ANU cracks electrical storage?

Not only will this create great potential for renewable energies, but if they can get the storage small enough it will create significant changes to transport – for example, if you can store 200hrs of power in a car, then you no longer will need a petrol engine, just a battery and 4 small electric motors. Same for trucks, ships etc.

And its potentially useful for third world countries where infrastructure is an issue. Lack of electricity is a major health and productivity issue. If you can bring one power line to a village and allow people to charge portable batteries that will last them 2 or 3 weeks, it gets rid of the need for fires (hence deforestation) etc etc

The search for a large capacity electrical storage device is very important – and will change the world if we can do it.

For anyone interested here is a link to a few more details:

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/07/01/3792075.htm

The material is made out of titanium dioxide, which is found naturally around the world and for which Australia is already a big exporter. Apparently titanium dioxide is commonly used as a whitening pigment in plastics, paints, creams and even low-fat milk and toothpaste.

Also the full article published in the journal Nature Materials can be read at:

http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1038/nmat3691

gazket said :

no doubt some other country will produce this new product and sell it back to us at a good profit.

Well, with the coalition promising to abolish the Clean Energy Finance Corp (and probably ARENA too) then yes that’s what I’d be expecting to happen.

Definitely sounds like it has huge potential!

On the bright side huge energy storage probably means high energy weapons, a new market to tap when The Powers That Be, tell half of Canberra to move to NT.

no doubt some other country will produce this new product and sell it back to us at a good profit.

howeph said :

One wonders if he really does believe in the science, as he says he does, or is he lying and still think it’s all crap. Or worse he does think climate change is real but doesn’t care about future generations only the business interests of the already rich and powerful.

That second thing you said. Or maybe the third.

Gods – it’s soooooo depressing.

astrojax said :

k’n brilliant – now, i wonder if australia has learned from the ralhp sarich saga and can capitalise on this innovation if, as jb says, it does what is says on the tin..?

Well it could work like this:

1) The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) – an independent Commonwealth authority, set up by the Labor government in 2011 which has $3 billion in funding and is orientated toward technologies that are still in the R&D and demonstration phase – provides funds to prove the technology.

2) Then Clean Energy Finance Corporation with $10 billion dollars of funding (directly from the nasty Carbon Tax) and is tasked with providing the financial support to take risky, but promising, green technologies from the demonstrator stage to commercial scale implementation.

But…

An Abbot government has promised to immediately abolish the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and has indicated that it has a policy to announce on ARENA, but it won’t say what it is.
http://www.liberal.org.au/our-plan-abolish-carbon-tax

Abbot has an unfunded Direct Action Plan to pay polluters with tax payers money and to create a green army to plant trees and… nobody knows. It’s a joke.

In addition Abbot is promising to fast track environmental approvals for coal powered power plants. http://tonyabbott.com.au/LatestNews/PressReleases/tabid/86/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/9245/The-Coalitions-policy-for-a-one-stop-shop-for-environmental-approvals.aspx

One wonders if he really does believe in the science, as he says he does, or is he lying and still think it’s all crap. Or worse he does think climate change is real but doesn’t care about future generations only the business interests of the already rich and powerful.

Deref said :

It’s always wise to be a little cautious about predicting the pace at which these innovations can change things, but allow me to express a suitably restrained “whoopee!” and a hearty congratulations to these brilliant people.

Yep. Having seen the excitement around capacitor innovations like EEstor’s claimed EESU technology slowly crumble, I’ll believe it when I see it implemented. But here’s hoping…

It’s always wise to be a little cautious about predicting the pace at which these innovations can change things, but allow me to express a suitably restrained “whoopee!” and a hearty congratulations to these brilliant people.

Ben_Dover said :

[confused] would allow for storage of renewable energy, putting baseload power out of business[/confused]

I see no reason it couldn’t also be used for storage of non-renewable energy…

Also, what that should say is “put old school carbon intensive baseload generation out of business, by storing lots of energy during periods of renewable generation (sunny days/windy nights) and releasing it continuously *AS* baseload power.