Meet Stan Ovshinsky, the Energy Genius

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Inspired by the Sun

Ovshinsky followed an unconventional path to establish  ECD Ovonics, one of the world’s leading energy innovators. Instead of going to college, he opened up a machine shop soon after high school. That may sound like an odd way to try to change the world, but it echoes Ovshinsky’s preference for the practical rather than the political.

“My wife [Iris] and I set up ECD in a storefront in Detroit in 1960 for the express purpose of using science and technology to solve serious societal problems,” Ovshinsky says. “I felt that without having truly realistic answers for unemployment, for lack of new industries, for things that were wrong with the world, you wouldn’t go very far. We are working to make the world a better place.”

Early on, the Ovshinskys realized fossil fuels were an area that would be a source of climate change and global conflict. “What do you do about it? You make fossil fuels irrelevant to world affairs,” he says. “The solution is the ultimate one: to utilize hydrogen.” Since then, hydrogen has been at the center of Ovshinsky’s work.

For starters, Ovshinsky sought to harness solar power (which comes from the hydrogen-burning sun) with thin-film PV. Hydrogen is the active element in anything that’s flammable, including coal and gasoline. For vehicles, Ovshinsky sought a way to use non-polluting hydrogen itself rather than hydrogen from fossil fuel intermediaries that simply trapped it. “So I invented a battery (NiMH) that works on the basis of hydrogen storage and hydrogen ions going back and forth between two electrodes,” he says. “All of the batteries in commercial hybrid cars are based on our patents.”

Furthermore, in August 2005, ECD unveiled a modified Toyota Prius with an internal combustion engine powered entirely by hydrogen. In addition to NiMH batteries, the modified Prius used Ovonic solid-state hydrogen storage cylinders, which supplied the fuel. “It gave the equivalent mileage of a gasoline hybrid, but with practically no pollution or climate changing gases at all,” he says.

A challenge to using flammable hydrogen as a fuel for vehicles is finding a way to contain it safely, especially in an accident. Rather than storing it as a high-pressure gas, Ovshinsky created a spongelike material — known as a solid hydride — that could absorb hydrogen gas, making it safe and easy to transport.

Ovshinsky also sees solid hydrogen storage as a means around two other hurdles to a hydrogen economy: mass production and distribution to fuel stations. “People say: ‘What about the infrastructure? That’s going to cost trillions of dollars.’ So we built a mobile solid hydride fuel station as well as our own dispenser,” he says. “It’s cheap. You can make it on a production line and ship it anywhere.” The station converts solar energy, or traditional electricity produced at night, to hydrogen through electrolysis, which releases hydrogen when electricity flows through water. Ovshinsky believes solid hydrogen can be transported via ordinary shipping means. And at retail hydrogen fuel stations, or even your home, he envisions thin-film PV solar panels creating hydrogen through electrolysis on-site, then storing that hydrogen in solid form.

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