The Orville and Wilbur Wright of the Green 21st Century

Ten years ago, on March 21, 1999, after close to 20 days in the air, Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones’ balloon “Rozière” landed in the Egyptian desert, so ending the first non-stop circumnavigation of the earth in a balloon. And giving inspirational birth to the dream of Solar Impulse. (more…)

The Ability of Light to Produce Electrons, and Thus Electricity, Has Been Known For Over 100 Years.

At the Albuquerque, New Mexico’s Sandia National Laboratories, scientists have developed tiny glitter-sized photovoltaic cells that could revolutionize the way solar energy is collected and used. (more…)

Too Good To Be True? Not With MIT On Our Side

MIT researchers have a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.

Daniel G. Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT, developed a simple method to split water molecules and produce oxygen gas, a discovery that paves the way for large-scale use of solar power.

The researchers developed a new catalyst, consisting of cobalt metal, phosphate and an electrode. When the catalyst is placed in water and electricity runs through the electrode, oxygen gas is produced. When another catalyst is used to produce hydrogen gas, the oxygen and hydrogen can be combined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power a house or an electric car, day or night.

With Daniel Nocera’s and Matthew Kanan’s catalyst, homeowners could use their solar panels during the day to power their home, while also using the energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen for storage. At night, the stored hydrogen and oxygen could be recombined using a fuel cell to generate power while the solar panels are inactive.

More engineering work needs to be done to integrate the process into existing photovoltaic systems, but Nocera said he is confident that such systems will become a reality.

Nocera hopes that 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. Electricity-by-wire from a central source could be a thing of the past.

But like the old saying goes ….. “an internet video clip from LiveScience.com is worth a thousand words“, so……