How to Make Electricity from Solar Energy – On Demand

Chalmers University of Technology researchers are developing molecular systems that capture sunlight and release it as heat on demand. The achievement could potentially replace batteries and solar cells.

“This is a radically new way of generating electricity from solar energy. It means that we can use solar energy to produce electricity regardless of weather, time of day, season, or geographical location. It is a closed system that can operate without causing carbon dioxide emissions,” says research leader Kasper Moth-Poulsen  , Professor at the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Chalmers.

Transcript

00:00:15 During the last ten years, we have been working on developing molecular systems that can capture sunlight, store it and release it as heat on demand. The new thing here is that we have developed a device that can convert this heat into electric power in a very local way. It could potentially replace a combination of batteries and solar cells. I'm very excited about this work. We hope with future development

00:01:42 this will be an important part in the future energy system.