One of the plaguing problems of solar power has been how to power a building when The Sun is not shining. Scientists at MIT announced they may have found a way to fix that, the Boston Herald reported.

Efficiently and effectively storing power generated while the sun is shining could make solar power more economically viable.

Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus professor of energy at MIT, and Matthew Kanan, an MIT postdoctoral fellow, developed the storage technology.

The pair told the Herald that in one hour enough sunlight hits the planet to meet the energy demands of the whole world for a year.

Nocera and Kanan said if the energy from the sun is split into water, hydrogen and oxygen, it can be recombined in a fuel cell to create electricity.

The results are environmentally friendly and beat the costs of previous storage methods for solar power.