I-Corps: Solar Cell for Simultaneous Electricity Generation and Storage

I-Corps项目的更广泛影响包括探索一种用于同时储存和发电的新型太阳能电池的商业潜力。这项技术还可以实现国家能源资源的长期可持续性。这项拟议的技术将光电化学电池和高容量光致变色材料的最新进展应用于太阳能电池，这可能使全天太阳能发电成为可能。拟议的客户发现工作将扩大已开发技术的技术能力。这项技术的商业化有望实现整体能源负荷管理和太阳能电池的短期过渡供电，并随着太阳能在美国的普及而满足对日常可再生能源供应日益增长的需求。如果成功，这也将最大限度地减少建造和运营旋转备用发电厂的需要，这是目前用来缩小电力消耗和发电之间差距的一种方法。这个i-Corps项目探索具有集成存储能力的下一代太阳能电池的商业应用机会。目前，大多数太阳能电池只是将电池或超级电容器等存储设备物理添加到太阳能电池中。这样的建设涉及复杂的单元架构和控制过程，而且可能昂贵得令人望而却步。为了绕过目前最先进的太阳能储存技术存在的问题，这项拟议的技术以光电化学电池结构上的双功能电极为中心，白天同时发电和储存电力，晚上同时放电。不同之处包括：结构简单，制造和维护成本更低，易于扩展和市场渗透，因为模块化面板设计与现有的光伏基础设施兼容；维护成本低，因为在夜间或在弱光条件下，放电会自动激活。

The broader impact of this I-Corps project includes exploring the commercial potential of a novel solar cell for simultaneous electricity storage and generation. The technology may also enable long-term sustainability of the nation's energy resources. The proposed technology applies recent advances in photoelectrochemical cells and high-capacity photochromic materials to solar cells that could potentially enable all-day solar power. The proposed customer-discovery efforts will lead to expanded technical capacity of the developed technology. Commercializing this technology is expected to enable both overall energy load management and shorter term bridging power of solar cells, and address the growing need for daily renewable energy supply with the expanding penetration of solar energy into the U.S. If successful, this will also minimize the need to build and operate spinning-reserve power plants, a method employed today to close the gaps between power consumption and generation.This I-Corps project explores commercial application opportunities for next-generation solar cells with integrated storage capability. Currently, most solar batteries are simply a physical addition of a storage device such as a battery or supercapacitor to a solar cell. Such construction involves complicated cell architectures and control processes, and can be prohibitively expensive. To circumvent the problems with the current state-of-the-art in solar energy storage, this proposed technology centers on a dual-function electrode on a photoelectrochemical cell construction, which simultaneously generates and stores electricity during the day, and discharge at night. Differentiators include: simple construction resulting in lower fabrication and maintenance costs, easy scalability and market penetration since the modular panel design is compatible with the existing PV infrastructure; low maintenance because at night or under low-light conditions the discharge is automatically activated.