Toward Home-brewed Electricity with “Personalized Solar Energy”

That's the topic of a report by an international expert on solar energy scheduled for the November 2 issue of ACS’ Inorganic Chemistry, a bi-weekly journal. It describes a long-awaited, inexpensive method for solar energy storage that could help power homes and plug-in cars in the future while helping keep the environment clean.

Daniel Nocera explains that the global energy need will double by mid-century and triple by 2100 due to rising standards of living world population growth. Personalized solar energy – the capture and storage of solar energy at the individual or home level – could meet that demand in a sustainable way, especially in poorer areas of the world.

The report describes development of a practical, inexpensive storage system for achieving personalized solar energy. At its heart is an innovative catalyst that splits water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen that become fuel for producing electricity in a fuel cell. The new oxygen-evolving catalyst works like photosynthesis, the method plants use to make energy, producing clean energy from sunlight and water. “Because energy use scales with wealth, point-of-use solar energy will put individuals, in the smallest village in the nonlegacy world and in the largest city of the legacy world, on a more level playing field,” the report states.

ARTICLE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
“Chemistry of Personalized Solar Energy”
DOWNLOAD FULL TEXT ARTICLE :
http://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/presspac/full/10.1021/ic901328v
Science Inquiries: Michael Woods, editor
m_woods@acs.org
202-872-6293
General Inquiries: Michael Bernstein
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