Future Solar Panels Will Generate Energy From Raindrops.

[Fr8monkey]

This is thanks to a thin layer of graphene they use to coat their solar cells during testing. Graphene is known for its conductivity, among many other benefits. All it takes is a mere one-atom thick graphene layer for an excessive amount of electrons to move as they wish across the surface.

amazing!

 

[CavLancer]

When the next level of technology is on the shelf at a reasonable price I hope I'm financially ready to go all out on our house here. Plenty of sun...

So that just leaves cloudy weather as partial downtime for panels. :b:

 

[Fr8monkey]

I'm where we get good sun in summer and rain in winter. I've been looking into solar; and can get by for 6G's. Summer sun would pay for winter heat...

 

[Perfection]

and current over µA, along with a voltage of hundreds of mV by simulated raindrops.

This pisses me off. They should tell me the approximate size of the cell. Is it 1mm^2 or 1meter^2?

Anyways a microwatt is very little power - if they can't get those numbers up by a lot it has very little potential use.

 

[Borachio]

Here's a bit more on the subject.

Silicon-based solar cell is by far the most established solarcell technology.The surface of a Si solar
cell is usually covered by a layer of transparent material to protect the device from environmental
damages/corrosions. Here, we replaced this protection layer by a transparent triboelectric
nano geneartor(TENG), for simultaneously or individually harvesting solar and raindrop energy when
either or both of them are available in our living environment. The TENG is made of a specially
processed polytetrafluoroethylene(PTFE) film, anindiumtinoxide(ITO )and apolyethylene
terephthalate (PET) layer. Under solar light irradiation(12W/m2) in a rainy day, the fabricated
high-efficiency solar cell provides an open-circuit(Voc) of 0.43V and short-circuit current density(Jsc)
of 4.2A/m2. And the TENG designed for collection of raindrop energy gives an AC Voc of 30V and Jsc
of 4.2mA/m2 when impacted by water drops at a dripping rate of 0.116ml/s. In rainy days, the
performance of solar cell decreased greatly, while TENG can be a good compensation as for green
energy harvesting. From these results, we can see that the hybrid cell formed by a solar cell and a
water-drop TENG have great potential for simultaneously/ individually harvesting both solar energy
and rain drop electrostatic energy under different weather conditions, especially in raining season.

So, Jsc 4.2 mA/m2. Doesn't sound much. But I wish they'd give me the W/m2, so I could make sense of it.

 

[uppi]

This pisses me off. They should tell me the approximate size of the cell. Is it 1mm^2 or 1meter^2?

Anyways a microwatt is very little power - if they can't get those numbers up by a lot it has very little potential use.

The cell is 50mm x 20mm and the news article even confuses millivolts with microvolts, so the power adds up to a grand total of - wait for it - 50pW!

It gets even worse: The simulated "rain" they use is actually a saline solution. If rain was that salty we would have other problems than power generation and without the salt it does not work.

So the news article and the paper itself are just a ridiculous attempt at attention grabbing.

 

[Ryika]

Still sounds a lot better than solar freaking roadways.

 

[Zkribbler]

It gets even worse: The simulated "rain" they use is actually a saline solution.

It gets worse:

The salt contained in rain separates into ions (ammonium, calcium and sodium),

The salt consist of ammonia, calcium and sodium? WTH?

 

[Bootstoots]

That's reasonable. Salts are any ionic compound, not just sodium chloride. In rainwater, ammonium (formed from ammonia released biologically and by humans) is usually the most common cation. Sodium appears in rain over and near oceans where sea salt is blown into the atmosphere, and calcium comes from things like calcium carbonate (limestone) dust. Not sure what anions are in their solutions, but sulfate, nitrate, and chloride are the most common three in rainwater.

 

[Fr8monkey]

Then again, it is first generation. In about 5 years, I'm sure the tech will be exponentially better.

 

[CavLancer]

This pisses me off. They should tell me the approximate size of the cell. Is it 1mm^2 or 1meter^2?

Anyways a microwatt is very little power - if they can't get those numbers up by a lot it has very little potential use.

I think they get the #s up by applying additional raindrops.

 

[Borachio]

Well. Why not bung the panels straight in the ocean, then?

 

[Leoreth]

Well. Why not bung the panels straight in the ocean, then?

That would make sea levels rise which is exactly the opposite of what we want to achieve.

 

[Borachio]

Um.

Yes. I guess?