there are a huge number of things that can store energy, chemicaly ,and reversibly, but the gotchas are always lurking, exotic wildly expensive ingedients, dangerous failure modes , or very complicated operational requirements that will not scale into the real world. this anouncent makes clear that is is based on dna, which is no surprise as nature is the ancient master of chemical energy storage,and which all of us useing right now anyway

That's a bit concerning. Runaway waiting to happen.

absent of a major breakthrough solar will always be a house/grid level technology, which is fine and works at scale

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec6413

"Upon treatment with acid, that bond breaks to release more than a megajoule per kilogram of the compound, enough to rapidly boil water from a solution."

That's from the editor's summary (I haven't had time to read the paper).

> When exposed to a trigger -- such as a small amount of heat or a catalyst -- the molecule snaps back into its original form, releasing the stored energy as heat.

From the paper abstract, the catalyst is HCl. I don't have access to the full paper, so I don't know how they separate the HCl from the MOST to neutralize it to be rechargeable again.