Using photovoltaic cells to generate electricity is one of the ways of harnessing solar energy. But one of the main reason why this technology is not commonly used in the market is because it can only be used when there is sunlight and if there isn’t any, it fails.

Now, A U.S scientist - Daniel Nocera, an MIT professor of energy, has developed a new way of powering fuel cells that could make it practical for home owners to store solar energy and produce electricity to run lights and appliances at night. Thus with storage, you can store sunlight as a chemical energy in the day and then use it at night.

This can be done through the use of a new catalyst which produces the oxygen and hydrogen that fuel cells use to generate electricity, while using far less energy than current methods. With this catalyst, users could rely on electricity produced by photovoltaic solar cells to power the process that produces the fuel.

The catalyst is made from cobalt, phosphate and an electrode that produces oxygen from water by using 90 percent less electricity than current methods, which use the costly metal platinum. However, Nocera’s system still relies on platinum to produce hydrogen.

Although a full scale version of this system is not available, it maybe ready in less then a decade.

Via- Reuters Image- Simply Renewable