'Artificial leaf' concept inspires research into solar-powered fuel production

Re:'Artificial leaf' concept inspires research into solar-po... by pacman83 on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @06:18PM (#23085786)

Just last week I was thinking we need solar cells wired up in a tree structure with batteries integrated into the tree so that we don't need to combine series and parallel or have the drawbacks of either. Is anybody doing that? I presume they would need to be connected with fluids, electrolyte in channels instead of with wires. Or have I just reinvented the tree?

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Re:'Artificial leaf' concept inspires research into solar-po... by sovreign on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @06:42PM (#23085986)

Sounds similar to a redox flow battery (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_battery) which uses tanks of anolyte and catholyte solutions to store power. Energy density for Vanadium based redox flow batteries are only 20Wh/kg but might be worth it given the volume of a typical (normal sized) tree.

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Re:'Artificial leaf' concept inspires research into solar-po... by p1mrx on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @06:39PM (#23085965)

What problem are you trying to solve?

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Re:'Artificial leaf' concept inspires research into solar-po... by pacman83 on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @07:01PM (#23086131)

That is always the most important question, isn't it?

I am looking at RV applications, thinking series would be ideal to reduce wiring cost, but just learned that a small patch on one panel of shade lowers current in the whole series, when wired that way. If there's some way they could be wired as a tree, with the high amperage portion of the circuit fairly short, that seems more efficient. But then I guess I have just reinvented the power grid... I'm talking about residential scale, though, or smaller.

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Re:'Artificial leaf' concept inspires research into solar-po... by p1mrx on Tuesday May 05, 2020 @10:17PM (#23087329)

So you're trying to connect an array of solar panels in series, such that shading one doesn't limit the current of the others. Isn't that normally solved using bypass diodes?

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Re:'Artificial leaf' concept inspires research into solar-po... by pacman83 on Saturday May 09, 2020 @11:55AM (#23125777)

I guess you just solved my problem. This is a topic I'm just beginning to look into. Thank you.

But now I'm wondering why are panels made this way? I mean internally they're wired in series or at least substantially so. and I've read that shading a small portion of one panel will drastically reduce the output of that one panel. Is it possible to create a panel (e.g. nominally 12 volt system) with bypass diodes inside it? If so then why wouldn't they have been doing this all along?

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