Conventional wisdom says that electricity is generated in one unit (e.g., wind turbine, photovoltaic cells) and stored in another (e.g., battery, supercapacitor). This paradigm could be changing. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have figured out a way to combine energy generation and storage into a single unit - eliminating intermediate steps and saving energy in the process. "People are accustomed to considering electrical generation and storage as two separate operations done in two separate units," says Zhong Lin Wang, a professor of materials science and engineering at Georgia Tech. "We have put them together in a single hybrid unit to create a self-charging power cell, demonstrating a new technique for charge conversion and storage in one integrated unit."
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