{"id":239796,"date":"2026-06-27T15:13:50","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T20:13:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/concrete-that-stores-a-day-of-electricity"},"modified":"2026-06-27T15:13:50","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T20:13:50","slug":"concrete-that-stores-a-day-of-electricity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/concrete-that-stores-a-day-of-electricity","title":{"rendered":"Concrete that stores a day of electricity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7AXl_4Wvc_4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In 2023, researchers at MIT and Harvard showed that ordinary cement, water, and a small amount of carbon black can be combined into a material that stores electricity, not in a battery embedded in the structure, but in the hardened concrete itself. As the cement hydrates, it consumes water and leaves a network of fine pores behind. The hydrophobic carbon black migrates into these spaces and self-assembles into a percolating, fractal-like electron-conducting network threaded through the calcium-silicate-hydrate (C-S-H) matrix. Soaked in an electrolyte and paired across a thin separator, two such electrodes form an electric double-layer capacitor, a supercapacitor, that stores charge electrostatically across an enormous internal surface area. The more interfacial surface inside the block, the more charge it holds. By the researchers\u2019 calculation, a foundation-scale block of roughly 45 cubic metres, a cube about 3.5 metres across, could store on the order of 10 kilowatt-hours, comparable to a household\u2019s average daily electricity use, while still bearing structural load. A 2025 follow-up reported a roughly tenfold increase in energy density, shrinking the volume needed for the same storage. This remains laboratory-scale work, demonstrated so far in small cells and prototypes, not a deployed foundation. Open questions include cycle life, self-discharge, and real-world scaling. References Chanut, N., Stefaniuk, D., Weaver, J. C., Zhu, Y., Shao-Horn, Y., Masic, A., &amp; Ulm, F.-J. (2023). Carbon\u2013cement supercapacitors as a scalable bulk energy storage solution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(32), e2304318120. Stefaniuk, D., Weaver, J. C., Ulm, F.-J., &amp; Masic, A. (2025). High energy density carbon\u2013cement supercapacitors for architectural energy storage. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(40), e2511912122. PHENOMICA \u2014 contemplative, precise science, one phenomenon at a time. #science #materialscience #supercapacitor #energystorage #concrete \u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2023, researchers at MIT and Harvard showed that ordinary cement, water, and a small amount of carbon black can be combined into a material that stores electricity, not in a battery embedded in the structure, but in the hardened concrete itself. As the cement hydrates, it consumes water and leaves a network of fine [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1497,1635],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy","category-materials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239796\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}