Creating Electricity Out of Thin Air

What if you could paint your house over the weekend and cancel your electric service on Monday?  It probably won't be quite that simple, but researchers at the University of Massachusetts have developed a way to create electricity using the ambient humidity in the air.  In effect, they have "created electricity out of thin air."

I'm certainly no scientist (as my high school science teacher would tell you since I was either unsafely playing with the experiment ingredients or simply elsewhere during class time) but I've believed for quite some time that our current centralized electricity delivery system is going to be completely upended by the invention of a device that creates enough electricity to support your household load, and that you'll be able to install such a device in your basement utility area right next to your heating system, water heater, or any of the other individual devices that make your house livable.  Not sure exactly what it's going to be powered by (because if I did I wouldn't be here writing this blog) but it will happen.  Hopefully in my lifetime because I can think of nothing more satisfying than calling up one of those rude little drones at the "Potomac Edison" call center and telling them to cancel my service.

Oh, but wait... I'd need to be connected to the grid in case of emergency where my power supply goes on the blink?  Not hardly.  It would be just like the occasional failure of my current electric service.  Power supply appliance goes on the blink... call for service.  Meanwhile, I do have that nifty generator left over from my Potomac Edison service days.

So, maybe this is it?  The Air-gen is small right now, but they're looking at ways to scale it up to provide bigger and bigger amounts of electricity.

Yao says, “The ultimate goal is to make large-scale systems. For example, the technology might be incorporated into wall paint that could help power your home. Or, we may develop stand-alone air-powered generators that supply electricity off the grid. Once we get to an industrial scale for wire production, I fully expect that we can make large systems that will make a major contribution to sustainable energy production.”

Get that?  Off the grid.  If each building had its own electricity supply, we wouldn't need any centralized generation, no transmission, no distribution system.  Our electric overlords would become obsolete.

And guess what?  It's completely "clean" and "green". 

The new technology developed in Yao’s lab is non-polluting, renewable and low-cost. It can generate power even in areas with extremely low humidity such as the Sahara Desert. It has significant advantages over other forms of renewable energy including solar and wind, Lovley says, because unlike these other renewable energy sources, the Air-gen does not require sunlight or wind, and “it even works indoors.”

And it's perfectly distributed, requiring no centralized infrastructure, like gigantic solar or wind farms.  It can be installed anywhere, so no more excuses about having to transmit renewable energy thousands of miles to get it to "where it's needed the most."  Anyone who loves renewables can install their own power supply in their own home.  Done.  They won't have to sacrifice other people in remote areas "for the public good."

So, maybe we want to stop wasting time and money pursuing the construction of soon-to-be-obsolete solar and wind farms, along with an unreliable and absurdly expensive "renewable grid"? 

Similar scientific breakthroughs have happened numerous times in the past decade, but after a brief blip in the news they fall off the face of the earth.  Why is that?  Are they really that unworkable, or do their inventors end up in a cell next to Jeffrey Epstein in investor-owned centralized utility basement prisons?  Who's buying up this technology and killing it?

Maybe the utilities will eventually get smart enough to realize they have to adapt to survive, otherwise they're going to end up in the history books next to street cars and landline phones.