Monday, August 4, 2008

Is MIT's Latest Solar 'Breakthrough' All Hype or a New Hope?

From Popular Mechanics:

The research university's third solar-powered power move in six weeks sounds like a revolution in the making: Use electrolysis to capture the sun's potential and store it for later—on the cheap. But as PM's award-winning energy reporter explains, it's not so much a solar-specific breakthrough as it is a boon for the much-maligned hydrogen industry.

MIT announced on Thursday afternoon a new method of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, predicting that it will unleash a "solar revolution." And they're partly right. The research, which appears in the new issue Science, has little to do with solar power as we usually think of it. But it has wide-reaching implications as a storage medium, making renewable but intermittent energy sources like the sun and wind more practical for everyday use.

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