Scientists in the United States and Saudi Arabia have harnessed the abilities of both a solar cell and a battery in one device a “solar flow battery” that soaks up sunlight and efficiently stores it as chemical energy for later on-demand use.
While sunlight has increasingly gained appeal as a clean and abundant energy source, it has one obvious limitation there is only so much sunlight per day, and some days are a lot sunnier than others.
In order to keep solar energy practical, this means that after sunlight is converted to electrical energy, it must be stored. Normally this takes two devices, a solar cell and a battery but the solar flow battery is designed to perform like both.
Compared with separated solar energy conversion and electrochemical energy storage devices, combining the functions of separated devices into a single, integrated device could be a more efficient, scalable, compact, and cost-effective approach to utilizing solar energy.
The solar flow battery has three different modes. If energy is needed right away, it can act like a solar cell and immediately convert sunlight to electricity. Otherwise, the device can soak up solar energy by day and store it as chemical energy to deliver it later as electricity when night falls or the sky grows cloudy. The device can also be charged by electrical energy if needed, just like a typical battery.
These integrated solar flow batteries will be especially suitable as distributed and stand-alone solar energy conversion and storage systems in remote locations and enable practical off-grid electrification
News Source: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-09/cp-dti092018.php
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