Huge Breakthrough For Solar Power

I do not think that will happen quickly. In the mean time it will allow power companies to decentralize more and have local power storage, buy the power when it is cheap, and sell it back to customers when they want it.

That will work a lot better with wind power which is very intermittent.

I think one of the main reasons that things like this work better on a small scale is that long-distance transmission is far more efficient with high-voltage a.c. power. This doesn't produce that. What it does produce works excellently on a single-home or neighborhood basis.

This same factor is why it's relatively straightforward to sell excess wind-generated power back to the grid. It can be regulated to 60 Hz a.c. before it goes back through the meter. You'd have to run the output from a battery or fuel cell through an inverter, costing a loss in efficiency in the process.

Ok so their was very few actual technical details written in that news article or the links I went to (I dont know where my earphones are so I cant watch the video), what I did see from what people posted and the article is that they mistate what has actually been created, which is not a storage solution AKA efficient mass storage of hydrogen which is one of the big stumbling blocks for a hydrogen economy, but they have figured out a more efficient method of electrolyising water , I.E. in hydrogen production.

Like some one already stated what this has to do with solarpower specifically is unclear if it can be applied to any power source, hell this could be just as much of a boon to the nuclear industry as it will for solar or wind.

So unless you have your own cryogenic tank for storing liquid hydrogen in, dont expect this to be storing (very much) power from your backyard windmill anytime soon....

No, that's one of the breakthroughs. All storage is at room temperature, and the process can take place in something as small as a glass of water at room temperature.

find your earphones and
read more here

Compressed gaseous hydrogen at 700 bar 5.6 MJ/L
This is at a much higher pressure then natural gas, which is usually around 200-230 bar though CNG has twice the energy density (10MJ/L)at this pressure.

That video wasnt increadibly informative either, but it is indeed a catalyst, though I am not sure if it is done by electrolysis, it looks like it may just be a catalyst to help the sun break up H2O- that is the only break through mentioned, no word on how to store enough H2 to run a household with.

thanks for the science lesson.

Maybe they would use something like a Hydrogen Tank. I dunno. just a thought.

Honda will eventually figure it out

Now if they could only make a car that doesn't look so god-awful ugly.

My 1980 Accord looks just fine to me.

I meant recent models. All of the hybrids/fuel efficient cars currently on the market look aesthetically horrible (to me anyways). I think the Daily Show had made a joke sometime ago, "Now, if they could only design a hybrid that doesn't look like a gay spaceship."

They're getting there



most everything is built for aerodynamics though.

Honestly? All I want is for all my power to come from the sun, and I want to be able to get it without paying some giant power company. I want solar panels (or something) on my roof, and I want enough power from that to power my house and my car.

I really don't think that's too much to ask for in 2008. I've already given up on my flying car.

You rang?

Your basis of claim is absurd. Niel Armstrong has a better claim on the Moon for sure. You have never been to the Sun, and cannot intercept even 1/100 of one percent of the energy it shines on earth.

YOU THINK?!

In other news, the entire concept of a land shark is ridiculous. Sharks need water to breathe, and they don't have digits flexible enough to ring a doorbell.

Tell me you were kidding. Please.

Like have you ever once seen petepolly be even slightly sarcastic or humorous!

Of course not!! never, never, never, has petepolly ever engaged in satire or humor to make a point.

Especially if I post a 50 page long reference I expect you to read it all cause I am just that serious of a panda bear! I would never think to make fun of people by just showing them that the list of references refuting their argument is alone is large enough to beat them over the head with.

I am not Bugs Bunny, I am petepolly a deadly serious fellow.

The language you used didn't seem like it was supposed to be sarcastic, but I couldn't tell for sure if you were just trying to deadpan. That's a dangerous tactic on the net, thanks to the same concepts behind Poe's Law.

I often use total deadpan.

I want people to think, it does not always work unfortunately.

I am actually more interested in getting people to think about things and discuss serious ideas, but this place is not all that good for it.

I was deadly serious for example about the green crude for example, and actually do have the education and training to evaluate it, and in my opinion it is a fraud if seriously intended to replace petroleum. As a stopgap of limited utility, and limited scope, it is fine.

The problem is everyone seems to think that because I have "conservative" (free-market) economic views, I am against any green ideas and nothing is further from the truth.

That one (green crude) is an issue that if imposed by government fiat can cause food shortages that can lead to mass starvation, like corn to ethanol. It could never compete in the market head to head with photo-voltaic solar, or wind power batteries, as fossil fuel prices get high (which they will again, this latest downturn is temporary.)

Which is a major reason to support a free market system, massive mistakes are much less possible. The current housing mess is a good example of a government imposed program (Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac) causing massive economic dislocation, that would never have survived in a free market.

Solar power is for pussies.

Fuckin' hell. I know it can do that, but seeing it is a real trip.

There's almost no way solar energy doesn't happen. In the last few months I've heard about 4 or 5 serious breakthroughs in the process.

One involved using a popcorn like texture on solar panels to trap more photons and prevent them from reflecting or refracting off the surface as easily. This almost doubles the efficiency of cheap panels.

Another used a window-like surface that transferred the photons to the edges of the panel, allowing for greater surface area exposure to light.

There's the one this thread is about.

And now another absorbs a greater range of wavelengths and phosphoresces as well as flouresces.

Well if you thought that last post of mine was a science lesson you must have some bad science courses in the u.s!

I am not sure what you thought I was suggesting that the hydrogen be placed in considering the fact I cited states that hydrogen has to be under enormous pressure to concentrate 5.6MW of energy per liter, nearly 3 times as much pressure as a compressed natural gas container- hence you need that much more stronger material to contain such force.
So yes indeed you will need a hydrogen container; a very strong and a very large container(and thus extremely expensive, on top of needing additonal energy and equipment to compress the H2 gas) to house enough fuel to feed the average family households activity during the evening, which is of course the time of day when households experiance the most prolonged and spiked power consumption during the day.

Though I see honda figures that the house will also be supplying hydrogen vehicles with their supply of hydorgen on top of houshold consumption as well, again I wont be holding my breath waiting for a corporation to deliver an affordeable "system" to my front door, when all it would take to have cars running on batterries is to have more frequent battery exchanges or charging stations along highways?
Most highways already have the neccesssary infrastructure developed or at least much more affordeable development costs and mature technology compared to perspectives of the hydrogen car.

A very strong and a very big container that is made on a project by project basis right now. Ordering one is expensive. Once mass production begins, the cost will drop.

I am not sure in Canadia, but here in the states we actually do stuff like store fuel underground. The only thing you would probably see is the equipment that is required to compress the H2 gas, which could easily be covered. So the size of the tank really isn't all that important, as most of it would be buried.

kind of like hydrogen filling stations in California, it just needs to catch on.

Really? You've obviously never traveled to the more rural parts of the United States. Our infrastructure is in such piss poor shape from neglect it's not even funny. Especially the electrical infrastructure, while power consumption continues to grow, we still do the bare minimum to the grid to keep it maintained and healthy, brownouts and blackouts are not all that an uncommon experience here.

Now add everyone plugging their car into an outlet to charge which is a huge current draw, and i would just about bet on a grid failure. Considering a tree in Ohio blacked out most of the northeast in 2003

Errm the news link this thread is based on seems to be a little bit more of a breakthrough then that one you linked to, you do realise they have only managed to create several molecules of that substance.....

I guess my optimism about solar power is held back by the seasonal latitude I live at, combined with the fact that I rent an apartment, the best I could really come up with is something on my balcony (though the giant tree in front of it will still get the lionshare of sun) or in my bedroom window.

A worldwide power grid is the only hope for people in northern latitudes in having solar power replace the lionshare of fossil fuel energy.

Yes we store fuel tanks undergound as well, never the less the tanks, the energy collection/conversion and the burrying are all part of infrastructure costs and when it seems that all these proposals are to transfer the bulk of these costs to the consumer in the price of their house(Oh the irony of ironies)or the increase in their debt, their might be a bigger problem with such proposed schemes then mass production of H2 tanks.

Well yes the eastern united states(and eastern canada) is in a rather horrible state of affairs given the neglect of the electrical infrastructure, but their is still infrastructure there which should be upgraded and expanded, given that solar let alone reneweable power will not be able to replace 100% of our energy consumption without such a grid or alternative redistribution system.
In fact this sounds like a good project to help get a few countries out of their [depression]recession.....

Right... but now there's a reason to try to engineer those molecules. They were created on accident. The materials that go into them aren't that tough to get. More work needs to be done, but this is a pretty big jump forward in the amount of energy we can get out of solar power.

When solar power happens for real, they won't sell panels at Wal-Mart and expect you to set it up. Don't worry about your balcony space.

I agree a discovery like this is critical for the future of reneweable energy, but given the scale of production, that they cannot even create a laboratory device to supply a current of some sort! All they have is a computer model some theory and few molecules that seem to resemble what their computer predicts.
Suffice to say their is a huge difference in the science of the subatomic to scale of um the width of one of your or my hair follicles.
Just the fact that they can only reproduce a few molecules (can you tell me how many molecules is predicted in a mole, few is not the apt description for plenty in a mole) is in itself enough reason to put this discovery in the graveyard.
Other then utilising a super computer to predict the behavior in matter(which is becoming more commonplace), the fact that their is no radical divergence in theory from the current status quo means that I dont even have a small reason to beleive that they might have some sort of insight unique compared to what is accessible by the rest of the scientific community.
Sorry I am putting this in the dustbin of could have bin breakthroughs until their is literature confirming that they can produce at least a functioning device that has the potential for mass production of moles of the substance, not molecules!