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[wolfmat]

Sorry, Britain. Maybe transfer the impulse from rain drops into batteries or something?

They'll make a market of overpriced goods out of this just as well. Cells will be restricted, energy has to be purchased through certain channels. They being the MAN

Here's hoping this works out well for everyone involved.

Actually, I'd rather travel through space at Warp 12. MIT, get to work.

 

[Keylime]

I don't understand why individuals generating their own electricity is suddenly a great idea. Isn't it incredibly inefficient to have us all trying to generate our own power? Seems to me that it's going to be a massive waste of natural resources; precious metals, plastics, manpower (who's going to maintain all these highly explosive mini-power plants?)


If Solar power is the future, then why don't we do it on an industrial scale? Put the plants where they can actually be highly efficient and use the existing national grid infrastructure.

You can bet your ass that the energy companies will start to create this model immediately when it is becoming apparent that consumers are no longer going to need them.

Not having to pay an energy bill?! Yeah right. Like these companies are just going to lay down and die for the good of humanity... psht. Businesses stopped serving the consumers needs a long ass time ago. Probably since the invention of money.

 

[Deleted member 1235]

I thought this may have some relation to William McDonough and his book, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, but if there's a connection, I'm not seeing it on that site. For the record, that TED speech is absolutely worth watching.

woops I just pulled the first google result :O I mean what you said.

Guy is such a good talker.

 

[Evlar]

Power distribution is amazingly inefficient. Centralized eneergy for every house and business in the country isn't a great idea just because that's the way we do it now.

 

[mAcOdIn]

Sorry, Britain. Maybe transfer the impulse from rain drops into batteries or something?

They'll make a market of overpriced goods out of this just as well. Cells will be restricted, energy has to be purchased through certain channels. They being the MAN

Here's hoping this works out well for everyone involved.

Actually, I'd rather travel through space at Warp 12. MIT, get to work.

Well considering that currently that all of our manufacturing is done with non renewable resources, if we don't come up with something to replace them we'll be building our warp 12 spaceships out of wood with axes and shit. They're focusing on the right path.

 

[FightyF]

Power distribution is amazingly inefficient. Centralized eneergy for every house and business in the country isn't a great idea just because that's the way we do it now.

Centralized energy won't cut it when people need more and more energy.

Look at places like India or Pakistan, where there is such a heavy burden on the grid, you often see hour long power outages during the summer. Hour long power outages make offices stand still, they make the summer heat unbearable, and they are frequent.

Secondly, how can you claim that it is inefficient, when there are many other benefits, one being no waste. I mean, even nuclear power has issues of waste (very dangerous waste), and dealing with that problem opens another can of worms.

I would compare power distribution to distributed computing. You can have some super computers working on a problem, or you can have millions of less powerful computers that would result in faster processing. As each breakthrough become a reality, we are essentially getting more powerful "computers" (ie. energy producing techs) to help the grid.

Also, why do you consider it inefficient? In what way? Costs? Materials used?

 

[firex]

I hope this research doesn't hit any kind of problems so it can be developed. Even if it's not the future solution to all our energy needs, it's such a huge step in the right direction.

 

[big_z]

i only read the bold parts but from what i got is that they are using solar power to make hydrogen with cheaper electrodes. that's nice and all but it's nothing new... free power nuts had this idea for a long time, the problem is making the hydrogen this way is slow as fuck and would never come close to meeting the consumption demands

 

[Hitokage]

i only read the bold parts but from what i got is that they are using solar power to make hydrogen with cheaper electrodes. that's nice and all but it's nothing new... free power nuts had this idea for a long time, the problem is making the hydrogen this way is slow as fuck and would never come close to meeting the consumption demands

The important part isn't in the article linked: electrolysis that requires only a tenth the electricity.

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

Finally, real solar panels instead of 10-30% max conversion.

Lets hope this sees way faster distribution than the previous techs.

 

[JzeroT1437]

This man needs to be snagged up by a political campaign stat.

 

[Fixed2BeBroken]

So, in layman's terms they made a new battery? Not very exciting TBH. Solar power always had the ability to be stored, shit you can find batteries on the market now that can store solar energy for stupid shit like garden lights and the like.

The problem was never that we couldn't store energy but that we didn't get enough of it from the cells. So until someone makes a solar panel that absorbs more energy from the sun in the same size panel than what we currently have solar power will remain a pipe dream for most.

translation: those guys at MIT are not smarter than me, I post on the internet, I give those a MIT guys a big "pfft"

 

[JCtheMC]

The important part isn't in the article linked: electrolysis that requires only a tenth the electricity.

Ah, so the journo chose to neglect to communicate the most important fact of the whole story. Excellent.

Sounds exciting. With the steady advancements being made in solarcell development, this might be in our homes sooner than we expect.

 

[Phobophile]

The important part isn't in the article linked: electrolysis that requires only a tenth the electricity.

This is what I was hoping someone would clarify. Photovoltaics are only about 10% efficient and they wanted to use that for electrolysis? I was imagining the efficiency loss until you mentioned they used a different electrolysis method.

 

[ZAK]

So they just invented plants. Way to go, MIT, but you know what? God beat you to it. In fact, God made plants before He even made the sun.

 

[Tamanon]

I don't buy it. You don't DRILL for solar power. So it can't be the solution.

On a serious note, if it's effective this is outstanding news.

 

[Kung Fu Jedi]

It's all fun and games until the War with the Machines and we have to nuke the planet to blot out the sun.

 

[Javaman]

I'm a little skeptical about the usefulness of this. Due to the inefficiencies of hydrolysis the solar cell is going to need to be massively oversized for the daytime usage in order to have surplus energy to separate the gasses for nighttime use. Worse yet, a catalyst don't do much good, it just kick starts a reaction but doesn't do much to continue it. If this is truly a reactant it would need to be replenished. I think solar has a good future (In most places there's over 2kwh per m2 of free energy!) but this just seems to add a lot of inefficiencies to the system which is something you want to avoid with the high price of photocells. I'm a much bigger fan of the solar concentrators that generate steam to run generators. I remember reading about a test site that uses the concentrated sunlight to heat/melt a certain combination of salt. It easily carries the heat over into the night for nighttime generation, and ends up being much more efficient. I'm not sure of the de-scalability of the system though, but I think home kits that harness the heat would work out to be a lot cheaper and easier to massively produce.

 

[DarthWoo]

Somebody needs to find a way to create a highly durable material that would double as solar cells, but could be used as a road surface. Or an extremely transparent material that could cover up solar panels built into the road. Think of all the area we'd have for solar panels if we could turn every major road in the nation into solar panels. Of course then it'd be a pain as they close the roads for construction and create nightmare traffic for years.

But if that supposed electromagnetic induction or whatever WiiMote first party charger thing worked like they said it was supposed to, they could install something like that, but on a larger scale, at every major intersection where cars are likely to stop, and thus you could briefly charge electric cars with the proper equipment while they're stopped there.

 

[Javaman]

The important part isn't in the article linked: electrolysis that requires only a tenth the electricity.

If that's the case, I wouldn't be surprised if the electrodes are considered consumables.

 

[Z_Y]

Solar-Powered Flashlights, Here We Come!!!!

 

[besada]

The other reason to generate power locally is that the existing system can barely function. Power generated locally is power not taken from plants which are barely keeping up. Done on a large scale, the infrastructure savings alone should be fairly large.

I think some people still aren't getting that this isn't a battery. It's a catalyzer that turns water into storable hydrogen fuel, and it does so for 10% of the energy needed in existing systems. And since the MIT guys are directly name-checking solar, I'd guess it does it for an amount of energy produced by a typical solar setup for the first time.

Which makes it a pretty big deal. If efficiency were high enough, and enough hydrogen could be produced, it would solve the problem of creating hydrogen filling stations, because you'd fill up in your garage. For the cost of water (which we, granted, already don't have enough of).

 

[Ela Hadrun]

How long before some mega-corporation takes every measure possible to cock block the technology from being developed for mass market?

Right. The energy crisis is not an environmental problem with an environmental solution. It's an economic problem. This technology is inherently less profitable than our current model, so unless some giant nonprofit appears or else the government offers some kind of tax credit or something? only we internet denizens will know about this. No one's going to fork over the marketing money in order to make our energy ecosystem more democratic and affordable and self-sustaining.

This paragraph brought to you by I didn't take my anti-depressant pill yet this morning.

 

[Sol..]

Solar-Powered Flashlights, Here We Come!!!!

no need, we have cheap long lasting super flashlights powered by masturbation stroking power. I say thats the real answer to the energy crisis. If we could all bottle up that wasted kinetic energy from our bouts of furious meat beating we could power a million cities with the power from just one technical college alone.

 

[Ghost]

no need, we have cheap long lasting super flashlights powered by masturbation stroking power. I say thats the real answer to the energy crisis. If we could all bottle up that wasted kinetic energy from our bouts of furious meat beating we could power a million cities with the power from just one technical college alone.

Lets genetically alter nerds to cum hydrogen!

 

[Monroeski]

Question from an unscientific GAFfer -

If we ever go full scale all out on wind or solar energy, what are some potential downsides to taking that energy out of the ecosystem? Would there even be anything foreseeable?

For instance, somebody mentioned all the water power we get out of rivers, but as we abuse the river there starts to be less and less water available downstream. Would making huge wind farms rob areas down the way of wind? Would grabbing and storing a ton of solar energy reduce the amount of energy available for plants to grow?

 

[ZAK]

Lets genetically alter nerds to cum hydrogen!

WeThey already do. It's just massively impure.

 

[Sol..]

Question from an unscientific GAFfer -

If we ever go full scale all out on wind or solar energy, what are some potential downsides to taking that energy out of the ecosystem? Would there even be anything foreseeable?

For instance, somebody mentioned all the water power we get out of rivers, but as we abuse the river there starts to be less and less water available downstream. Would making huge wind farms rob areas down the way of wind? Would grabbing and storing a ton of solar energy reduce the amount of energy available for plants to grow?

Windmills don't capture wind, the wind just passes through moving the turbine.

And to that solar thing....no? Sorry, trying to capture that line of thinking takes me into some crazed universal space line of thinking. It's like doesn't the sun technically touch everything exposed on the surface? Even if it's not exposed can't sunlight reflect and bounce around to hit things supposedly covered? My brain is melting. I CANT TAKE IT!!!

 

[Javaman]

Question from an unscientific GAFfer -

If we ever go full scale all out on wind or solar energy, what are some potential downsides to taking that energy out of the ecosystem? Would there even be anything foreseeable?

For instance, somebody mentioned all the water power we get out of rivers, but as we abuse the river there starts to be less and less water available downstream. Would making huge wind farms rob areas down the way of wind? Would grabbing and storing a ton of solar energy reduce the amount of energy available for plants to grow?

I'm no scientist nor have I played one on TV, but I'd imagine that what we could harness from would be such a infinitesimal fraction of the total energy pumping non-stop around the Earth that there would would be no difference.

Once energy from the sun hits Earth I think it's pretty much trapped except for reflected light and other radiations from Earth (There's some others I'm sure, but I have no idea :lol) . Really we're just changing forms of energy. If we tap into air power to generate electricity the end result is almost always heat.... Heat generated during the change to electricity and heat generated at the destination (masses being moved, sound generated. light created). That heat is going to try and flow up creating the potential for wind from somewhere else. Since cities are always hotter then the surrounding countryside there's a little bit of wind generated, but it pales in comparison to what the ocean/rivers/lakes and land heating at different temperatures creates.

One of the reasons hydro-generators are bad for the enviroment is due to blocking water critters from moving upstream. They really don't consume much water. Of course if people tap off of the dam to irrigate fields and stuff then there are bigger issues, but the energy generation is "free" energy from something that would have been a loss if not harnessed. (Water height difference)

 

[Instigator]

Question from an unscientific GAFfer -

If we ever go full scale all out on wind or solar energy, what are some potential downsides to taking that energy out of the ecosystem? Would there even be anything foreseeable?

None. Lots of solar energy is just reflected back into space anyway. Having a solar panel on your roof does not effect whatever plant and animal life nearby.

But building large fields of solar panels, like those proposed projects in Arizona, is still encroaching on wild nature. Not as bad as building cities, but it would have some impact.

For instance, somebody mentioned all the water power we get out of rivers, but as we abuse the river there starts to be less and less water available downstream. Would making huge wind farms rob areas down the way of wind? Would grabbing and storing a ton of solar energy reduce the amount of energy available for plants to grow?

I'm not sure how much water is needed for large scale energy production of this kind, but from my understanding, you're using the same water over and over again.

 

[Monroeski]

Windmills don't capture wind, the wind just passes through moving the turbine.

And to that solar thing....no? Sorry, trying to capture that line of thinking takes me into some crazed universal space line of thinking. It's like doesn't the sun technically touch everything exposed on the surface? Even if it's not exposed can't sunlight reflect and bounce around to hit things supposedly covered? My brain is melting. I CANT TAKE IT!!!

Of course the wind passes through, but it just CAN'T be passing through at the same rate, can it?

As for the sun, I was thinking more along the lines that right now, the energy does hit everything, but I was working under the assumption that it then pretty much reflects off of most stuff and starts hitting other things. If you set up a bunch of solar panels, not nearly as much would be reflecting, correct? On a small scale, if some part of your yard was dependent on light that is reflected off your walls/windows, wouldn't storing that energy instead of reflecting it have some effect?

Again, I may be just totally way off in left field with this, as I don't really know the science. I just can't shake the feeling that there's some huge downside to wind and solar power that we're not seeing.

::edit::
questions answered by two posts while I was typing. Thanks!

 

[Hitokage]

Windmills do restrict airflow, but wind is indirect solar power and there's a lot more atmosphere in motion than the lower 100 feet or so that windmills occupy. Compared to the effect of completely damming off a river, it's negligible.

 

[jtardiou]

So they just invented plants. Way to go, MIT, but you know what? God beat you to it. In fact, God made plants before He even made the sun.

lol

 

[ChunderMan]

Yeah, this'll work great until the sun burns out. Then what are we gonna do? C'mon!

 

[charlequin]

Yeah, the article is somewhat misleading if you don't read it carefully. What MIT has actually announced is a breakthrough involving a dramatically more efficient form of electrolysis; this should theoretically combine with solar panels to produce a more efficient system for renewable, localized energy, but it doesn't actually have anything at all to do with solar power specifically -- this tech is applicable to tidal energy, wind power, etc. as well.

This is what I was hoping someone would clarify. Photovoltaics are only about 10% efficient and they wanted to use that for electrolysis? I was imagining the efficiency loss until you mentioned they used a different electrolysis method.

Consumer-level panels aren't that good, but experimental photovoltaic designs have hit efficiency thresholds as high as 40%. This technology is hypothetically mass-produceable and could really take off if it's given a good monetary push. Combining that with this storage breakthrough and the overall efficiency will be way up from what somone putting in panels today is looking at.

EDIT: I'm not actually worried about this sort of thing getting cockblocked by Big Energy. Historically, things like electric cars have gotten shut down due to a combination of factors: they presented a benefit people didn't really need yet on an individual level (because gas was so cheap) and which would only benefit society as a whole way down the line, they required a new infrastructure that no one was in the position to implement easily, and the people who would have pushed the technology (the car companies) were more than willing to stick to their existing, profitable business model and bury the tech.

In this case, the end goal of developing this line of technology is to create efficient, self-contained power systems that can be incorporated directly into individual buildings. Big business can't really do much against that because for every business that wants it stopped (current Big Power), there's some other business that wants to make a goddamn fuckton of money rolling it out and selling it. If this sort of thing works, it could be like the Wii of electricity.

 

[maynerd]

Sign me up!

 

[professor_t]

What energy crisis?

Exxon just reported the largest quarterly profit in U.S. history.

 

[DonasaurusRex]

cool beans but how much power can we get from solar even with this breakthrough enough to replace oil in a city for example>?

 

[oxrock]

I don't understand how people wouldn't be excited about this. Over time it could be a CONSIDERABLE difference in money, not to mention the environment. I found it hilarious when someone said they hoped this would effect the price of oil. If this was to be utilized then oil would play a MUCH smaller role in all of our lives. Imagine You could charge and store more energy than you needed just to run your house. Why not run your car off this stored energy? Why not run just about everything off of this? No doubt that it needs time to develope and be implemented but I am definatley looking forward to this.

Oh, someone else mentioned that they think it'd be more intelligent to have a massive solar panel array and just have the power distributed through the power lines already setup, all I can say is why? They'll just charge you whatever they want for it. Does it really seem so difficult to set panels up on the roof or even just hire someone to do it?

 

[Pancakes]

Yeah, this'll work great until the sun burns out. Then what are we gonna do? C'mon!

OH NOES! :lol :lol

Really though this is great news, just wondering what the oil companies will do about it.

 

[LuCkymoON]

I don't understand how people wouldn't be excited about this. Over time it could be a CONSIDERABLE difference in money, not to mention the environment. I found it hilarious when someone said they hoped this would effect the price of oil. If this was to be utilized then oil would play a MUCH smaller role in all of our lives. Imagine You could charge and store more energy than you needed just to run your house. Why not run your car off this stored energy? Why not run just about everything off of this? No doubt that it needs time to develope and be implemented but I am definatley looking forward to this.

Oh, someone else mentioned that they think it'd be more intelligent to have a massive solar panel array and just have the power distributed through the power lines already setup, all I can say is why? They'll just charge you whatever they want for it. Does it really seem so difficult to set panels up on the roof or even just hire someone to do it?

those same people have also ignored how inefficient the current power distribution grid is.
with on site power generation people will worry less about terrorist attacks against sub-stations or natural disasters wiping out power lines. this will also open up new local community jobs for electrical/mechanical repair men.

 

[Atrus]

Wouldn't relying on H20 for energy purposes be prohibitive? Pure water is a precious resource as it is (what with freshwater supplies being strained), and in order to desalinate water for use it would take an additional amount of energy that needs to come from somewhere.

 

[B.K.]

The oil companies will buy the technology and keep it locked away.

 

[Raistlin]

So, in layman's terms they made a new battery? Not very exciting TBH. Solar power always had the ability to be stored, shit you can find batteries on the market now that can store solar energy for stupid shit like garden lights and the like.

You may want to do some research before posting

Spoiler

you're very wrong about storage

 

[ZAK]

Yeah, this'll work great until the sun burns out. Then what are we gonna do? C'mon!

Oh shi-- You probably don't realize it, but by asking that question you've created God.

Okay, you know what, I don't want it to look like this has anything to do with the other God-related post I've already made here, so this is what I'm talking about.

 

[mAcOdIn]

You may want to do some research before posting

Spoiler

you're very wrong about storage

So you're saying there's no way to currently store solar power right now? Only options are let it go to waste or give it back to the grid for credit right?

I think YOU need to do more research.

 

[Raistlin]

So you're saying there's no way to currently store solar power right now? Only options are let it go to waste or give it back to the grid for credit right?

I think YOU need to do more research.

So you're telling me we currently have economic ways to power an entire house, over night, using direct current?

 

[Formless]

I'm a little skeptical about the usefulness of this. Due to the inefficiencies of hydrolysis the solar cell is going to need to be massively oversized for the daytime usage in order to have surplus energy to separate the gasses for nighttime use. Worse yet, a catalyst don't do much good, it just kick starts a reaction but doesn't do much to continue it. If this is truly a reactant it would need to be replenished. I think solar has a good future (In most places there's over 2kwh per m2 of free energy!) but this just seems to add a lot of inefficiencies to the system which is something you want to avoid with the high price of photocells. I'm a much bigger fan of the solar concentrators that generate steam to run generators. I remember reading about a test site that uses the concentrated sunlight to heat/melt a certain combination of salt. It easily carries the heat over into the night for nighttime generation, and ends up being much more efficient. I'm not sure of the de-scalability of the system though, but I think home kits that harness the heat would work out to be a lot cheaper and easier to massively produce.

Technically catalysts aren't even consumed, their chemical/physical properties are the same before and after reaction. I'm not sure about this one though.
I'm not even sure why it'd be bad for a catalyst to not "continue" a reaction, the whole point of a catalyst is to make the reaction happen a lot easier/faster. The reaction doesn't need to be "continued".

 

[koam]

When do we invade iraq for their sun?

 

[xelv]

So, in layman's terms they made a new battery? Not very exciting TBH. Solar power always had the ability to be stored, shit you can find batteries on the market now that can store solar energy for stupid shit like garden lights and the like.

The problem was never that we couldn't store energy but that we didn't get enough of it from the cells. So until someone makes a solar panel that absorbs more energy from the sun in the same size panel than what we currently have solar power will remain a pipe dream for most.

This is where GAF really sucks. I prefer the girl stories, and photoshopping threads to these supposedly intelligent discussions. Most people don't know what the hell they're talking about here. Jesus, just leave the "smart" men talk and quit with the "it's already been done OMGZ" and "it DOESNT WORK THAT WAY AMIRITE" crap.