By Heather Hamilton, contributing writer
As solar power becomes increasingly popular, thanks to costs that have fallen roughly 90% in the last decade, there are more questions about what exactly a user does when the sun isn’t out. In theory, solar power is a great solution, but for customers in less fair climates, it can seem impractical.
A team of researchers from Soochow University in China has begun work on a solar cell that produces energy from both sunlight and rain. The research, published last month in the ACS Nano journal, claims that it is functional in a variety of weather conditions and uses a tribeoelectric nanogenerator, also referred to as TENG, to create charge via friction from two materials rubbing against one another.
“Our device can always generate electricity in any daytime weather,” said Baoquan Sun of Soochow University. “In addition, this device even provides electricity at night if there is rain.”
In this instance, TENGs generate power from the force of raindrops hitting and then rolling off of a solar panel. By using two polymer layers to make a TENG on top of a photovoltaic cell, the system is both simple and relatively light. They added slits using imprints from DVDs to one polymer to make it more efficient — it acts as an electrode for both the TENG and solar panel underneath. Energy is conducted between the two devices as it rains, and they come into contact with one another but are transparent so as to allow sunlight to also be absorbed.
In the future, the team hopes to increase the amount of electricity that is possible to generate to expand the system for commercial use. “In the future, we are exploring integrating these into mobile and flexible devices, such as electronic clothes,” says Sun. “However, the output power efficiency needs to be further improved before practical application.”
Business Insider also reports that the team will need to work on lowering the cost of the product if they hope to revolutionize how the solar panels are used in the future. Right now, the device has a peak short-circuit current of approximately 33 nA and a peak open-circuit voltage of about 2.14 V, neither of which is particularly high, though it does demonstrate functionality and may prove to be scalable.
The team hopes to produce a prototype product in three to five years, reports The Guardian, especially being that other Chinese researchers are using TENGs to harvest power from wind. Sun believes that his device could also do this, which may make it more useful on a larger scale.
Sources: ACS Nano, Business Insider, The Guardian
Image Source: Pixabay
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