Solar Storage: This Small Technology Matter So Much In The Future
Posted on September 26, 2021
Solar energy generation and consumption is an automated process. Your solar panels will collect solar energy, and they will keep feeding its lines despite your appliances not always in use. This activity lessens during cloudy or low-sunlight days, and you may need to switch to your main power supply to have enough energy. However, if a high-quality solar energy storage technology becomes available, solar energy can become a much more versatile energy source in the future.
Golden, CO, is a home for stormy weather with bright summers. During the summer cycle, homeowners with solar cells can collect and store their solar energy in low-decay, long-lasting solar storage batteries. In doing so, they have enough power to last them the entire rainy and winter seasons with low or zero sunlight to generate solar energy.
Nowadays, technology has progressed with functional solar energy cells, but they’re still not enough to store energy that can power an entire home. As a result, we still have yet to encounter a reliable and capable energy storage medium for solar technologies.
The Conversation has the following energy storage technologies viable for solar energy. Read more about them below.
Longer charges
From alkaline batteries for small electronics to lithium-ion batteries for cars and laptops, most people already use batteries in many aspects of their daily lives. But there is still lots of room for growth.
For example, high-capacity batteries with long discharge times – up to 10 hours – could be valuable for storing solar power at night or increasing the range of electric vehicles. Right now there are very few such batteries in use. However, according to recent projections, upwards of 100 gigawatts’ worth of these batteries will likely be installed by 2050. For comparison, that’s 50 times the generating capacity of Hoover Dam. This could have a major impact on the viability of renewable energy.
Batteries work by creating a chemical reaction that produces a flow of electrical current.
One of the biggest obstacles is limited supplies of lithium and cobalt, which currently are essential for making lightweight, powerful batteries. According to some estimates, around 10% of the world’s lithium and nearly all of the world’s cobalt reserves will be depleted by 2050.
Furthermore, nearly 70% of the world’s cobalt is mined in the Congo, under conditions that have long been documented as inhumane.
Scientists are working to develop techniques for recycling lithium and cobalt batteries, and to design batteries based on other materials. Tesla plans to produce cobalt-free batteries within the next few years. Others aim to replace lithium with sodium, which has properties very similar to lithium’s but is much more abundant.
Safer batteries
Another priority is to make batteries safer. One area for improvement is electrolytes – the medium, often liquid, that allows an electric charge to flow from the battery’s anode, or negative terminal, to the cathode, or positive terminal.
When a battery is in use, charged particles in the electrolyte move around to balance out the charge of the electricity flowing out of the battery. Electrolytes often contain flammable materials. If they leak, the battery can overheat and catch fire or melt.
Scientists are developing solid electrolytes, which would make batteries more robust. It is much harder for particles to move around through solids than through liquids, but encouraging lab-scale results suggest that these batteries could be ready for use in electric vehicles in the coming years, with target dates for commercialization as early as 2026.
While solid-state batteries would be well suited for consumer electronics and electric vehicles, for large-scale energy storage, scientists are pursuing all-liquid designs called flow batteries. (Continued)
