The Future of Power

A guest post by James Q.

First off, I want to thank Jarred for inviting me to guest post on Tropophilia.  I’ve been following the blog since its inception and have been nothing but impressed.  I hope I can meet the standards of this site.

Jarred linked me to an article about using solar power in conjunction with a small water powered fuel cell.  While photovoltaics power a home during the day, surplus power splits water into hydrogen and oxygen, and the two are combined again at night in a fuel cell to produce power.  Sounds good enough, but I cannot in good faith agree with the concept.

I’m not an engineer or scientist by any stretch of the imagination, but I do believe that simplicity works.  My first thought when reading the article was, “why not just store the excess power in a battery instead of using it to power another process?”  To me, adding extra steps, equipment, and parameters only complicates things. Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t efficiency fall every time an energy source passes through a different medium?
In terms of energy storage, instead of sun to photovoltaic to battery to power, this system would go more along the lines of sun to photovoltaic to separation of water to hydrogen and oxygen to fuel cell to combination of hydrogen and oxygen to power.

What this comes down to is storage of energy.  You can either store it as hydrogen or store it as electricity.  If that energy is delivered in the form of electricity from the photovoltaics, why not keep it that way?

The article also mentions being able to use some of the newly produced hydrogen to power a car.  That’s a whole other article on why I don’t think that’s a good idea.

If you read to the end of the article, the author admits that he believes batteries and capacitors are still a better idea than hydrogen energy sources.

While I encourage research and thought about the production, storage, and usage of energy, I can’t help but think all roads lead to electricity.  And if all roads lead to electricity, let’s not take any unnecessary detours.

Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of Flickr user 4ever30something.