One of the biggest challenges with solar and wind is that they are intermittent sources of energy, requiring storage to make viable for a grid. Likewise, nuclear has trouble cycling down at night and responding to varying loads during the day. Imagine a building being able to store energy for use later. Franz-Josef Ulm at MIT has converted concrete into a supercapacitor – a type of battery. Carbon black is added to concrete and cast into thin sheets. The sheets are soaked in a potassium chloride solution to create wire like structures that can store energy. The sheets are layered with paper to create plates – like in an actual battery.
A concrete cube 3.5 meters on each side (3.5 m =11.5 feet) could store about 10 kWh, or about one-third of the power needed by a US home on a daily basis. This could store solar energy from panels on the roof, or be charged by cheap nuclear power at night to reduce the demand on the electrical grid later. There are issues with keeping the block wet, but this is a good first step to cheap energy storage and perhaps a grid that relies more on renewable energy. – Steve Terry, DTC HVAC & Refrigeration Instructor
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