Oh my.
A big breakthrough was announced last month by researchers in MIT that may dramatically increase the importance of solar cells as a major source of energy. Up to now, there has been no easy way to store solar energy. The immediate availability of sunlight pretty much dictates how much power you have at any time. As soon as the sun goes down your immersion heater starts to cool down and your solar powered car grinds to a halt.
Meanwhile, nature has been busy mocking us. All around, efficient natural solar factories are at work converting the sun’s heat into chemical energy and storing this energy away for use at a later time. These conversion factories are known to the rest of us as leaves.
Taking a leaf (ouch) from nature, the MIT researchers have discovered a chemical mechanism (a catalyst) that can be used to extract oxygen from water at room temperature. Another catalyst is then used to extract hydrogen from water. All you need to trigger the reactions is electricity (from a solar cell for example). Both gases can then be safely stored away for later use. To create usable energy later on, you recombine the two gasses in a device known as a fuel cell.
Cheap, reliable, clean solar energy generated from within your home. Your house as a power station and as a refueling station. No need to wire your house to a power station. According to the scientists, we might see changes happening in as little as 10 years time. It will be interesting to see how it works out.
Then again, this is Ireland. Now, if you could extract energy from rainclouds you might get somewhere..
Passive Impressions 
Energy from rainclouds?
Isn’t that hydro power. Not always big dams and turbines, but a lot more could be done with smaller turbines for community power schemes or individual homes.
http://www.torrshydro.co.uk/ is localish to where we are.
Interesting, Phil. Energy storage as described above would work just as well for hydro as it would for solar. All you need, from what I read, is electric current.
Interesting indeed. I do see a couple of problems with this though.
Currently solar cells are very inefficient pieces of equipment. We’ve just tested a couple of smallish panels (~1/4m2) and the overall energy collected over the period of a week was around 60Wh i.e. just enough to light a single 60W light bulb for one hour. Not that impressive… Granted this is Ireland! But this is summer measurements when the weather wasn’t too rainy. I’m looking forward to seeing the figures for a typical Irish winter week…
The fact that they found a more efficient electrolysis catalyst is interesting though. Effectively you’d only need to store the hydrogen as there is plenty of oxygen around (~21% of the air we breathe). To store enough hydrogen to power a house you’d have to keep it in a pressurised tank. So you need power to compress the hydrogen to its liquid state and fill a tank.
Where I would be really impressed is if someone came up with a new type of solar cell that delivers closer to the ~1kWh/m2 that hit the earth every day. And works even when overcast. So effectively transforming daylight into electricity rather than high energy sun-rays…
Until then I think our best bet is a combination of wind and hydro-power. Store that energy as hydrogen and then supply later. It’s way more viable on our shores 🙂