Scientists Have Made an Incredible Breakthrough with a New Heat-to-Energy Converter — and It Could Change the Electricity Market

Green energy sources like solar and wind are generating more and more energy as we expand our infrastructure, but we need reliable methods of storing the excess for later use.

Solar energy production peaks during the day, but its consumption is highest after dark. Wind production also suffers from the intermittent nature of air flows, making storage key to realizing the full potential of these renewable energy sources.

According to a report by New Atlas, researchers at the University of Michigan took this to heart and recently developed a cost-effective and highly efficient thermophotovoltaic cell that converts heat into energy.

According to the portal, thermophotovoltaic cells absorb photons from the infrared part of the spectrum as heat, while normal photovoltaic cells absorb them from visible light. The energy generated by clean sources can be discharged as heat to these cells and later extracted again as electricity.

As detailed in the report, the heat storage medium can be anything, such as sand, molten salt or clay bricks, but the researchers’ new system uses silicon carbide. It is surrounded by semiconductor materials, including indium, gallium and arsenic, that are designed to maximize the range of photons collected from the heated source.

When the researchers heated the cells to 1,435 degrees Celsius (2,615 degrees Fahrenheit), the semiconductors captured 20% to 30% of the released energy. Additional layers of air and gold reflectors bounced some of the escaping photons back for another chance to be converted into electricity.

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The team ultimately achieved an impressive overall power conversion efficiency of 44%, which beats the 37% achieved by other designs operating at the same temperature, according to New Atlas.

Stephen Forrest, one of the study’s co-authors, said: “We haven’t reached the efficiency limit of this technology yet. I’m confident we’ll get to more than 44% and aim for 50% in the not-too-distant future.”

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, U.S. electricity consumption is expected to grow 3% in 2024 and 2% in 2025, while electricity generation should increase 3% in 2024 and 1% in 2025. Wind power should still account for about 11% of our renewable energy production, but solar is projected to grow to 7% of U.S. electricity generation by 2025.

To help keep pace, at least one solar project using stored heat in a different way is already underway and specifically addresses the intermittent nature of supply. This project will focus on solar energy as heat in a tower and use that heat to generate electricity by powering a turbine. Some of the heat will be stored to power the turbine when the sun is not shining.

Although systems that store energy as heat, including thermophotovoltaic cells, can be less efficient than lithium-ion batteries, the research team believes its technology is superior in several ways. As detailed in New Atlas, it is safer and cheaper to produce and maintain, enough so that even losing some of the stored energy is still worthwhile.

Forrest elaborated on the benefits in a statement to Michigan News, saying, “It’s a type of battery, but a very passive one. You don’t have to mine the lithium like you do with electrochemical cells, which means you don’t have to compete with the electric vehicle market. Unlike pumped water for hydroelectric storage, you can put it anywhere and you don’t need a water source nearby.”

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