Now, raindrops will help generate electricity through this Hybrid Solar Cell

Beijing, March 14: As advanced and efficient as our solar panels are becoming, they're still pretty much useless when rain clouds arrive overhead. That could soon change thanks to a hybrid cell that can harvest energy from both sunlight and raindrops.

 

According to a study, the key part of the system is a triboelectric nanogenerator or TENG, a device which creates electric charge from the friction of two materials rubbing together, as with static electricity it's all about the shifting of electrons.

TENGs can draw power from car tyres hitting the road, clothing materials rubbing up against each other, or in this case the rolling motion of raindrops across a solar panel. As the extra layers were transparent, sunlight could still be captured, though not at such an efficient rate as is possible without the extra layers on top.

The next challenge is increasing the amount of electricity that can be generated to make this commercially viable. However, the concept has been proven, and that's an important first step – harvesting even a small amount of electricity during a rain shower has to be better than harvesting nothing at all.

By separating the positively charged ions in salty rain, the scientists were able to get them binding to the graphene which then acted as a pseudocapacitor essentially, two layers with different energy levels that then produced an electric current.

The main drawback, as in this new research, was in being able to generate enough electricity to make it work practically outside of the lab. Still, it feels like we're getting closer and closer to solar panels that don't necessarily need only solar input.