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iEnergy 2023, 2(2): 93-99 https://doi.org/10.23919/IEN.2023.0015
Letter | Open Access | Issue | Published: 01 June 2023

Rational TENG arrays as a panel for harvesting large-scale raindrop energy

Show Author's Information Zong Li1,2,T( ),  Bin Cao2,T( ),  Zhonghao Zhang3,T,  Liming Wang2,  Zhong Lin Wang4,5( )
State Grid Qingdao Power Supply Company, State Grid, Qingdao 266002, China
Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen 518055, China
China Electric Power Research Institute, Beijing 100192, China
Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100083, China
School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30332-0245, USA

These authors contributed equally to this work.

Keywords:
Triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG), energy harvesting, droplet, bridge array generators (BAGs)
Cite this article:
Li Z, Cao B, Zhang Z, et al. Rational TENG arrays as a panel for harvesting large-scale raindrop energy. iEnergy, 2023, 2(2): 93-99. https://doi.org/10.23919/IEN.2023.0015
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Abstract Full text Electronic supplementary material About this article

Raindrops contain abundant renewable energy including both kinetic energy and electrostatic energy, and how to effectively harvest it becomes a hot research topic. Recently, a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) using liquid–solid contact electrification has been demonstrated for achieving an ultra-high instantaneous power output. However, when harvesting the energy from the dense raindrops instead of a single droplet, a more rational structure to eliminate the mutual influence of individual generation units is needed for maximize the output. In this work, a “solar panel-like” bridge array generators (BAGs) is proposed. By adopting array lower electrodes (ALE) and bridge reflux structure (BRS), BAGs could minimize the sharp drop in the peak power output for large-scale energy harvesting devices. When the area of the raindrop energy harvesting device is 15 × 15 cm2, the peak power output of BAGs reached 200 W/m2, which is remarkable for paving a potential industrial approach for effective harvesting raindrop energy at a large scale.


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Electronic supplementary material
About this article

Rational TENG arrays as a panel for harvesting large-scale raindrop energy

Show Author's information Zong Li1,2,T( ), Bin Cao2,T( ), Zhonghao Zhang3,T, Liming Wang2, Zhong Lin Wang4,5( )
State Grid Qingdao Power Supply Company, State Grid, Qingdao 266002, China
Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen 518055, China
China Electric Power Research Institute, Beijing 100192, China
Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100083, China
School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30332-0245, USA

These authors contributed equally to this work.

Abstract

Raindrops contain abundant renewable energy including both kinetic energy and electrostatic energy, and how to effectively harvest it becomes a hot research topic. Recently, a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) using liquid–solid contact electrification has been demonstrated for achieving an ultra-high instantaneous power output. However, when harvesting the energy from the dense raindrops instead of a single droplet, a more rational structure to eliminate the mutual influence of individual generation units is needed for maximize the output. In this work, a “solar panel-like” bridge array generators (BAGs) is proposed. By adopting array lower electrodes (ALE) and bridge reflux structure (BRS), BAGs could minimize the sharp drop in the peak power output for large-scale energy harvesting devices. When the area of the raindrop energy harvesting device is 15 × 15 cm2, the peak power output of BAGs reached 200 W/m2, which is remarkable for paving a potential industrial approach for effective harvesting raindrop energy at a large scale.

Keywords: Triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG), energy harvesting, droplet, bridge array generators (BAGs)

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Publication history

Received: 01 March 2023
Revised: 29 April 2023
Accepted: 05 May 2023
Published: 01 June 2023
Issue date: June 2023

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© The author(s) 2023.

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under Grant No. 52007095 and in part by NSFC under Grant No. 51977118.

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This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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