Solar to Ammonia - via Proton's NFuel units

The biggest problem associated with solar power is intermittency. The problem is ensuring energy supply after the Sun has gone down. Balancing this cyclic and intermittent energy production along with uncertain energy demand is a major concern to all large utilities around the world. Conventional options for dealing with such imbalance of energy consist of creating flexible electricity demand and supply, but that is not always feasible. Hence options for storing energy when in excess and supplying it when the demand rises are investigated. Batteries are conventional solutions for energy storage; newer options include storage in the form of hydrogen. We propose a new solution for all energy buffering problems - Ammonia! Ammonia can be a suitable medium to 'buffer' intermittent renewable energy in liquid form. We propose a completely environmentally friendly system, where there are no carbon emissions upstream or downstream. Ammonia can be produced decentrally from renewables (or cheap power) via Proton's NFuel units and this ammonia can be converted into power when needed via ammonia generators. Secondly, excess ammonia can be directly used as a fertilizer or chemical feedstock. Over the longer term such decentralized and independent power production and usage system will herald the dawn of energy independency, guaranteeing security of supply by reducing reliance on imported oil and gas. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).