A freeze-thaw molten salt battery for seasonal storage


New research paper from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Abstract "Grid-level storage of seasonal excess can be an important asset to renewable electricity. By applying the freeze-thaw thermal cycling strategy, here, we report Al-Ni molten salt batteries with effective capacity recovery over 90% after a period of 1–8 weeks as a proof-of-concept. We explore three activation methods... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Nov. 23


Graphene energy Researchers from the University of Arkansas, University of Pennsylvania, and Universidad Carlos III de Madrid built a circuit capable of capturing graphene's thermal motion and converting it into an electrical current. "An energy-harvesting circuit based on graphene could be incorporated into a chip to provide clean, limitless, low-voltage power for small devices or sensors,... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Dec. 18


Solar storage Engineers at MIT, Georgia Institute of Technology, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory designed a system to store renewable energy in vast amounts and deliver it back to the grid when power generation is low. The system stores excess electricity from solar or wind installations as heat using tanks of white-hot molten silicon, and then converts the light from the glowi... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Mar. 20


Proton battery prototype A team at RMIT University built a prototype rechargeable proton battery combining hydrogen fuel cells and battery-based electrical power that has the potential, with further development, to store more energy than currently-available lithium ion batteries. The working prototype proton battery uses an activated carbon electrode for solid-state storage of hydrogen with... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Feb. 21


Harvesting energy from multiple sources Researchers from the University of Oulu in Finland found a particular type of perovskite, KBNNO, has the right properties to extract energy from multiple sources simultaneously. While perovskites are particularly known for their use as solar cells, certain minerals in the perovskite family show piezoelectric and pyroelectric (harvesting energy from ... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: June 28


Mimicking roses for solar Scientists from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW) reproduced the epidermal cells of rose petals and integrated the transparent replicas into an organic solar cell, with an efficiency gain of 12%. The epidermis of rose petals consists of a disorganized arrangement of densely p... » read more