April 15th, 2008
New Ways to Store Solar Energy for Nighttime and Cloudy Days
Hopefully they can make this work in the near future.
New Ways to Store Solar Energy for Nighttime and Cloudy Days
The idea is to capture the sun’s heat. Heat, unlike electric current, is something that industry knows how to store cost-effectively. For example, a coffee thermos and a laptop computer’s battery store about the same amount of energy, said John S. O’Donnell, executive vice president of a company in the solar thermal business, Ausra. The thermos costs about $5 and the laptop battery $150, he said, and “that’s why solar thermal is going to be the dominant form.”
