Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Sunday, October 2, 2011
MIT working on the next LEAF of ENERY
In Friday's Boston Globe MIT development
The thumb-size black strip looks like a thin magnet. But in reality, it is an artificial leaf, made of silicon and capable of using sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen that can be fed into fuel cells to make power.
“You drop it in a glass of water and you walk outside and hold it in the sun, and you’ll start to see bubbles of hydrogen and oxygen,’’ explained Daniel Nocera, an MIT professor who led the team that invented the device.
The next step, he said, is to make the technology work on a large scale to produce enough hydrogen and oxygen for a fuel cell to power a car or home.
The leaf, which Nocera has worked on for about three years, has the potential to solve one of the most pressing challenges facing solar power: how to store energy produced by the sun so it can be used on cloudy day.
Instead of a battery, that energy could be stored as oxygen and hydrogen gases, then recombined in fuel cells, which generate electricity from the chemical reaction.
Sun Catalytix Corp., the Cambridge company founded by Nocera to commercialize the technologies coming out of his lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - wants to experiment with the leaf to make it more efficient, perhaps mimicking algae, which could be spread across large surfaces of water to produce hydrogen and oxygen in volume.
Executives and researchers at Sun Catalytix say Nocera’s leaf holds particular promise because it is made from low-cost, abundant materials, including silicon, cobalt, and nickel.
That could mean that, once commercialized, the leaf’s technology will be an inexpensive way to generate energy from nonpolluting sources.
“That’s something we’re still working on,’’ said chief executive Michael P. Decelle. “It takes a lot of engineering to turn a scientific achievement into a marketable product.’’
Sun Catalytix’s work is backed by venture capital firms, including Polaris Venture Partners of Waltham. Sun Catalytix raised $9.5 million in a funding round last year, and also has a contract for over $4 million in federal funding from the Department of Energy.
At Polaris, general partner Amir Nashat, who used to head Sun Catalytix, said his firm is watching how the artificial leaf develops.
“It [potentially] provides an avenue for giving everybody energy anywhere,’’ Nashat said. “If we can make it better, make it cheaper, make it more efficient [then] it could really change the way we think about where our fuel comes from.’’
Nocera, along with researchers at the MIT and Sun Catalytix, started working on the leaf in 2008 after inventing a cobalt and phosphate compound that acts as a catalyst to speed the transformation of water into its separate elements.
That compound now coats one side of the artificial leaf, drawing oxygen from the water; a nickel-based alloy coats the other side, releasing hydrogen.
“This is a problem that the scientific community has been working on for a very long time,’’ said Steven Y. Reece, a Sun Catalytix research scientist who helped develop the leaf.
Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy and a professor of chemistry at MIT, said he likes the invention for its simplicity. Unlike other attempts to create a device to split water into its components, the artificial leaf doesn’t use corrosive solutions, he said, nor does it need a connection to an outside electrical current.
“I don’t have to have anything wired up, I don’t have to plug it into anything,’’ he said. “That‘s what leaves do: They take sunlight and they make a wireless current - like what is happening here.’’
Erin Ailworth can be reached at eailworth@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @ailworth.
A leaf that could power the future
Silicon strip developed at MIT might be key to inexpensive fuel cells
The thumb-size black strip looks like a thin magnet. But in reality, it is an artificial leaf, made of silicon and capable of using sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen that can be fed into fuel cells to make power.
“You drop it in a glass of water and you walk outside and hold it in the sun, and you’ll start to see bubbles of hydrogen and oxygen,’’ explained Daniel Nocera, an MIT professor who led the team that invented the device.
The leaf, which Nocera has worked on for about three years, has the potential to solve one of the most pressing challenges facing solar power: how to store energy produced by the sun so it can be used on cloudy day.
Instead of a battery, that energy could be stored as oxygen and hydrogen gases, then recombined in fuel cells, which generate electricity from the chemical reaction.
Sun Catalytix Corp., the Cambridge company founded by Nocera to commercialize the technologies coming out of his lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - wants to experiment with the leaf to make it more efficient, perhaps mimicking algae, which could be spread across large surfaces of water to produce hydrogen and oxygen in volume.
Executives and researchers at Sun Catalytix say Nocera’s leaf holds particular promise because it is made from low-cost, abundant materials, including silicon, cobalt, and nickel.
That could mean that, once commercialized, the leaf’s technology will be an inexpensive way to generate energy from nonpolluting sources.
“That’s something we’re still working on,’’ said chief executive Michael P. Decelle. “It takes a lot of engineering to turn a scientific achievement into a marketable product.’’
Sun Catalytix’s work is backed by venture capital firms, including Polaris Venture Partners of Waltham. Sun Catalytix raised $9.5 million in a funding round last year, and also has a contract for over $4 million in federal funding from the Department of Energy.
At Polaris, general partner Amir Nashat, who used to head Sun Catalytix, said his firm is watching how the artificial leaf develops.
“It [potentially] provides an avenue for giving everybody energy anywhere,’’ Nashat said. “If we can make it better, make it cheaper, make it more efficient [then] it could really change the way we think about where our fuel comes from.’’
Nocera, along with researchers at the MIT and Sun Catalytix, started working on the leaf in 2008 after inventing a cobalt and phosphate compound that acts as a catalyst to speed the transformation of water into its separate elements.
That compound now coats one side of the artificial leaf, drawing oxygen from the water; a nickel-based alloy coats the other side, releasing hydrogen.
“This is a problem that the scientific community has been working on for a very long time,’’ said Steven Y. Reece, a Sun Catalytix research scientist who helped develop the leaf.
Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy and a professor of chemistry at MIT, said he likes the invention for its simplicity. Unlike other attempts to create a device to split water into its components, the artificial leaf doesn’t use corrosive solutions, he said, nor does it need a connection to an outside electrical current.
“I don’t have to have anything wired up, I don’t have to plug it into anything,’’ he said. “That‘s what leaves do: They take sunlight and they make a wireless current - like what is happening here.’’
Erin Ailworth can be reached at eailworth@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @ailworth.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Google wants to put solar panels on YOUR ROOF!
From the Boston Globe Today:
The search giant announced yesterday that it will provide $75 million to build 3,000 residential solar electricity systems across the country. Google will own the panels, and get paid over time by customers who purchase the electricity the panels produce.
The search giant announced yesterday that it will provide $75 million to build 3,000 residential solar electricity systems across the country. Google will own the panels, and get paid over time by customers who purchase the electricity the panels produce.
Google is creating a fund with a San Francisco company called Clean Power Finance that local solar installers will be able to tap so they can offer financing plans to prospective buyers. The plans allow homeowners to install a $30,000 solar electricity system on their house for little or no money up front. Instead, customers pay a monthly fee that is the same or less than what they would otherwise be paying their local utility for power.
Google will earn what it calls an attractive return on its investment in two ways. It gets the monthly fee from homeowners, and, as the owner of the systems, Google will get the benefit of federal and state renewable energy subsidies.
The systems will not carry the Google brand, however. Instead, local installers will offer the deal under their own brands.
Solar power has gotten dramatically cheaper, but the up-front cost for a homeowner remains formidable. A typical home system costs $25,000 to $30,000. Federal and state governments offer subsidies to help defray the cost somewhat, but it is still far too much money for many homeowners to shell out.
Solar financing plans are offered by a handful of large solar companies such as SunRun, SolarCity, and Sungevity, and they are growing in popularity. Google created a $280 million fund with SolarCity in June to help SolarCity expand offerings.
But Google’s new fund will flow to small, local installers who would otherwise not be able to offer these financing plans. Google says there are 1,400 solar installers in all 50 states.
“Cash sales [of solar panels] have been good, but once you add financing, sales can go through the roof,’’ said Rick Needham, of Green Business Operations at Google, in an interview. “It’s an opportunity to significantly expand the market.’’
This is the second such fund established by Clean Power Finance. The company declines to name the investor in the original fund, but says the amount of the fund is larger than Google’s. Google hopes its investment will show a way for other investors to team up with installers to finance many more home solar systems and make a profit in the process.
This is the latest in a string of investments Google has made in renewable energy, now totaling $850 million. Google has invested in wind farms in North Dakota, California, and Oregon, solar projects in California and Germany, and a project off the East Coast meant to help make offshore wind farms possible.
Monday, September 5, 2011
IKEA adds Solar Panels to CA stores.
IKEA Solar Parade Marches Into San Diego
I was reading, in my new Ipad app Editions, a story by Earthtechling.com They reported: If it seems just a bit brighter as you peruse the aisles of San Diego’s IKEA store, it’s not some new Swedish super light bulb. It’s clean, green solar power.The retailer recently flicked the switch on its new roof-mounted solar power system. The 30,000-square-foot photoelectric array consists of 1,120 panels and a 252-kilowatt system which will provide approximately 366,400 kilowatt-hours of clean electricity annually – enough to power about 32 homes. The new IKEA array will lower the store’s carbon footprint by 290 tons of carbon dioxide, the company said.
Good to see retail going green and giving back.
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