You’ve probably read a number of articles from various news sources that the cost of solar panels has been dropping excessively lately. You might be already making plans of becoming completely independent from the grid, avoiding power disruptions, and, at the same time, saving a lot of money. This is not far from being the truth.
Manufacturers now have reliable tools to measure thin-film thickness during the production of solar panels, which reduces costs and is making solar panels more and more affordable for an average family.
But the state of current affairs is such that the grid is still not perfect, and the abundance of energy your solar panels will generate will be nowhere to store since the grid is not equipped to withstand such a huge supply of power.
The great news is that scientists keep working on ways to store generated solar energy. University of California researchers have developed what looks like a mechanism that will allow storing energy.
Currently, panels can only store solar energy for a fraction of seconds but with the new technology that the chemists from UCLA came up with, it will be possible to store the energy generated by the panels for few weeks. This may also revolutionize the way solar cells are being manufactured. The scientists drew inspiration from biology and the way plants generate energy through photosynthesis. More information can be found in the July 19 issue of the journal Science.