The Lemon Fool

Researchers have come up with a new way to generate electricity with solar panel technology by harvesting the energy produced by raindrops.

The method, proposed by a team from Tsinghua University in China, involves a device called a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) that creates electrification from liquid-solid contact.

These are typically used to harvest energy from waves, as droplet-based TENGs (D-TENGs) have previously faced technical limitations that prevented them from working at any significant scale.

By using solar panel bridge arrays, the researchers discovered such barriers could be overcome

“Referring to the design of solar panels in which multiple solar power generation units are connected in parallel to supply the load, we are proposing a simple and effective method for raindrop harvesting,” said Professor Zong Li, who led the research.

ursaminortaur wrote:Researchers have come up with a way of using solar panels to also generate energy from raindrops.

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/solar-panel-electricity-rain-china-b2379404.html

Researchers have come up with a new way to generate electricity with solar panel technology by harvesting the energy produced by raindrops.

The method, proposed by a team from Tsinghua University in China, involves a device called a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) that creates electrification from liquid-solid contact.

These are typically used to harvest energy from waves, as droplet-based TENGs (D-TENGs) have previously faced technical limitations that prevented them from working at any significant scale.

By using solar panel bridge arrays, the researchers discovered such barriers could be overcome

“Referring to the design of solar panels in which multiple solar power generation units are connected in parallel to supply the load, we are proposing a simple and effective method for raindrop harvesting,” said Professor Zong Li, who led the research.