Surplus food can always be frozen. Excess solar or wind energy could be stored as heat.
Now, a startup from New Zealand is developing new, static, energy storage solutions. The founder and her professor were already researching how aluminium can be used for solid-state batteries.
Like sodium the metal is widely available. Carbon is an important component in batteries, used for cathodes. The team experimented with different materials.
They discovered that active carbon from human hair is superior in terms of capacity to that made from hemp fibres and carbon – even after 50 charge cycles.
Indeed, with a range between 150 and 300 wh/kg, their battery has a significantly greater energy density than its traditional counterparts.
Kiwi power.
