Slashdot Mirror
Solar-Hydrogen Eco-House
Cymage writes "An architect in Malaysia has built a Solar-Hydrogen Eco-house, the first in the world that is fully self-sustainable and runs entirely on hydrogen. The house has an electrolyser to generate hydrogen that runs off of solar panels, then that hydrogen is used for heat and electricity for the house. Pretty cool stuff. I wonder how long before a kit is ready to convert regular houses?"
250000RM is $65,800 US. I would guess it would cost more in the US though.
You should check out my methane-powered nightmare house on nacho night.
"Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the atmosphere. I believe it is the fuel of the future," said Kamaruzzaman.
Yes, hydrogen is explosive. Yes, it can be used safely. No, there is no chance in a properly engineer application for hydrogen to make this house go BOOOM! like the Hindenburg. Give up, Dick Cheney is not paying attention.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
http://www.narvakitchens.com/Solar.pdf
"Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the atmosphere. I believe it is the fuel of the future," said Kamaruzzaman. "People tend to equate hydrogen with hydrogen bombs, but in fact, it is really quite safe because it is so light that it disappears into the atmosphere as soon as it is released."
Apparently physics is *not* this guys strong suit.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
I recall seeing "the house of the future" once, built by Nasa engineers. Solar-powered, thermally efficient, geo-thermal power, yada yada yada yada.
All protected by a security system, whose password was "1978".
The year the house was designed, built and shown to the public. The same year I saw it.
I'm still waiting for all this great technology to hit mass market.
And you know why it won't? It's too damned expensive.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Isn't it fairly ineffecient to use the electricity to make hydrogen? It seems to me you would get more usable energy by just useing the power the solar cells create directly.
==>Lazn
I want a house that can run on Methane. That way my mexican cooking won't go to waste.
Hmmm, but what kind of collection method can be used? uh, nevermind. I withdraw my request.
This signature is a waste of 42 characters
"I wonder how long before a kit is ready to convert regular houses?"
Apparently, you didn't even skim the article - the physical design of the house is just as important as the power technology. A Prius wouldn't get 60 mpg if it wasn't tiny and aerodynamic.
G
There is no way to have 100% effecency in transforming energy from one from to the other - so we have a loss from transforming sunlight to electricity, and then a loss transforming the electricity to a storable chemical (hydrogen), and then yet another loss as it's transfered back to electricity to run the house. Sounds like they are wasting power by having unnecesary steps here...
Now, I'm not a rocketscientist, and I dont research fuelscells and batteries - but would it not been just as efficient, or even more efficient, to just store the electricity in a batterybank? Unlike in a car, weight and to a certain degree volume isn't a limiting factor in a house.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
It seems like a great idea for Malaysia, but lets consider North Dakota:
1. Heat: Its a high plains desert in a northern climate. If I need electric heat I'm going to burn a lot more hydrogen. Winters get down around -30F
2. Entertainment: Nights last longer up here, so I can't live without my 500w sound system, my Sun Lamps and outdoor lighting.
3. Oh yeah, water for Hydrogen production is in short supply.
It may be a few more years before technology catches up with us, right about the time the local theatre starts showing Phantom Menace.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
What sort of fire hazard is this place? Assuming the hydrogen is stored in a combustible state (which is very likely), and that a very large volume will be stored.
Plenty of people store large tanks of propane outside their house which they use for the stove, water and even lighting. It is very common in mountain and beach houses.
Btw, welcome back.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
Luckily /.ers are libertarian. Home power is a great way to put your libertarian ideals into action! Check out "home power" magazine too--it's all about getting off the grid. Vote Nolan!
-I am an elective eunuch.
I don't think we give near enough thought to the way that we are ravaging our planet. Don't get me wrong, I love tech. But I am dying for a freeway safe electric car. Even then though, we use dirty tech to make electricity. It can't last, but we are addicted to it.
I hope someone does come up with a way to make clean technologies widely available.
Yeah, I guess I'm funny like that.
How is this any different than the 2 gigantic natural gas tanks I have sitting out in my back yard?
Lots of people use natural gas for heating, and you don't hear about their houses blowing up.
I imagine in a commercial unit, they would add trace amounts of mercaptans so you can smell a leak, if there is one.
I wonder how long before a kit is ready to convert regular houses?
They already exist. They're called matches. They will convert any regular house into carbon dioxide and water vapor. You will have to figure how to control the rate of reaction and store all the excess heat that is released in one go. The rate at which you must supply new houses may also be cost prohibitive.
Imagine being off the grid in an urban setting!...So if the main tank blows, you still have electricity so you can charge your mobile to dial 911.
Heh, if someone else in my urban setting isn't calling 911 when my H2 tank blows, I'm guessing my neighbors don't want my hippie ass around anymore.
I also reply below your current threshold.
It is an interesting project, but, I fear, taps into the hydrogen-mania that seems to have gripped the world lately.
I don't believe there is a major reason to be concerned about the safety of the hydrogen. I don't believe it is actually much, if any, more dangerous than other things that we live with every day (methane, gasoline, diesel, batteries) for reasons that vary by what particular thing we are comparing it to.
I would wonder, though, if by powering the house from a fuel cell run from a hydrolizer, are they doing seriously better than if they had used a battery bank? For the hot water and the air conditioner, they might be doing better by running them directly from hydrogen, but what about the household electrical supply?
Also, might better efficiency be realized by uniting the DC bus of the solar panels with that of the fuel cell, at least unidirectionally? What I'm saying is, doesn't it make sense to send electricity straight to the house from the solar panels when it is available, rather than sucking H2 into the fuel cell to get it? Yes, H2 production would drop according to household load, but H2 consumption would drop further.
Just a few random thoughts.
www.wavefront-av.com
Hydrogen (gaseous that is, not liquid) is actually a reasonably safe fuel. As far as explosiveness, it's roughly equivalent to, say, natural gas, and much less explosive than acedalene.
Keeping hydrogen in a tank (outside of a house or in a vehicle) is fairly safe. If the tank is ruptured, the hydrogen is so light that it leaks into the air and floats up and away very quickly. (Unlike, say, gasoline, which tends to sit on the ground, mix with air, and cause explosions). (The article said that the H2 tank was _outside_; having it inside _would_ be dangerous.)
By the way, the reason that the Hindenburg was such a horrific accident wasn't primarily because it was filled with Hydrogen. It was because the body of the blimp was painted with a substance that was essentially rocket fuel.
Craig Steffen
http://www.craigsteffen.net
I'm sure many /.'ers are aware of this, but the fact that the Hindenburg was filled with Hydrogen had very little to do with the disaster. The problem was the coating of the balloon, which was highly flammable and susceptible to static buildup (someone provide more details if possible). Add in the metal frame, and as soon as a small spark erupted it arced across the whole balloon and the rest is history.
Hydrogen is pretty safe, if you know what you're doing. But a good point the Hindenburg can teach us is that all elements of a system must be inspected with respect to each other, in order for something to be truly safe.
Then you should be able to do it for a yacht or larger boat. It would be really cool to see somebody sail around the world on eco-power.
--
now, let me anticipate a few responses....
1) Ummmm...what about sails?
A: Sails don't generate heat and electricity.
2) Cloudy days?
Can also use wind generators in addition to solar power.
3) Cloudy windless days?
ya got me there....
A goal is a dream with a deadline
I don't understand why people are fussing about the safety of using hydrogen. Hydrocarbon gas (ands its byproducts) can be just as dangerous. I seriously doubt that something going comercial like this would have a high risk of danger.
HERE is a link concerning safety issues and applications for hydrogen when used as a fuel source. The site is by the International Association for Hydrogen Energy. This site may need to be taken with a grain of salt though.
Being abundant has nothing to do with being the fuel of the future.
Despite what the fuel cell lobby would like you to believe, Hydrogen is not an energy source, as there is no ample supply of usable hydrogen fuel. As in this case, the Hydrogen has to be produced, which consumes energy. This is done using the most abundant energy source in the universe [and the atmosphere ;)], the SUN!
Solar is the key.
First off, storing volitile gases in tanks outside of the house is a common, and noramlly safe practice. Granted, when the fire swept through Oak Hills here in Southern California last year, there were some big booms, but that is a very rare occurance. Second, hydrogen is safer to store than propane is. Hydrogen, when release from a tank, tends to spread out, or mostly up, too fast to create a good explosion, unless you are storing the hydrogen mixed with oxygen, and I doubt that they would be that dumb. Overall, I'd much rather have a huge tank of hydrogen outside my house, than a huge tank of propane. And (insert diety here) forbid that I would end up driving around sitting on a very volitile liquid for hours on end, oh wait, I do, and its considered safe.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
The designers should be commended for the power self-sufficiency of the house.
But I notice from the photo that the house has been constructed primarily from steel and concrete, which are hardly sustainable materials. The amount of energy that goes into extracting and processing steel or concrete is thousands of times more than that for wood or masonry. The net energy balance from both the construction and long-term operation of this house is likely to be very negative.
For reference: stats, stats and more stats
See http://engineer.ea.ucla.edu/releases/blimp.htm - hydrogen did NOT cause the Hindenburg to burn, it was the fact that it was painted with rocket fuel, basically.
One of the more advanced energy efficient, solar power homes in the country is under construction in Ohio: http://www.solterra.info
It uses 5 alternative energy sources.
O=='=++
Photovoltaic cells actually take more energy to produce than they will output over their lifetime. This makes them little more than a large, wasteful battery. The most efficient form of solar energy that we've been able to harness is hydroelectric, but that's not exactly easy to use on a residential scale.
The most promising technology I've seen for residential solar power goes back to our tried-and-true method of electrical generation: Heat water into steam, spin a turbine. Numerous mirrors focus a large amount of light onto a very small area, to boil water and spin a turbine. It's not nearly as "fire and forget" as PV cells, but it's much more environmentally friendly.
I'm not sure this is true. While Hydrogen was not the cause of the disaster -- as in the substance that first caught fire -- it is not clear to me that the fact the Hindenburg was filled with Hydrogen didn't make the disaster much worse. Would the disaster have been as bad had the Hindenburg been filled with Helium? Would it have been consumed by fire so quickly? Is there any chance that more people could have survived?
I honestly don't know, but I think the above are legitimate questions.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
Gaseous hydrogen quickly oxides into water vapor, which in turn traps heat energy in the atmosphere. I havent been able to find a comparison of the potency of hydrogen and carbon dioxide. Being the smallest molecule, dihydrogen leaks the most easily from containment systems. Some people have speculated that large amounts of hydrogen could leak and contribute the greenhouse problem.
Actually, there is quite a science to tropical architechture, or there was before the invention of air-conditioning. I have an uncle who was trained as an architect in Vietnam and he learned all this stuff about how to design buildings to be self-cooling. Now, living in the U.S. where every building of any size has its own air-conditioner, his skills are completely outdated.
I'm not really trying to defend the term "bio-climatic" but there is something to be said for climate-appropriate architecture. It's not even a matter of being an "eco-freak": if you need to get by in a climate that has 100% humiditity and 110 degree temeratures in the shade, you need to put some real thought and effort into your architecture. Folks in tropical climates have understood this for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
One of the attractions of Hydrogen is its storage potential, as that allows us to make full use of 'alternative' energy sources such as solar, wind etc. Whether it's in a garage that needs less frequent tanker visits because of the solar cells on it roof, or in a car that refuels itself and runs the air conditioning while parked on a hot day, or in a house like the one mentioned, hydrogen's best feature is not its cleanliness, but its ability to smooth the link between supply and demand that allows us to use these cleaner alternatives.
On a larger scale industrial installations would allow us to do the same thing, so that we could have fewer power stations running at 100% day and night, rather than having inefficient spinning reserve. And of course we could get by with less still if we all had a power station in the basement. There are alternatives such as using superconducting magnets, or compressed air, but the ubiquity and relative safety of hydrogen makes it a real enabler of such change. Assuming the political/economic will is there of course.
In a proper storage system even fire would have zero impact.
I've seen test footage from the late 70's, when LNG (Liqefied Natural Gas)/LPG (Propane) was first being put into cars and trucks. The Department Of Transportation, of course required much testing, and damned if these tanks aren't tough. They're aluminum, wrapped with a fibreglass mesh composite.
They dropped cars with these tanks in the trunk from cranes (equivalent to 80Mph crashes), shot them with pistol rounds, shot them with M16's, burned them on top of stacks of skids, and even tried to explode them with dynamite (no effect).
The only thing that had any effect at all on the tanks were the armor piercing rifle round, and extremely hot fires. The rifle round penetrated, but it didn't cause a fire, or any explosion. The tank just sat there and vented.
The fire increased the pressure inside of the tank to it's bypass pressure, and some gas vented (but didn't ignite, despite being surrounded by a huge fire...because there was no oxygen to make it burn).
Just try any of that with a regular automotive fuel tank.
People all excited about hydrogen and LNG/LPG are idiots, plain and simple. Gasoline is a far more hazardous fuel than any of those. Ask the Army. It's no wonder all (most?) US military vehicles use diesel fuel (besides some of it's more obvious benefits).
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Actually, the hydrogen did not burn until it had escaped and mixed with air.
At this point it did little to effect the actual incident.
It would not have made any differance what was inside the gas bags.
"The house has an electrolyser to generate hydrogen that runs off of solar panels, then that hydrogen is used for heat and electricity for the house."
I hate getting hit from hydrogen running off of solar panels.
Oh wait, I get it:
"To generate hydrogen, the house has an electrolyser that runs off of solar panels. The hydrogen is used for heat and electricity in the house."
Hydrogen is just used as an energy storage device here -- the fact of the matter is you can create a self sufficient house running off of just solar-to-battery array for less money.
Saw a TVO show on it recently, an Ontario couple had their whole modern house (fridge, stove, blenders, tv's everything) running perfectly off of a large solar setup, completely off of the grid - and they did it all top to bottom for less than 50K, Canadian! That's right, almost free!
meh, I'm going to live simply with a solar/wind to battery array - we don't need no stinking hot water tanks.
On that note, can anybody point out the latest greatest, low cost, energy efficient PV collectors?
My gut feeling is that the difference would have been minimal to having Helium vs Hydrogen as far as that accident. (assuming the design changes needed for Helium would not have worsened the situation.)
That's an interesting point. Using Helium would have required a much larger surface area, which would have required much more paint. So there'd have been more of that stuff to burn.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Check out New Jersey's renewable energy program - http://www.njcleanenergy.com
State will GIVE you back 70% of what you spend on all hardware and labor.
What's even more exciting, is the venture capital fund that will give your business 5 to 500k recoverable grant to expand your renewable energy business development. This money could help you buy installation equipment, trucks, warehouse space, help hire additional staff,etc. Unfortunately, this fund is only 5 million is size. If a lot of companies apply, there won't be enough for everyone.
I think any experienced roofer would be crazy not to at least consider doing solar installations. I mean if they are already ripping an entire roof and replacing shingles, why not offer to install some solar panels or tile south side of the roof with solar shingles?
Natural gas is flammable too, that's the whole point of fuel. There isn't that much difference between using natural gas and hydrogen gas (except the hydrogen molecules are smaller and therefore need other materials to make the pipes and tanks gas tight, but this hardly new. Hydrogen has been used for decades in the industry).
Such a tank isn't very likely to blow up (unless you live in a Hollywood movie). Except when you happen to live in forest that decides to start burning big time. If the fire heats the tank, you can imagine what happens, assuming you're familiar with the ideal gas law pV=nRT, the volume V of the tank and the amount of gas n inside remains the same (And so does the constant R), The temperature T rises, So the pressure p doesn't have much choice than to rise as well.
p will rise until the tank bursts and some of the gas combusts.
If the same tank was filled with natural gas, the same thing would have happened. Even if it was filled with helium it would have burst (but it wouldn't have burned ofcourse).
oh and IANYAE (I'm not yet an engineer)
Hydrogen is probably the perfect storage device for energy derived from small scale and less than optimal renewable sources. The biggest problem with home generation of energy from wind, solare or whatever renewable energy you pick is often the problem of regulating the output to achieve a constant usable powere supply. Many of these renewable energies are difficult to use and made much more expensive by this single requirement. That is why they only build wind and solar farms in certain places whit a constant source of wind or sun. Imaging trying to powere you computer with solar power that cut off at knight and in the day and browend in and out all the time and would often spike 20% higher under high illumination thanthe average. You can use expensive line conditioning to fix the momentary ups and downs but when it goes you you will need a powere storage device like battries. Unfortunately conventional lead acid battries are only 5-15% efficient at charging up and have a limited life not to mention the extra cost. The use of hydrogen can offer an alternative to this.
about hydrogen:
1 - Easy to make trough electrolysis (electricity + water = hydrogen and if desired oxygen)
2 - Electrolysis unlike electronics is fairly insensitive to power fluctuations and does not have to work a 100% duty cycle provided the amount of stored gas is sufficient, so carfull powere regulation is unneeded.
3 - Excess hydrogen could be sold (if there was a demand).
4 - Electrolysis is at least as efficient as battery powere storage
5 - You can easily make a car run on it (imaging DIY home filling)
6 - There are fuel cells that make a 85% efficient conversion to electricity from this fuel (very expensive but NASA has them and mass production could bring that cost down). The use of hydrogen fuel cells and hydrogen / oxygen fuel could be one of the world most efficient energy solution but may be not the cheapest.
7 - There are numerous safety innovations that can help reduce fire risk (hydrogen can easily be as safe if not safer than natural gas / propane).
8 - You can easily make a cars that will run on it (imaging DIY home filling) not to mention that care need not be a new one. You can have a conventional 350 big block with all the power you would expect run on hydrogen. The conversion is expensive now, but masproduction would lower that to the cost of a engine rebuild that you may need already. You will not need to fear a explosion in a wreck as there are fuel cells that even if punctured and on fire can not explode as they only release the gas fast enough to burn.
9 - It is a 0 emission fuel that may be used in any place that natural gas could be used.
10 - Hydrogen fuel use can really lower smog. I have seen allot of emphasis on electric cars, however these are not really 0 emission. Fossil fuel was burned someplace to make the electricity (40% efficient process) that charged your batteries (15% efficient). this This means that using an electric car is about 6% efficient. I would bet that '86 Suburban has better energy milage than an electric car. You folks in cites and Ca need to think about that.
*imagine enviromental value "ahem" of a 0 emissions vehicle that would do 0-60 in 8 sec flat.
Still, using hydrogen tanks as a storage medium for unused electricity is a nice touch.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
Some people did survive. Yet it was effectively the death blow for commercial airships. So, one wonders how survivable are landing accidents of heavier-than-air vehicles? That is: was even the hydrogen accident really that much worse than the first that engulfs a plane full of fuel when it goes down? I don't know that a Hindenberg into the WTC would have burned as hot for as long as the planes did.
-dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
Spam energy would be hard to control. As soon as you get a little of it, it keeps increasing until the system vaporizes in flash of penis enlargement pills and cheap medication.
Political promises contain zero energy. This easely to prove. The day after the election they disappear without a trace. So if they would have contained any energy, this would violate the laws of thermodynamics.
Puh, another self-sustaining house. No, not in the Sahara, neither in Texas or South California:
Freiburg, Germany, 1992, running with solar power and hydrogen(PDF), (and a picture of it)
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
The fire went on for something like 20 minutes and burned very hot. A bag full of hydrogen simply CANNOT sit on the ground and burn for 20 minutes unless the fuel is something other than hydrogen.
Be happy. Nothing else matters.
Of course, they would have still been in .de at the take-off point sitting on the ground... But they'd be safe!
....that the natural air-conditioning method described in the article was discovered in the 1930's by R. Buckminster Fuller, during the development of his Dymaxion House.
I belong to the ______ generation.
In fact only a year or so previous to the Hindenberg disaster, a similar event took place in California though fewer lives were lost. That blimp was full of helium and it still went up in a great ball of flames - because like the Hindenberg it was coated with cellulose acetate (I think to keep water off it). Not sure if it had the aluminium paint as well though.
So yeah, I think the gas used for bouyancy makes little difference to the hazard.
Now if we could produce some kinda field that stabilises positive muons by an order of, say, many trillions, we could have muonium lofted blimps that make do with 10% the volume. But. Alas...
You might have misread what the original poster was probably saying.
He said:
The only mention of an 04 Accord is when discussing the size; "bigger", "faster", and "more efficient" probably refer to an '04 Prius compared with the previous version of the Prius - according to this review, relative to the original Prius the '04 is 6.9 inches longer in wheelbase, 6.3 inches longer overall, and taller and wider (and heavier) as well, has a bit more horsepower (and I've seen claims that it's faster 0-60mph), and has higher EPA fuel economy.
The V6 EX does accelerate much faster - according to an edmunds.com comparison site, it's 7.5s 0-60mph vs. 10.37 for the Prius. The site doesn't give the acceleration for the 4-cylinder EX. The interior sizes are a mixed bag - the Prius wins on front and rear headroom, rear leg room, and luggage capacity, and the Accord wins on front and rear shoulder and hip room and front leg room. (The Prius, not surprisingly, wins on fuel economy.)
"the house has been constructed primarily from steel and concrete, which are hardly sustainable materials" That's an intresting way of looking at it, considering that those building materials last practically forever, where as wood most certinally does not. Would you propose that we build all of our houses out of paper and replace tehm every couple of years?
Why do you think that it requires more energy to make concrete than to make masonry? They're essentially the same thing (except that a few chemicals go into concrete), and masonry has to be fired in a furnace, so that probably makes up any energy differece there. As far as steel goes, yes it does take a lot of energy to produce it, but it lasts a LONG time, a lot longer than wood and masonry.
I hardly think it's fair to say that a house made of steel and concrete can't be eco-firendly. Personally, I'd rather see people start designing and using perminant structures and stop using wood alltogether.
P.S. I have some major problems with that first article you linked. It pretends to be all green and shit, but then it basically says that we sould use our forrests as though they were a gigantic tree farm. Am I the only environmentalists who thinks our natural forrests sould remain natural? Second of all right after it says steel and aluminum cost a lot to recycle, it says we'll run out of aluminum in 200 years, hello? aluminum and steel completly and endlessly recyclable, we'll never run out of them. Finally, I really object to them saying that wood siding is better than aluminum recycling. Basically aluminum siding lasts forever, wood siding starts looking really shitty and needs to be replavced every decade or so. And when you do, you can't recycle it because of all the paint and oil put into it over the years. Which is really better for thin environment? This site is jsut a bunch of loggers trying to tell you that they're going to turn the natural forrests into a farm, and it'll be good for the environment. A good clue that this is propaganda is that they list the R-values of metals to tell you that they're not energy efficient (metals are structural, you'd never use them for insulation).
There are houses like this in Austria, the Netherlands, Baveria and Swizerland (NOTE: Last two links are to non-English PDF files but contain pictures).
These houses are referred to as "Nullenergiehaus" in German. Searching for this term on Google will demonstrate that at this point already a whole industry has evolved around constructing these buildings. How else could Europe ever hope to fulfill the CO2 demands imposed by the Kyoto treaty?
It is nice to see that slashdot spends some attention on this but Michael is way of the mark when copying the claim of the article that this is the first fully self-sustainable Eco-home.
umn I have seen some home wind turbines for less than 10k. They are not 1MW, but are enough to power a house if the engery is stored. The wind in amny places blows 24 hours a day. Small wind turbines produce more per dollar of capital in many areas AND are cheaper to maintain than solar systems. Installing wind power to a rural house( new construction OR not yet on grid) can be cheaper than running the wires to get it in grid. Sadly there are problems with wind for most urban or sub urban homes.
The only way to bust a doper--is when you yourself become a smoker!
Solar>electrolysis>Hydrogen>fuel cell>conversion - what a stupid and wasteful chain of supply. Now I understand why BP and the oil companies are so into hydrogen - not because of the sale of hydrogen, but because of all that money they expect to make on their PV arrays! Batteries aren't 100%, but dumping and then reclaiming from the AC line is about as efficient as you can get, and if you have access to the mains AC any other storage (more than a few hours) is just a stupid waste of money.
If that thing cost $70k with all that crap either they were GIVEN all the collectors and electronics or the house cost $1000 to build. And if I could build a house like that for $1000 then I think I might need to consider cashing out and moving to Malaysia... they speak french over there, don't they?
This is why I asked for someone to dig up a link.
Unfortunately, you probably won't find a link - I've never seen more than passing references to catalytic photolysis outside research journals.
So where can I get a water photolysis system that yields more energy out than a $15-20k photovoltaic system? Does this exist outside of research labs and plant leaves?
Again, you can't. Despite readily-reproduceable results, I know of no commercial systems that work by this method. I agree, holy grail indeed! Sure, the catalysts don't come cheap, but compared to $20k+ for PV?
I apologize for the scarcity of info on this topic... Believe me, I wish I could tell you more, but I have only recently come across this concept myself, and it looks truly staggering in the implications. It also looks like one of those areas of research that people keep very quiet about, either in the hopes of someday marketing it, or for fear of incurring the wrath of our oil-baron leaders.