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Lightcell: An engine that uses light to make electricity

(www.lightcellenergy.com)
229 points curl-up | 1 comments | 14 Jan 25 13:36 UTC | HN request time: 0.203s | source
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jandrese ◴[17 Jan 25 19:27 UTC] No.42742255[source]▶
Bottom line: 40% efficiency, which is better than I expected but the competition is batteries at 80+% efficiency. It's a hard sell, especially as continual improvements in battery storage will continue to eat away at their niche.

5,000 W/kg sounds great on paper compared to 150 W/kg for batteries and is even in the same ballpark as gasoline at 12,000 W/kg, but I think that's just the figure for the fuel. I don't think it includes storage, the solar panels, the burner, etc... The cost is an open ended question as well. Maybe this will pan out for aircraft?

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1. gene-h ◴[18 Jan 25 23:00 UTC] No.42752118[source]▶
It's useful for grid storage. Very large amounts of hydrogen are already stored in salt domes[0]. Current salt domes have volumes in the range of hundreds of cubic kilometers and can support pressures around 50-150 bar, translating into storage of thousands of tons of hydrogen. Along the texas gulf coast, there are hydrogen storage facilities that each store enough hydrogen to translate to around 100 GWh chemical energy. Being able to convert that chemical energy with 40% end to end efficiency means one site could store 40 GWh. In comparison, in 2023 the entire world had only around 56-200 GWh of battery storage capacity[1] installed.

[0]https://energnet.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/3-Hevin-Under... [1]https://www.rethinkx.com/blog/where-is-all-the-battery-stora...