given square meter of the earth under even the best of conditions, and it's not very much. Even if you can capture it with 100% efficiency (which you can't) it would still take vast amounts of land area to capture enough. Do you know anybody who's not on the grid, who runs their home off solar panels alone? If so, do they have a regular refrigerator? Washer & electric dryer? A/C? Electric stove and oven? TV? Computers? Enough lighting to not make their place feel like a tomb? Can they run any of them any time of the day or night? Can they run them all together? Could they produce even more, enough to power an electric car? If they answer to all these is yes, I would venture to say that you have some very unusual and wealthy friends.
Color me unimpressed. I did this in high school. Even in high school you can do it with 50-70% efficiency, at room temperature, with ordinary saltwater. What's the big deal here? I think I know hype when I see it.
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Colin Wright Posted 12:05 pm
02 Aug 2008
Keep the funding coming...
PL: the big news here is that electrolysis can now be done essentially for free -- cheap materials and sunlight. This could be the big breakthrough for solar storage. (I'm looking forward to what Gar and Joe have to say!) I really recommend the hour-long lecture by Prof. Nocera on the MIT site to get an idea of how the dream of mimicking how nature does photosynthesis is finally coming true.
The other news on the NYT coverage of this story is a replacement for for expensive Platinum for fuel cells. So we have new possibilities opening up right before us due to years of painstaking world-class research by Dr. Nocera and others.
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amazingdrx Posted 12:16 pm
02 Aug 2008
Truly astounding!
The scientific illiteracy in this press release.
"...developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun's energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases."
Hmmm, well it's called electrolysis isn't it, first developed in 1800?
"Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials"
"Combined with another catalyst, such as platinum, that can produce hydrogen gas from water,"
Platinum abundant? It is rare and extremely expensive. Catalytic converters are now being stolen from cars for the Platinum. The thieves get 100 bucks from scrap dealers for the 1000+ dollar items.
"In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source"
That has already happened. Solar concentrating PV/heat cogeneration and solar concentrating furnaces with heat storage have acomplished that.
"MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn't shine."
This has too. With concentrating solar furnace molten salt base load power.
No need to proceeed, there doesn't seem to be one thing that the reporter got right in this article. I'm afraid to watch the video out of fear that the researcher will follow suit.
A complete hydrogen powered home was featured a year or two ago. The storage tanks, electrolyzers, and fuel cells cost 300,000 bucks if I remember correctly.
But have no fear, thanks to this huge breakthrough... "...within 10 years, homeowners will be able to power their homes in daylight through photovoltaic cells, while using excess solar energy to produce hydrogen and oxygen to power their own household fuel cell."
No problem, just wait 10 years. Instead of going solar now.
Damn, I did it, watched the video. Is duuhbya appointing research professors at MIT now? This guy actually had a diagram where oxygen was stored to feed the fuel cell.
So you compress the hydrogen and the oxygen? Oxygen that any other fuel cell design (except in airless space) gets from the air? The energy to store the compressed gas defeats the efficiency of this design with hydrogen compression alone.
But compressing the oxygen needlessly? Yur doin' a heckuva job Nocera..ie.
What has happened to our scientific and research community that this can happen?
You want a hydrogen storage breakthrough MIT? Try nano tech metal hydride if you really want to do something useful.
Recent nano tech methane storage has nearly reached the energy density of liquid fuel. And because of the high efficiecy of solid oxide fuel cell/tubines (that don't use expensive elements like Platinum), 5 times that of an ICE, a plugin hybrid with this nano tech fuel storage will beat gas guzzlers all hollow on energy density. Look for methane powered airplanes soon.
You could do that with hydrogen, at least the nano tech storage part. But hydrogen fuel cells are built with Platinum, which is prohibitively expensive. And so does producing the hydrogen.
Methane is naturally ocurring and can also be derived from biogas, at a huge offset of GHG if it is made from waste.
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amazingdrx Posted 12:23 pm
02 Aug 2008
Despite that new electrode Collin
I smell majical hydrogen economy diversionary tactics in this. Delay, divert, and keep on guzzlin', neeehaaaaww! The old texas (corporate lobbyist) oil shill three step.
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Colin Wright Posted 1:58 pm
02 Aug 2008
Beckett and Joyce would be proud.
Amazin, love the stream of consciousness!
But I don't see this new discovery as a delaying tactic of the car industry. Nocera's goal is to deliver energy to enable homes to go off-grid, something I thought you would be partial to. (Cars, hydrogen-powered or not, are extremely inefficient ways to move people, as you know.) Rather, I see it speeding up the renewable transition by bringing more possibilities online.
If you think, Nocera is a fraud, this is the video I recommend: http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/518/
The Forbes article had the most detail on the new discovery, but I alas do not have a subscription to Science.
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WWAGD?! Posted 2:58 pm
02 Aug 2008
The New Electrolysis
In response to a few of the posters here.
Previous methods of hydrolysis have been energy intensive. The breakthrough here is that the oxygen can be removed with very little energy.
Platinum. Yes, platinum is used, but a very small amount of it. The breakthrough is the use of cobalt and a phosphate -- which are recoverable (not used up in the process).
So, this is a real breakthrough:
Lower energy costs.
Cheaper materials.
BTW -- this has been making the rounds on a few green blogs...is the Hydrogen Car so new? Ask Jack Nicholson:
http://gizmodo.com/5031960/jack-nicholson-solves-oil-cris ...
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amazingdrx Posted 3:17 pm
02 Aug 2008
Well
Thanks Colin. I am afraid to watch the longer video. Maybe later, hehey.
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President Lindsay Posted 3:26 pm
02 Aug 2008
Energy doesn't come from the ether
The hoopla about this all over the internet is on a par with those who write as if energy efficiency creates energy. Energy efficiency uses less for a given task, but doesn't create energy. And this purportedly nearly magical catalyst can't create more energy than the electricity that goes into it. Since regular old electrolysis can be up to 70% effective, how much better can this be? You still have to produce more extra energy than you would need for all the things you want to do when the sun's not shining brightly on your panels, and you still have to convert the energy twice, losing some of it each time. But this sounds so reassuringly utopian to those who don't think rationally about the bottom line: the amount of the sun's energy that falls on a given surface in the best of circumstances and the conversion of that energy into electricity or, in this case, into electricity, then hydrogen, then back into electricity.
This hype from MIT doesn't change this basic fact: the energy of sunlight is extremely diffuse. Thus, capturing it--even in the most efficient manner possibly allowed by the laws of physics, much less with multiple energy-losing conversions in between production and use--would require vast seas of solar panels on the scale of tens of thousands of square miles to supply even only the present electrical needs of the USA (30,000 square miles, according to Scientific American, for just some of the energy we need).
But you can tell from the excitement online that this marriage of two of the most-exaggerated energy panaceas of the unrealistic future has the dreamers' hearts all aflutter. Sunshine is wonderful, but it won't provide all the energy we need. Nor will sunshine and wind. And MIT isn't going to change that. You can't beat the laws of physics.
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WWAGD?! Posted 5:25 pm
02 Aug 2008
Ah, Nuts!
Maybe they should invent a catalyst to remove the wax from between your ears, as the question has been answered several times over.
A catalyst doesn't "create" anything. The definition of a catalyst is that it is not used up in the reaction...it helps the reaction take place. The energy is in the H2 inside the H20 molecule. The catalyst helps separate the H2 from the 0. But -- the energy holding the H2 to the 0 is not proportional to the energy available in the H2!
It's like a walnut. The energy you put into cracking the shell is not proportional to the meat...otherwise, squirrels would starve to death. A "catalyst" in this "reaction" would be the squirrels teeth. But again, the teeth aren't used up in the opening of the walnut.
Here...read this:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=hydrogen-power-on-the ...
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President Lindsay Posted 3:45 am
03 Aug 2008
Ah, I get it! Perpetual motion
jabailo, before you knock people down you should understand a thing or two about physics and chemistry instead of assuming you understand it from a newspaper article. Hydrogen is not a source of energy, it's an energy carrier. The amount of energy that you're going to get out of it is always going to amount to less than what you're putting into it to split it off from the oxygen. I realize that plenty of people may think that's not the case and that the amount of energy they'll get out of the H2 will exceed the electricity put in because of the magic catalyst, but just because lots of people believe something that's not true doesn't make it any more true.
If what you're saying were true, then we could shut down our power plants right now and just merrily split water from a few solar panels on our roof. Since the MIT idea is to make the current with the electricity from the sunlight to liberate the hydrogen from water, then create electricity from that hydrogen as it recombines with oxygen to form water again, if it's going to give us more current than what it took to liberate the H2 in the first place you've just overcome the laws of physics. Because now you can just take a portion of that electricity you made in your fuel cell to liberate some more hydrogen from some more water, and you can feed the excess electricity back into the grid. You've got a good thing going there! Congratulations, you've just invented perpetual motion.
So I guess I should be grateful to be lectured about the nature of catalysts from a scientific paragon of your stature. And thanks for clearing it all up with the analogy about the squirrel and the walnut. That put it all into perspective for me. That revealed the depth of your understanding in a nutshell--an appropriate receptacle.
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Jon Rynn Posted 5:07 am
03 Aug 2008
PL, step back a bit...
...it may be the case that renewables such as solar and wind can blanket buildings and parts of the landscape (and offshore), in addition to increasing efficiency, to such an extent that there would be enough left over to lose the energy which you point out happens with this process, and still come out ahead because we now have a way to get around the "baseload" or "intermittency" problem. That has been a big problem, and I've always thought that hydrogen based fuel cells might be appropriate at a building or even neighborhood level, if you've got enough energy left over to do the storage.
Now, if you don't think there's enough land,etc., there are quite a few attempts to show that land is not a problem, and Gar Lipow has set up a spreadsheet which I am trying to help with, that shows that a renewable system is feasible.
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President Lindsay Posted 6:35 am
03 Aug 2008
Land isn't the problem, I'll grant you that
Let's just take a peek at that special edition Scientific American did about our solar future. All we have to do, they blithely maintained, is cover 30,000 square miles with solar panels and build a high-tension DC grid to ship it around the states from the southwest. And this to supply just 69% of America's electrical needs by 2050. That's covering 2 entire square miles with solar panels and their assorted infrastructure every day, 7 days a week, for about 40 years. Oh, and since existing panels in those areas have to be pressure-washed every 6 weeks or so to keep them functioning efficiently, we just have to figure out a way to pressure-wash about 715 square miles of panels every day, forever, in a place that has virtually no water. If we could do that, of course, the water would nourish all sorts of plants that would then grow to shade the panels, so let's not forget 30,000 square miles of herbicide application every few months, AND BE CAREFUL NOT TO GET IT ON THE PANELS!
Seriously, how can people write this stuff? And if they do, how can readers swallow it? It's like there's no concept of what happens when you scale up technologies. If it works in the lab or my backyard, cool! Let's just make a jillion of them. Mission accomplished.
But maybe we just disagree on the meaning of the word "feasible."
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Jon Rynn Posted 6:47 am
03 Aug 2008
Yeah, well, there are other ideas
and usually the ones kicked around here are of a more localized nature, such as my proposal that you could kill all coal plants by letting buildings heat and cool themselves. I think buildings, neighborhoods, cities, and then, perhaps some large offshore and onshore wind and solar farms, supplying a society that wouldn't need so much electricity, is technically feasible -- although I'd also want to feed an all-electric transportation system, which would require yet more electricity. And yes, maybe enough left over to store energy in fuel cells.
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WWAGD?! Posted 9:25 am
03 Aug 2008
Straw Men
So, the amount of energy I spend digging for oil is equivalent to the energy in the oil from the ground?
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Max8806 Posted 9:48 am
03 Aug 2008
Putting the cart before the horse
The insistence on creating a storage system for variable output power systems such as wind and solar misses the point. Especially with solar. Have solar power stored so it can power even at night? Power is worth way more during the day. It's a false obstacle.
The issue with storage is regulatory, not technical. FERC issued a pro forma (model) tariff (order 888, since updated as well) for transmission service providers in wholesale organized electricity markets that standardize certain charges. It's a good idea to weed out discrimination, but one of the charges is very high penalties for not delivering as much power as you bid in (offered). As I understand it, this is to deal with abuses of market power from withholding energy like Enron et al did to jack up the price. But it has the unfortunate side effect of biasing against wind/solar, where underdelivering isn't market power abuse, its just the nature of wind/sun.
So far this might seem fair, but there's a catch. Aggregate electricity demand on the grid is random and is always moving around anyway. Sometimes there's a bit more power on the grid than necessary, sometimes less. There's a "regulation" market bidding power on the time scale of seconds to try and keep this in balance, within a reasonable buffer. Since the variability of renewable energy isn't correlated with the natural variability of the electric load in the first place, the added variability to the system when you add (variable) renewable power is much less than the variability of the renewable source itself. So stringent penalties for under-delivering are unduly discriminatory against variable sources because they don't in fact cause add that much variability to the system. The system can absorb plenty, because its random already and so half the time wind underproduces the grid is oversupplied anyway.
Obviously this breaks down when you reach higher penetrations of variable supply, but I've seen plenty of studies that put the extra costs to the system (in terms of extra spending on regulation, or uneconomic dispatch due to misprojected wind) at just a few tenths of a cent per kwh for penetrations under 20%. So why are we so obsessed now, with penetration around 1%, on something that won't really matter for about a decade, even with aggressive growth?
We need to fix the rules so variable sources don't have to face such extra costs for storage that aren't actually necessary for system reliability or economic dispatch. Storage and variable output regulation will be important eventually, but it is not step one. I don't get it, seems like putting the cart before the horse to me.
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WWAGD?! Posted 10:47 am
03 Aug 2008
Spin Up What?
But with hydrogen there is zero variability because of two reasons.
- Obviously, you can tap the hydrogen day or night, in any kind of weather.
- Hydrogen can generate electricity from fuel cells. Now with a fuel cell you don't have to have it be huge. You can have an array of small fuel cells and use as many or as few as needed.
So whereas wind is macro-quantized by the turbines, as is nuclear by its reactor, oil-gas-coal by "spinning up" generators-turbines, the hydrogen can be activated in milleseconds to provide power. You can in fact, link the flow of the hydrogen by computer to exactly match demand at a very granular level!Permalink
President Lindsay Posted 11:21 am
03 Aug 2008
Dreaming
my proposal that you could kill all coal plants by letting buildings heat and cool themselves.
This and the rest of your post are quite ungrounded from reality. Have you lived in Minnesota? How about Tucson? If we're going to get away from fossil fuels, we'll not just need some more electricity, we'll need A LOT more. You can dream all you want about wind and solar, but wishing doesn't make it so.
jabailo writes: So, the amount of energy I spend digging for oil is equivalent to the energy in the oil from the ground?
You're not serious, right? Tell me you're not serious.
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Jon Rynn Posted 12:31 pm
03 Aug 2008
Tuscon and Minnesota have geothermal heat pumps
Tuscon has quite a bit of solar energy, just when it's needed, and Minnesota pretty windy -- now, hydrogen might not be the big answer, but there are plenty of current technologies around that can get us to a carbon-free economy.
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amazingdrx Posted 2:07 pm
03 Aug 2008
Too pessimistic PL
Check the thread on Jon's oringinal article on this topic.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/2/18/212538/864
Fine work followed by another whole great thread started by Gar.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/6/29/132129/715
Best to consider the words of these two, and other energy revolutionary Grist contributors before adopting the pessimistic conventional wisdom on renewables and conservation. Turn that frown upside down, hehey.
And my humble take, on my blog.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2008/7/1/3 ...
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President Lindsay Posted 6:14 pm
03 Aug 2008
Pessimism or realism?
Tuscon has quite a bit of solar energy, just when it's needed, and Minnesota pretty windy -- now, hydrogen might not be the big answer, but there are plenty of current technologies around that can get us to a carbon-free economy.
With Tucson I was thinking about cooling, not heating. And no, Minnesota isn't all that windy. I grew up there. I agree, H2 isn't the big answer, it's nothing but an energy carrier, and a pretty finicky one at that. There are plenty of technologies around that can get us to a carbon-free economy, as you say. I'm just saying that there aren't enough unless you include nuclear power.
Dr. X, I couldn't agree with you more about the good sense to use heat pumps all over, though in really extreme climates they'll still need some sort of backup (I'm thinking of Minnesota again). And while I also would gladly concede that lots more energy can be generated if we started putting solar panels all over everything, that doesn't change the fact that it's very diffuse and that creating and maintaining tens of thousands of square miles of solar panels to provide just some of the energy we need is simply not economically and logistically feasible. If the energy that's there to start with isn't enough, then finding new ways to store it that only lessens the amount isn't going to help. It's not a question of being pessimistic. It's a matter of being realistic. Remember, we want to replace all carbon spewing sources, including natural gas. That means electric stoves, electric space heating and water heaters (again, heat pumps would work better here), washers and electric dryers (no, not everybody's going to hang up their clothes), refrigerators and freezers, TVs and computers, lights, and don't forget electric cars. Then think about all the industrial uses of electricity, and the uses of coal and gas and oil in manufacturing that also has to be replaced, including such high-draw needs as smelters.
Can wind and solar do that? If you think they can, how many decades do you think it would take to convert the entire world's energy supplies over? How many decades do you think we can afford? How much do you think it would cost? If you just use Scientific American's solar special's numbers, for our 5% of the world's population we'd need all the hydro and wind we could get plus about 40,000 square miles of solar panels (remember, their 30,000 only provided for about 69% of our electricity needs, and I don't think they were even considering an all-electric society). Now multiply it by 20 to bring the rest of humanity up to speed, remembering that their increase in demand will be greater than ours (assuming we're aiming for global egalitarianism). We're talking about roughly a million square miles of solar panels. Oh, and don't forget the water to keep them clean. And speaking of water, we're going to need a lot more electricity for desalination for our burgeoning population, especially when we're wasting so much of it washing off our solar panels. So we'd better build a lot more solar panels to run the desalination plants. Do you feel like a dog chasing your own tail?
This isn't pessimism. If I thought these were our only options, that would be pessimism. If I thought that people who automatically reject nuclear power would prevail in future energy decisions, that would be pessimism. If I thought that nuclear was too uneconomical, unsafe, and inescapably dangerous to future generations because of the waste, that would be pessimism. But I'm an optimist. I know we can do this, and I have high hopes that reason will prevail over fear and ignorance. I just hope it doesn't take too long.
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enki Posted 11:40 pm
03 Aug 2008
Unfortunate
I agree that this story is an unfortunate blur of the reality involved. This is the fault of the scientist who is making the claims more then the author. Check out my rebuttal to the story on the Nature magazine news site for a more complete analysis.
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080731/full/news.2008.996 ...
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amazingdrx Posted 1:01 am
04 Aug 2008
Still 50 degrees underground
"..good sense to use heat pumps all over, though in really extreme climates they'll still need some sort of backup (I'm thinking of Minnesota again)"
It still makes sense, even more up here in the north because our heating bills are much higher. 50 degrees up to 80 degrees, that's an easy, efficient leap for a heat pump.
"...if we started putting solar panels all over everything, that doesn't change the fact that it's very diffuse and that creating and maintaining tens of thousands of square miles of solar panels to provide just some of the energy we need is simply not economically and logistically feasible."
The new concentrating solar PV/ heat cogeneration systems are competitive on cost, on a per kwh basis. Surveys of roof space indicate that nearly all our power could come from roof mounted solar with the new higher efficiency solar systems. Especially when combined with conservation from ground source heat pumps and plugin hybrids.
It's all here somewhere PL. On the blog here or linked to on other sources. Actual projects that are proving these newer better renewable and conservation energy systems.
The old fossil and nuclear baseload centralized grid and gas guzzling transportation economy is no longer needed, and it is destroying the human friendly climate. Dump it, we don't need it. A 20 year timetable to do a transition is feasible.
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vakibs Posted 1:19 am
04 Aug 2008
amazing coal drx
Surveys of roof space indicate that nearly all our power could come from roof mounted solar with the new higher efficiency solar systems.
I think you are referring to Gar Lipow's post on rooftop solar replacing coal. If you look at the comments below, it has been established that rooftop solar can replace the current share of coal in US home electricity production. The keywords are current , US and home. Electricity usage is bound to increase in the future due to your favorite electric vehicles and cars. And homes only account for a portion of total electricity use. And China is quickly becoming a bigger offender than US in burning coal.
The bottomline is that rooftop solar is not an invincible superhero that can beat coal into pulp. The demand for coal is HUGE and is bound to increase further with rising gas prices.
You should do an exercise on energy demand and energy supply. In an energy efficient country where all transport is electrified and efficiency is tapped completely, there will still be an energy demand of 125 KWH per person per day. (The US currently uses a gluttonous 300 KWH per person per day). Your rooftop solar, wind etc.. will only provide a portion of this demand.
You don't like nuclear. Probably it is difficlt to throw away all your anti-nuke T-shirts !
And to my surprise, you avoid even desert solar systems. So basically you are in deep trouble. Your policy is concise and simple : burn coal, burn.
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amazingdrx Posted 1:32 am
04 Aug 2008
Back to the original thread
Storing solar electricity as hydrogen, then storing the hydrogen safely and efficiently (pumping it into a lquid takes all the energy in the hydrogen fuel). That's what MIT should work on. This invention in the original article helps split water more efficiently by mimicking photosynthesis, well good! But here is the real challenge:
"you basically put hydrogen atoms in between the crystallic structure of solid metals. IFE presently has the reigning world storage record for hydrogen using this method. By putting the hydrogen atoms 0,16 nanometre apart, they have achieved a hydrogen density more that 8 times higher than liquid pressurised hydrogen."
"Although the metal hydride used by IFE today is too heavy and too costly to be commercially interesting, when you include safety considerations (real or imagined), the metal hydride method seems to be a practical"
http://www.nanonordic.com/extra/news/?module_instance=2&a ...
A nano metal hydride MIT? That would be a breakthrough. A nano designed lattice structure for hydrogen atoms to fit into and store the hydrogen at solid densities at ambient tempeature and pressure. Then you've got something, make it inexpensive and that would be even better.
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amazingdrx Posted 1:35 am
04 Aug 2008
How about a bacteria or virus
That is like a coral organism, that could build a "reef" on a nano tech scale that was made from carbon and zinc atoms. Hehey.
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amazingdrx Posted 1:46 am
04 Aug 2008
My reasoning Vak
Well here is the radical revolutionary reasoning behind that astounding claim of 100% rooftop solar in 20 years, hehey.
Conservation? Potential savings, 40% of present energy use.
Surveys indicate around 50% of present power use could come from rooftop solar at the 10% efficiency calculated in this older data.
With concentrating solar PV/heat cogeneration 60% would be normal, higher could be acheived.
Storage would come from emergency backup batteries in homes and buildings. More storage from heat/cold storage in building mass and heat stored in molten salt in factory roof mounted solar furnce systems. I am including space over parking lots and outdoor factory sites in the calculation for the solar furnaces.
And the sides of buildings as well, with good solar exposure.
Over the next 20 years superconducting magnetic energy storage could be expanded, it is in operation in power grids already.
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MClemens Posted 6:54 am
04 Aug 2008
I do know
of a place in Baraboo, WI that is projected to be 110% energy efficient (thanks to the solar panels on it's roof), is carbon-neutral, and at last check, had received the highest LEED rating of any building in the world. It is the Leopold Legacy Center, a conference/office/nature center facility that houses the Leopold Foundation. Having been there, I can attest the fact that yes, they do have refridgerators, computers, TV's, and it doesn't feel like a tomb (even in winter as one of the staff informed me when I, too, was skeptical of that being possible). It is truly a testament to the potential of this country being able to convert to sustainable means of existence when there is demand to do so.
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usandthem Posted 7:12 am
04 Aug 2008
Lindsay
The next to last paragraph is quite true.You would have to be very wealthy to be able to afford enough solar panels and batteries to be able to live like the average american energy hog.The first thing that you learn before you buy ANY renewable energy source is CONSERVE,CONSERVE,CONSERVE!Then you can invest in renewables.You will still have to have learned how to conserve and not waste energy.
There is another energy generating source that does operate 24/7 and that is tidal flow and or ocean currents and flow.There are prototypes of the ocean current device now in operation and the tidal flow generators are somewhat common.I think that the Bay of Fundy has a large one.
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amazingdrx Posted 7:13 am
04 Aug 2008
Great!
I'm doing a trail run there later this fall, I will check that out.
http://www.greatlakesendurance.com/race_info.htm
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GRLCowan Posted 7:58 am
04 Aug 2008
Wonks who thrill to the word electrolyzer
are illiterate. Anything that does any kind of lysis is a lyser, not a lyzer, loser.
Nocebo, I mean Nocera's enthusiasm seems desperate. A marginal increase in the efficiency of water electrolysis doesn't get you around doing something with the hydrogen once you've got it. I suppose flaring it would be easy and straightforward.
--- G.R.L. Cowan, H2 energy fan 'til ~1996
How solar power can work through winter
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President Lindsay Posted 1:25 pm
04 Aug 2008
Changing behavior is tough - and unnecessary
You would have to be very wealthy to be able to afford enough solar panels and batteries to be able to live like the average american energy hog.The first thing that you learn before you buy ANY renewable energy source is CONSERVE, CONSERVE, CONSERVE! Then you can invest in renewables.You will still have to have learned how to conserve and not waste energy.
To a great extent energy conservation can be built into the system. Here in California, for instance, long ago twisty light bulbs were subsidized and many people switched to them. Traffic lights were converted to LEDs. Bounties were offered for old inefficient appliances. Building codes were tightened. Now it looks like they're going to ban incandescent bulbs. All these things are fine and could be even improved on, and implemented nationwide. It would help, but it doesn't generate electricity.
When it comes to behavioral modification to conserve more, then it gets problematic. Turn off lights when you leave a room? Lots of people don't pay any attention to that. Turn down/up the thermostat to a less comfortable temperature? Plenty of people will ignore that. Get rid of your old freezer in the garage, turn it in for $100 bounty and buy a new one that's more energy efficient? Few people will do that simply because it's a perceived major cost--never mind that the money would be paid back over time in electricity savings. Plenty of people live pretty much paycheck to paycheck and don't have the extra money to make such upgrades. Nor are many people going to go to the store (via light rail) to buy clothespins instead of using a dryer. And we want to get rid of gas dryers and gas heaters. Yes, I know heat pumps can work for the latter, but here again people have to be willing to pay many thousands of dollars to dig up their yards and buy and install them. Will some people do it? Sure. How many do you know who already have? These systems have been around for a long time. I personally don't know a single person who has a heat pump system. Can the government subsidize them? Sure. But like solar panels, subsidies can work when a very small percentage of people buy them. If you want everybody to do it, then there's no such thing as subsidies. We'd all be paying for all of it, and these things simply aren't cheap. Some of them are very, very expensive.
Can we put regulations into place for all new homes to have heat pump systems. Sure. That's a fight you have to take to your statehouse or D.C. But for many decades older homes won't have them. In other words, the majority of homes--likely the vast majority--won't have such systems even by the middle of the century, even with forced 100% compliance for new homes. Do we have 100 years or more to wait to achieve our GHG-free society? I doubt it.
These are not minor annoyances to thwart the dreams of a super-energy-efficient world. These are hard realities. Can we do better than we're doing now? Certainly. California has shown that. Can we transition quickly and economically to the sort of all heat pump/solar panel society envisioned by many and passionately articulated by some people here? I seriously doubt it.
Behavioral modification is doubly difficult when it comes to having people spend major amounts of money in service to what others (not necessarily they) perceive as the common good. Heck, it's hard enough even when it doesn't cost people a cent. Just take a look at recycling. How many people couldn't care less and just throw everything in the trash can? Plenty. Should we get all draconian on them and try to figure out ways to force them to separate their bottles and paper and plastic? Why not just figure out a way to painlessly recycle everything without anybody--even the virtuous--having to separate anything?
As for vehicles, trying to get people to spend the kind of money it would take to get them to buy new cars that run on fuel cells is going to be mighty tough if those cars are anywhere near as expensive as their current cars, especially if the hydrogen isn't cheap. But offer new cars that use zero-emission fuel that's 100% recyclable and costs just tens of cents for the energy equivalent of a gallon of gas, and the automakers won't be able to produce them fast enough. Can we do that? Ask Graham.
As for the electricity that we would wish to produce GHG-free to displace coal and gas and power electric transportation to whatever degree we want, how do you get everybody to sink thousands of dollars into that capital investment in solar cells or wind power (imagining, if you insist, that that would be sufficient). The vast majority of people will blithely keep their connection to the grid and pay their electric bill every month. Without subsidization like we have today (at least in California) for solar panels, very few people would even consider buying them. Even with massive subsidization very few Californians have invested in them, and only at a serious cost even then.
But the good news is that we don't have to rely on people changing their behavior against their will and spending thousands of dollars that they don't have. We don't even have to get them to stop being energy hogs. They don't have to separate their trash because we know how to recycle everything even when it's all tossed in together. And we can provide unlimited amounts of electricity to the grid cheaply, safely, and without fossil fuels.
Why the great antipathy to the grid? It's worked pretty well up to this point, and with new ACCR power lines we could transmit double or triple the current current over existing power corridors without even building any new towers, and without having to blaze any new power corridors. Windies want to upgrade the grid anyway, as do solar afficionados who dream of blanketing Arizona and New Mexico with panels and pumping the juice all over the country.
You'll be a lot more successful in converting to a GHG-free economy if you don't ask everyone to spend thousands of dollars extra for the infrastructure. Instead, it can all be converted behind the scenes without added cost to anyone. In fact, it'll be cheaper than proceeding with business as usual. A lot cheaper, in fact. Here's how.
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President Lindsay Posted 1:59 pm
04 Aug 2008
Funding?
Mike Johnston writes: I agree that this story is an unfortunate blur of the reality involved. This is the fault of the scientist who is making the claims more then the author. Check out my rebuttal to the story on the Nature magazine news site for a more complete analysis.
Your rebuttal was spot on, Mike. When I started to describe this "breakthrough" at MIT to my daughter who's in grad school in physics at Cornell, before I even got finished talking she piped up, "It sounds like they're just trying to get more funding." My first clue was the lying about normal methods of electrolysis. The next was their portrayal of it as akin to photosynthesis. The only thing it has in common with photosynthesis is that the original energy comes from sunlight, which is something you could say about a lot of things, including oil. If it looks like hype, walks like hype, and quacks like hype...
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amazingdrx Posted 3:07 pm
04 Aug 2008
Perpetual motion?
That's it eyyh PL. Will it power GRL's boron energy economy too? One suggestion.
Why not get three names like GRL, President? Don't you feel a little inadequate? How about President Emperor Wizard? PEW Lindsay. Has a ring to it.
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President Lindsay Posted 3:57 pm
04 Aug 2008
No need to snap, Dr. X
Seems I'm getting a bit of transferred rage here, Dr. X. Did you and Graham have some disagreements in the past? No need for venom here, I'm trying to have a reasonable discussion. If Graham has an idea that could work, I'm as ready to look at it as any other idea. And his boron fuel idea for vehicles has plenty of advantages. There are some pretty impressive scientists who are quite convinced it could work.
Ad hominem never advances reasoned discussion. You're better than that, I suspect.
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GRLCowan Posted 12:34 am
05 Aug 2008
That could never happen ...
You must be unaware that the Doctor is "trying very hard ... in his own way, to be a consensus-building diplomat".
I have commented on messages by him, as best I recall, exactly twice. One comment was a response to his misrepresentation of the shorter version of "Boron: A Better Energy Carrier than Hydrogen?".
The other was recently, after I saw he had grown a real-looking name and might no longer be beneath notice. It was an insinuation that the proofs of innocence he requires of nuclear energy, and would re-require in perpetuity if he could, are proofs he might find rather tiresome to have to provide on his own account.
It was a Simpsons reference, too. The thread had started with Simpsons references, but apparently only the forces of darkness are allowed to use them.
Have you noticed how, with global warming deniers and the like, stupidity is so often not just a job but a calling?
--- G.R.L. Cowan, H2 energy fan 'til ~1996
How solar power stations can work all winter
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GRLCowan Posted 12:43 am
05 Aug 2008
PL, I's seeing some weird foreign talk
at the URL you gave above --
Is that what's supposed to be there?
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GRLCowan Posted 12:56 am
05 Aug 2008
Wait, you gave the wrong link
It's www.prescriptionfortheplanet.com/, not .net.
--- G.R.L. Cowan, H2 energy fan 'til ~1996
How solar power stations can work all winter
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amazingdrx Posted 12:56 am
05 Aug 2008
Gee...RL
"I's seeing some weird foreign talk"
You noticed that too?
The best part of GRL's boron powered economy PL?
The part about the boron being burned in pure oxygen in turbines that shed the boron combustion product solidifying on the blades and still staying in balance. (pure oxygen tanks on cars? turbines that need to be balanced to keep from tearing themselves up, with solids precipitating on the blades?)
Or the part about boron oxide "gravel" emitted from cars collecting at intersections.
I'm not sure. But it is worth reading (for entertainment value too) to understand just how far from reality one can go and still have the delusion of perfect sanity. Human self-delusion, the second most powerful force in the universe? Hehey.
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amazingdrx Posted 1:09 am
05 Aug 2008
Expect some comedy PL, GRL
When you rudely berate others (and in the case of GRL, actually accuse me of murder !?!).
And then give a link to gibberish to support your majical mysterious energy source that makes renewable/conservation energy revolution unecessary. With straight lines like this, how do you expect to not get a little ribbing?
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vakibs Posted 2:13 am
05 Aug 2008
amazing does it again
And then give a link to gibberish to support your majical mysterious energy source that makes renewable/conservation energy revolution unecessary.
@amazing
Please stop getting amazingly jumpy. Nobody is out here to kill your magical solar baseload + biogas + blah blah revolution. Most people on gristmill have an open mind and care about the environment. If you want to convert people to your religion, you have to rub them in the right way.
Just as RMI is the gossip source and you are the gossip carrier, nuclear could be the energy source and Boron/Hydrogen the energy carrier.
You can despise at this "pitiable" idea for yourself, but you don't have to condescend on GRL and Pres Lindsay. I assure you they don't have any majical mysterious energy source
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GRLCowan Posted 2:31 am
05 Aug 2008
Just boron, no hydrogen
B2O3 can flow. I've seen it do so.
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amazingdrx Posted 2:46 am
05 Aug 2008
But he does vak, he does
"I assure you they don't have any majical mysterious energy source "
http://www.prescriptionfortheplanet.net/
Here, it's brilliant. All the energy anyone could ever need!
Yes, Vak, GRL's plan is great too. Wonder in awe as pure oxygen combustion of boron fuel yeilds molten boron oxide that flows smoothly over turbine blades to be formed into "gravel" that exits the car. So it accumulates at intersections.
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President Lindsay Posted 2:51 am
05 Aug 2008
Bad link
Sorry about that link. Fixed now.
As for Graham's speculation about turbine design, while you might take issue with that (I, too, feel like direct burning in the turbine entails problems) it doesn't change the fact of boron's energy density, about quadruple that of hydrocarbons. It could very well be burned in a combustion chamber with a heat exchanger, which could then cleanly and easily power a turbine. In regard to the gravel you spoke about, he was referring more to other energy carriers. There's no reason that a boron/oxygen combustion chamber would have to eject anything at all. Unburned boron and/or oxygen could simply be fed back into the intake, and the boria would collect at the bottom to be unloaded at the boron fueling station.
I went back and looked at that thread where the esteemed Dr. X was so slandered by Graham, and as the latter said it was a Simpsons joke on a thread that started with Simpsons jokes. That was the article by Joe Romm where he threw around numbers like $6-8,000/megawatt as a cost for nuclear power, which is ridiculous unless you assume that any nuclear plant is going to be hamstrung by endless lawsuits and drag on for a decade or more because of it, that they'll be all built as one-off designs in the old style, and other such archaic notions.
If you'd like realistic projections for costs, you need look no further than the experience of GE/Hitachi in Japan with their recent and current construction of the ABWR reactors. Even on first of a kind projects, they were able to go from breaking ground to loading fuel in 39 months, and build them quite economically. Now they're building more for Japan, more in Taiwan, and they hope to build them in the USA where they've got pending orders. At this point they have a considerable data set from which to price them, and they know from very recent and current experience that they can build them for about $1,400/MW. But they also have learned from building the earlier ones (which are running just fine, thank you very much) and feel quite confident that they can reduce that to $1,200/MW. Compare this to Pickens' and North Sea wind farms at about $15,000/MW (if you don't ignore that pesky capacity factor).
The thing is, as economical as the ABWR is, the newer and even safer designs stand to be even cheaper. The AP-1000 by Westinghouse, already being built in China, and the new ESBWR by GE/Hitachi (now in the certification process) will be smaller units that can be built in factories and transported to the sites to be dropped into their excavations, allowing for great quality control and diminished expense. Plus they go even farther than the ABWR in terms of completely passive safety systems (though the ABWR is way ahead of current designs) and thus are able to employ even fewer pumps and valves and other complexities of earlier designs, thus resulting in a smaller footprint and lower costs.
But the S-PRISM reactor is the one we should be waiting for, and impatiently so, for that one can finally solve our entire nuclear "waste" problem, and won't require a speck of uranium to be mined to fuel them--ever. (Well, not for about a thousand years, anyway.) It's a modular system using passive safety features unrivaled in their effectiveness by even the newest plant designs. It's already been designed and could start to be built pronto, but of course most of our policymakers don't even know about it because the DOE is still censoring research reports that mention that naughty word "breeding." While the USA has its collective head in the sand, other countries (India, China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, France) are all proceeding with projects to build similar reactors, yet unfortunately we don't seem to be sharing our considerable knowledge about the safest designs with them because we keep pretending they don't exist. It's a great pity, especially as our world heats up and we keep pretending that we can gather enough sunshine to fix it.
So Barack comes out with his much-heralded energy speech calling for clean coal, the ludicrous cap & trade, more drilling, and one sentence about nuclear that show not an iota of knowledge about such technologies. This is what we have to look forward to? The politics is what's killing us.
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President Lindsay Posted 2:55 am
05 Aug 2008
Okay, Dr. X, I give up
You've convinced me that you're not serious. Fortunately others here are.
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GRLCowan Posted 3:21 am
05 Aug 2008
He says it's worth reading, but never gives the
link. Gristers, just 4,000 words separate you from finally attaining the coolness you have desperately sought, lo these many years.
Dr. X hasn't, except to within half of a large US state, disclosed his location. This proves he is really Dick Cheney.
Mr. President, I hope your planetary prescription is up-to-date with my latest boron publication, abstract linked below. It has almost twice as many words as the above-linked 2001 version, and many of them are different. As far as I know, it's the only document on the web that refers to the state of being broken to harness with a single word.
--- G.R.L. Cowan, H2 energy fan 'til ~1996
How solar power stations can work all winter
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amazingdrx Posted 4:22 am
05 Aug 2008
Seriously!
I think you two ought to exchange addresses! Who knows who you really are? Hehey.
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President Lindsay Posted 3:09 pm
05 Aug 2008
We already have
Graham and I have known each other for years. As for who I really am, just got to my web site and you can read the beginning of my book and my true identity will be revealed!
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