Huge Breakthrough For Solar Power

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Yea but how do you tax that?

Sounds like communism to me.

That was my initial thought, too. Oh, it's cheap and renewable, so it'll never go anywhere.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting this, but it sounds like they've just figured out a way to make electrolysis more efficient. It's a breakthrough for energy storage perhaps, but seems to me like they still rely on plain old electricity from photovoltaics.

You don't sell the equipment and you don't make it easy to set up yourself. You rent it, like a cable box.

Some genius finds a way to stick a flag on the sun and begins to ask rent for it's rays

Pay a kill fee to the oil companies?

Wow. Everybody put an extra spoonful of cynicism on their corn flakes this morning?

Of course, the Oil companies will patent that for themselves (or allready have), just to have the idea vanish.

However, with a little luck, you might find some nations, who do not acknowledge the patent and will still produce this cheap new solar cells.

The biggest looser here will be the coal, however. And maybe the Nuclear Power Companies. Oil is still needed for gasoline, sinceelectro cars are still inferior to gas-cars, even if you have enought electricity.

However, I would really like to know, how much more efficient the new system is, as compared to the allread known solar cells with an electrolysis battery put behind it. If it's not at least a factor of 3, I think they overact the impact.

What is more interesting is that if he is right it also applies to other types of green intermittent power sources like wind or wave power. If you watch the video the professor talks about the actual invention as using a catalyst to aid in efficiently converting water to hydrogen and oxygen gas using electricity. That will also work for wind or wave or any sort of electric power.

Electrolysis has been an inappropriate model for energy replacement because of the amounts of electricity required to split water into potentially usable hydrogen (and oxygen). I read this somewhere: any elementary school classroom can make hydrogen by jamming electrodes into a tank of water. But if that electricity comes from fossil fuels, we've obviously not solved the problem.

Solar power has always been inadequate because of the low conversion rate. You can't come anywhere near powering a whole house on a roof's full of solar panels, not to mention the problem of storage for night or bad weather.

However, it looks like this new technology is a big step in that direction. There's nothing wrong with electrolysis if we can generate the necessary electricity via the sun. That means no fossil fuels to burn to generate the hydrogen, so the environmental impact is way, way lower. I'm really excited about this, and I hope we see more attention paid to this soon.

I'm not saying that this isn't potentially a major breakthrough in battery technology. I'm saying that declaring it a "huge breakthrough for solar power" is misleading, at the very least.

we will pay and it sounds better than what i'm paying for now.

If anything it's a break through for any alternative source that uses batteries for storage.

FTR kind of misguided us with the "Huge Breakthrough for Solar Power" title. While it is huge for solar power, the article itself is actually relates to the storage discovery.

It is big for solar power, it's also big for wind power, or any other power that uses unconventional means.

The biggest problem i have had with my little solar power project is battery life. Ohio isn't known as the sunshine state, we can actually go some time without direct sunlight, just overcast. The batteries still get a charge, but they're far from getting a full charge.

Open source.

Actually, I read that article, or another one on the same subject, a month or two ago, and they also titled it as a solar breakthrough. It really should have been titled as a major breakthrough in electrical storage, as it really has nothing to do with solar, per say.

So would it be reasonable to buy huge sections of unused desert here in Arizona, use them to harness solar energy, then use these breakthroughs to transfer that energy to consumers? Because that seems like a profit-generating model.

Sorry, I took this statement

as true.

I apologize.

Yes, it would, but I think part of the idea is to de-centralize power generation, therefore making us less dependent on things like utility companies, and outdated transmission lines and power grids. That way, if something goes wrong, it won't take out large areas, like the recent NYC and east coast blackouts did. It will also help "empower" (pun intended) individuals, instead of making us more dependent on massive electric monopolies. It will also help to create massive amounts small, local businesses, to sell, install and service the equipment, which will further divest us from our dependence on massive utility companies.

I'm just saying, it doesn't seem to make sense to me to suggest that power companies wouldn't be interested in this because you can't make a profit with it. You can. And that this system allows you to store energy so efficiently means that, while you can utilize one primary area to harvest most of the energy, you can "save it up" for emergency situations in the event that something goes wrong.

For solar energy harvest, Arizona's just sort of a no-brainer. And our state could use the money. I'd really like to see this happen here.

Something like 80-90% of Nevada is federal government owned. From time to time the Bureau of Land Management sells or trades off bits and pieces of it. Generally to allow for more growth in Las Vegas, Henderson and North Las Vegas.

There's rather huge sections of southern Nevada where there isn't enough water to support much growth. This kind of thing could save towns like Tonopah, Beatty, and Goldfield. I suppose it would depend how many people it would need and what kinds of skills would be needed to maintain something like this.

I don't see any reason why you couldn't do both (large instillations, and smaller, consumer versions). It should be economically viable in both situations.

Same reasons I want it in Arizona. There's reason to believe that our water expenses in this state will shoot up fairly soon, our being able to supply energy to the country would counterbalance that.

You guys can use yours to power The Floating Island Hotel that they'll make after this comes out. It'll be a hotel that hovers several hundred feet above the strip. Patrons will be beamed up. It's going to be awesome.