Efficient storage of solar getting closer

mdovey · Oct 24, 2013

Battery boost from coated silicon

BBC News - Battery boost from coated silicon

This looks promising for more ecological and economic storage of solar than the current battery solutions available.

Matthew

Badged01 · Oct 25, 2013

Do I suspect there could be a nice 'price' associated with the solution too?

Worcester · Oct 25, 2013

See spidy man in the BBC image, now just slip, or put a foot though one of those!!!

ultimately it should be cheap: Self-recharging mobiles a possibility with newly-developed super-capacitor | NDTV Gadgets

onions1066 · Oct 25, 2013

I was talking to someone the other day regarding solar storage and he is one of the scientists who is working on this and he didn't think they were close at all to making an affordable system that would be brought out into the market. He seemed to think they are years away.

mdovey · Oct 25, 2013

onions1066 said:
I was talking to someone the other day regarding solar storage and he is one of the scientists who is working on this and he didn't think they were close at all to making an affordable system that would be brought out into the market. He seemed to think they are years away.

I did carefully choose the topic of "getting closer" rather than "close" or "very close".

The fact that there is a possible direction of research for storing solar more efficiently and economically than current batteries is promising, but no, I wasn't expecting to be able to pick on of the shelves just yet...

Matthew

Darkwood · Oct 25, 2013

Here's a more technical read of the same development
Scientists Develop Graphene-Coated Silicon Supercapacitor | SciTech Daily

mdovey · Oct 25, 2013

darkwood said:
Here's a more technical read of the same development

Interesting - this part stood out for me

"Pint’s group is currently using this approach to develop energy storage that can be formed in the excess materials or on the unused back sides of solar cells and sensors. The supercapacitors would store excess the electricity that the cells generate at midday and release it when the demand peaks in the afternoon."

It suggests that we one day see a new generation of solar panels with the energy storage built in.

Matthew

yorkshiremike · Oct 25, 2013

Their energy density is still worse than a lead acid battery and over an order of magnitude less than Lithium Ion (less than 10Wh/kg, versus over 100Wh/kg for LiIon), so I can't see them being the 'renewables energy storage solution'. Conventional Supercaps have fantastic power densities (lots of current in and out) but they're expensive, so if these new silicon/graphene ones are cheap enough, they may be good for covering short term peaks and troughs but probably over minutes/10s of minutes at best rather than hours/days.

Worcester · Oct 25, 2013

Just remember that graphene was discovered/created at Manchester Uni

Manchester Graphene (The University of Manchester)
and they are building the new headquarters of the Graphene Institute there as well as hedquarters of various other Graphene businesses:
University attracts major graphene manufacturer to Manchester | The University of Manchester

Who says we aren't the best

Gavin A · Oct 26, 2013

Don't kid yourself there Worcester. Manchester Uni is the top ranked UK institution for holding graphene patents at 163 in the world with 6 patents, vs 210 patents held by samsung.

We absolutely suck at anything related to actually commercialising the results of our universities research.

http://www.ipo.gov.uk/informatics-graphene-2013.pdf

Mr Hehound · Oct 26, 2013

If and when graphene threads can be produced at a reasonable cost they will make a huge impact on power transmission, storage and capactitors.

Its a way off yet - interesting times tho.

Worcester · Oct 26, 2013

It's not the number of patents that matters, if all the others are dependent upon one key one

My interest? My eldest son is just trying to choose which uni to go for for Materials Science, QMC, Imperial, Manchester, plus 2 others, Manchester impressed so far in the materials dept they have 7 scanning electron microscopes and the most powerful tunneling electron microscope in the UK

- there's only 7 of what they've got in the world atm... plus (compared to a lot of establishments) are pretty good at commercialising what they do.

Graphene is a superconductor at STP, that's what makes it most interesting.

2nd thing to consider, and this gets scary...

The top 5% of undergraduates in India is MORE than the TOTAL number of UK undergraduates.

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Efficient storage of solar getting closer

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