A massive blackout struck the American Southwest Thursday afternoon and continues to affect millions this morning. At its peak, the power outage affected five million people, stretching all the way from Orange County, California through Arizona and into northern Mexico. Though some power was restored around 9:00 PST, officials expect most areas to have widespread problems throughout the day Friday.
Power outages seem to be in the news a lot lately. In the midst of still-raging wildfires and record-breaking heat in Texas, power companies have avoided rolling blackouts by asking residents to voluntarily decrease power consumption. New York City and other areas on the eastern seaboard experienced outages two weeks ago when Hurricane Irene hit.
It’s in the context of our weakened electric grid that we bring you Japanese company FC-R&D‘s ZEEP24, a self-contained hydrogen fuel system powered by sunlight and water. Can ZEEP24 help you beat the blackouts?
[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfYRYnhOPiE’]
“With 500 cc of water, you can produce 500 liters of hydrogen. With 500 liters of hydrogen, you can theoretically generate 1,500 Wh of electricity. So you could produce 100 W for 15 hours, say. ZEEP24 can store 1,500 liters of hydrogen, so it can generate about 5,000 Wh, which is enough to meet the night-time requirements of one household.”
“Basically, this system is intended for use in areas that don’t have an electricity supply yet, or places where the supply has been knocked out by a disaster. It can also serve as an emergency power supply, if electricity becomes needed for 2 or 3 days. In that sense, this is a power supply for communities or emergencies. And because it’s also far more compact than ordinary power supplies, we think there’ll be a variety of customers for it.”
(Thanks to DigInfo News for this intriguing video introduction to ZEEP24.)
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