By Greg Borzo
One of the biggest challenges to wider adoption of wind and solar power is how to store the excess energy they often produce.
A technology developed at the University of Chicago, and now being commercialized by a University startup, is addressing the intermittent nature of these renewable sources. It uses a selectively evolved, unicellular microorganism that helps convert electricity into methane gas. That gas can be stored, transported and used wherever natural gas is used, including for the generation of power on demand.
Laurens Mets, associate professor of molecular genetics and cell biology, began developing the technology in the late 1990s. From it, the startup Electrochaea was born with support from UChicagoTech, now part of the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation…
Continue reading at UChicago News…