Facebook deploys its AI to find green energy storage solutions

Our traditional solution to the unpredictable nature of renewable energy sources like solar and wind power has generally been to simply dump the excess wattage back into the local grid or sequester it away in utility-scale batteries. But as more and more of our power generation is created by renewables, their production capacities can potentially outstrip that of the local grid while battery technology can quickly become prohibitively expensive at scale. One alternative is putting that excess power to work driving catalytic reactions. "There are a lot of different ways that we can store the energy," Zack Ulissi, CMU Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering, told Engadget. "The most well known is you take water and you electrolyze it to split it into hydrogen and oxygen. And then you can take that hydrogen and run it into a hydrogen fuel cell."