Solar panels are generally useless in rainy weather. But researchers in China have found an ingenious solution: They've developed solar panels that can harness the motion of raindrops for energy. It could revolutionize the solar industry. One of the biggest problems plaguing the widespread adoption of solar power is, quite simply, rainy weather.
Solar panels are designed to
convert sunlight into electricity. But when it's cloudy or rainy, they're
rendered useless. There are batteries, like the Tesla Powerwall, designed to
store electricity for those cloudy days. But the technology isn't quite
effective or cheap enough to make using solar power worth it in regions that
don't receive a lot of sunlight.
A group of researchers from
Soochow University in China has come up with a promising solution to that
problem: they've developed solar panels that can generate power from raindrops.
Their research, published
last month in the journal ACS Nano, details how technology known as a
triboelectric nanogenerator, or TENG, could get added to a solar panel to
capture energy from the motion of raindrops that hit it. Nanogenerators, in
simple terms, are devices that convert mechanical energy, or movement, into
usable electricity.
The TENG would do that on a very
small scale for raindrops.The researchers behind the new study developed a
hybrid solar panel that incorporated the TENG technology yet was still
lightweight and cheap enough to mount on roofs. To accomplish this, they
experimented with different transparent plastics, or polymers, that form a
layer between the TENG layer and the solar cells on a panel. The layers were
connected but could function independently — making it possible for the solar
panel to generate electricity in a range of weather conditions.
If the researchers can
figure out how to bring down the cost of production of such a product, the
technology could potentially revolutionize how solar panels are used. It would
make solar power an efficient clean-energy solution even in less sunny areas
that aren't currently considered ideal for solar-energy collection.
Solar power, despite its
weather-related challenges, is quickly becoming one of the fastest-growing
energy sources worldwide. The price for installing commercial solar panels —
those used by companies like Apple, Walmart, and Amazon — has fallen by over
58% since 2012, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.
The International Energy
Agency predicts that renewable energy will comprise 40% of global power
generation by 2040. In the next five years, the share of electricity generated
by renewables worldwide is set to grow faster than any other source.
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