With all the power outages Texas has been experiencing these recent weeks, its about time to look at alternative solutions like this startup that developed the first renewable, hydrogen-powered energy storage system in the world!
When it is fully charged, it has the capacity to provide a whole house with electricity for up to three days.
When you’ve brought up the idea to a friend about installing solar panels to save on electricity, you may have gotten replies such as, “what happens when it’s cloudy?”
Yes, this has been a legitimate negative aspect when it comes to rooftop PV panels. But just as all inventions take time to improve throughout the years, options for storing solar power during the night or cloudy days are becoming more and more available.
In New South Wales, Australia, LAVO offers a green battery storage system in order to retain solar energy during cloudier days by inventing a very clever system where electrolysis generates energy from stored hydrogen.
This special material where the hydrogen is stored is a thousand times safer than other conventional technologies. Not only does the product life last about 30 years, but it can also be recycled.
This new innovation is connected to the water main and a commercially available rooftop PV solar array. The solar energy then powers an electrolyzer which converts water into hydrogen and oxygen, while the former goes into the patented hydride storage material, and the latter simply returns back to the air.
A fuel cell then converts the hydrogen that gets stored back into electricity once the battery is switched on. The fact that hydrogen is stored in a solid-state instead of liquid or gas, makes it that much safer because there is no fire hazard coming from the material.
The LAVO hydrogen battery is able to store three times more power than other competitive lithium battery systems. It is about as big as a home refrigerator with the price of $29,500.
The battery can also be used to power other hydrogen-electric machines that are sold by LAVO such as a barbeque grill and a bicycle.
A spokesperson from the company said that an eco-lodge has already pre-ordered one, while another Australian investment company and clothing business called Gowings Bros announced that it has signed on as an investor in LAVO and committed to purchasing 200 batteries for all its properties in Australia. Let’s hope this new technology becomes available real soon in Texas and beyond.
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