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Researchers Refine a Device That Can Both Harvest and Store Solar Energy, and They Hope It Will One Day Bring Electricity To Rural and Underdeveloped Areas (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: The problem of energy storage has led to many creative solutions, like giant batteries. For a paper published today in the journal Chem, scientists trying to improve the solar cells themselves developed an integrated battery that works in three different ways. It can work like a normal solar cell by converting sunlight to electricity immediately, explains study author Song Jin, a chemist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. It can store the solar energy, or it can simply be charged like a normal battery. It's a combination of two existing technologies: solar cells that harvest light, and a so-called flow battery. The most commonly used batteries, lithium-ion, store energy in solid materials, like various metals. Flow batteries, on the other hand, store energy in external liquid tanks. This means they are very easy to scale for large projects. Scaling up all the components of a lithium-ion battery might throw off the engineering, but for flow batteries, "you just make the tank bigger," says Timothy Cook, a University at Buffalo chemist and flow battery expert not involved in the study. "You really simplify how to make the battery grow in capacity," he adds. "We're not making flow batteries to power a cell phone, we're thinking about buildings or industrial sites.
My first immediate thought on this is I think this will work well on our space colonies on Mars. There will be no infrastructure so we can just setup one of these modules in each colony and have always available electricity.
Ok, so any time you take a solar panel and add some kind of energy storage device, that's a story now? There are a lot of ways you can store the energy - many different battery types, pumped water storage, molten salt I suppose. This is just silly.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Likewise, any time you see a statement that contains a reference to "wealth creation", you know that it's some typical pile of libertarian tripe that should be ignored.
My first thought was, what is this "liquid"?
How many gallons would it need to run a house?
Is it Toxic? Corrosive? Environmentally dangerous in some way?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Its just a plant!
Don't get me wrong here... I'm not doubting the ability of science to propel us forward... but where are the actual, usable, breakthroughs?
Every new "discovery" is followed by the phrase "may one day lead to..." or "scientists discovered x that -might- help humans in 30 years".
Taking off my pessimist cap now lol
Right - wealth can't be created. That's why our population has exploded and yet standard of living improves. It's all a fixed pie, and we're taking smaller and smaller portions but we don't notice because... Libertarians.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
2021 - Moscow Donald joins his campaign manager in prison, discovers that treason really is illegal.
I imagine a remote electric 'gas station' where you would exchange the used liquid in your car's flow battery for freshly-charged liquid. The station itself could even be solar. No more sitting for an hour at a recharge station waiting for your Tesla's battery to get topped off - a recharge stop would only take as long as pumping gas does now. Used fluid would go back to the station to be recharged.
Using a Tesla Model 3's stated average power consumption, about 2 liters of charged liquid battery per hour of driving should be enough.
I do not belong to the church of the lowercase 'i'
The problem of energy storage has led to many creative solutions, like giant batteries.
I'm sorry, but giant batteries seem like the least creative solutions.
"We have to store huge amounts of energy? I know, we'll create really, really big batteries!"
Trees.
You meant to say Trump succesuily runs for a third term after the supreme court rules in favor of his right to run for a third consecutive term.
Isn't this already a thing? I have seen underwater storage where they pump air into the tanks and then release it to generate electricity. Also, what about just pumping water up hill?
Which one did you patent?