Hydrogen is problematic as an energy storage media because it must be compressed to achieve any reasonable energy density.

eeStor’s super capacitor achieves the same goal, including 5 min recharge of your super capacitor based car, at a fraction of the cost and danger. They will be in production in 2009 with a 50KWh unit for home and cars. Their 2010 price is $40/kwh. but like all of these technologies you must first collect the solar energy and convert it to electrical power.

In my opinion the folks betting on 50,000g/yr/acre algea @ < $100,000/acre have it right. That comes to 20 cents per KWh installed! An 18hp cyclone engine generator running 24 hours/day into a 50kwh super cap will run a home and two cars.

Posted 1 year by Anonymous

Anonymous,
Do you have any links to or further info on the algae, its conversion to KW, etc.?

Posted 1 year by Anonymous

Why not flow low-speed-of-light (1 m/s) hyperspace energy over hydrogen atoms to produce 300 electrons per atom by the decay of the proton?

Posted 12 months by Anonymous

you never get cut with Occam’s Razor… the more the merrier and soon.

Posted 11 months by Anonymous

This seems a thought experiment that hasn’t been thought through. Solar photovoltaics are expensive already. Adding the inefficiencies and costs of splitting water, compressing and storing the hydrogen, then combining in a fuel cell seems crazy. Mr. Nocera says you already have a battery around in your car; when you don’t, hand the electricity you generate to a smart electric grid and let someone else use it.

He’s “fixing” a problem that’s years away (OMG we have so much electricity from renewables we don’t know how to store it!), meanwhile focus on getting solar generation out there!

Posted 10 months by Anonymous

This technology seems to have potentially infinite future. What’s holding you back? You appear to have an incredibly efficient storage medium. You should connect with Mark Morelli over at EDC – Ovonics. He has an credibly efficient solar photovoltaic collection system with no photovoltaic panels involved. Ovonics rolls the photovoltaic material out like laminated roofing material. In fact, the material looks like conventional three-tab composition roofing shingles that you would buy at you’re building supply store, except it generates electricity. You might also want to connect with Martin Everhart and Marc Tarpenning, they build Teslas in California. I’s an electric car that will go from zero to 6o in 4 seconds, and still get about 240 miles between charges. I’m no futurist, but I can see electricity generating roofs, electric cars in the garage (with power going both ways) and YOUR storage system under the stairs. There would be no need to beef up or replace our electrical grid. The new argument, it seems to me, will be similar to the one between GE & Westinghouse at the very beginning of last century: the use of DC v AC.
Respecfully submitted,
CJ Widman
Redding, CA

Posted 7 months by Anonymous

If you don’t want all your posts signed by “Anonymous,” you should provide a field for a name, or even an e-mail address. You could put that right alongside your spam filter.

Posted 7 months by Anonymous

an earlier post tried to poo poo this whole idea claiming that hydrogen has to be compressed for energy density. I question if this would need to become this extreme for a simple household application. I’ve seen the tremendous energy stored in very small amounts of hydrogen. To me the challenge is a method that is efficient and cost effective that converts this energy to AC or DC.

Posted 7 months by Anonymous

Is this better than just using batteries to store the extra because it’s cheaper or more efficient? Or something more subtle?
So my question, what’s the big breakthrough here from a practical perspective, I guess there must be one because people here are smart, but could you spell it out in lay-mans terms please?

Posted 6 months by trainer

there are several ways to use the power of water several types of water how to split h 2 o first there is tap, sea , bs water that is given off as a residual of pulling oil out of the ground this is the best because it has to be put back into the ground unless we find a use for it. bs salt water is a catalyst, pump the fluid at very fast rate by electrode made out of aluminum, the closer the plates the faster the rate of gas then capture the gas in a double tank. the problem with most of the water spliters is the gas has to rise on it’s own

Posted 2 months by kcbcbw