Solar Energy

Batteries are a hot topic for SPARRCI researchers

Published

4 years ago

March 2, 2021

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Batteries are a hot topic for SPARRCI researchers

If you have flown commercially in recent years, you may have noticed that certain items with large lithium-ion batteries can’t be checked. Instead, they must be in your carry-on and turned off.

Objects with these batteries, such as hoverboards or even cell phones, have been known to spontaneously combust, especially if they are physically damaged somehow. The resulting fire presents a danger to people in their vicinity.

So, if these batteries aren’t allowed on airplanes unsupervised, using them to propel the fully electric aircraft of the future may come with some challenges and questions about safety.

Exploring the feasibility of predicting and preventing battery fires before they happen is the idea behind a NASA research activity called SPARRCI, or “Sensor-based Prognostics to Avoid Runaway Reactions and Catastrophic Ignition.”

The big goal is to create a “smart” battery system that would self-monitor, learn about itself as it goes, and if needed say “hey, I’m developing a problem, shut me down” well before it endangers the safety of its aircraft.

“Batteries are a hot topic. Pun intended,” said Brianne DeMattia, lead researcher for SPARRCI at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.

One of the safety threats posed by batteries in electrically propelled aircraft is fire. These larger batteries, like those needed to power hoverboards and cars, have been known to catch fire because of an effect called “thermal runaway.”

Large batteries are basically many cells of small batteries packaged together. If one cell has a malfunction and starts to heat up in temperature, it causes the neighboring cell to do the same. Eventually, the whole battery overheats and could start a fire.

Battery sensors like the ones used by our phones and computers only measure the temperature outside the battery. SPARRCI is designing batteries with sensors inside them to identify the conditions that lead to thermal runaway, then alert the aircraft’s operator to the potential trouble.

The operator would then be able to correct the problem or replace the battery before the dangerous overheating ever occurs. This new, fine-tuned view of the inside of a battery could lead to safer and better performing energy storage – a new generation of batteries.

“With current batteries, we just try to contain fire so it doesn’t spread. But the best approach is to try and prevent the overheating and fire entirely. That’s what we’re trying to do with SPARRCI,” DeMattia said.

Size Matters

Another research area of SPARRCI is battery size and power storage.

A typical remote control for a television uses a couple of AA-sized batteries. A small electric aircraft such as the X-57 Maxwell, NASA’s first all-electric aircraft, may need a battery with the equivalent power of more than 5,000 AA-sized batteries.

Currently, large batteries providing that kind of power must be packaged in bulky containers to make sure that if something gets hot or catches fire, the heat is insulated, protecting other battery cells and the vehicle.

The size and weight of these containers could be reduced in the future with SPARRCI’s ability to show what’s going on inside the battery.

If the aircraft’s pilot or maintenance crew know that thermal runaway could occur, the battery can be replaced and never have a chance to catch fire.

If fire isn’t a threat anymore, extra insulation isn’t required, and the battery’s overall size and weight can be reduced. This would allow more space inside the vehicle to be dedicated to energy storage, improving its range and available power.

Since the activity began in 2020, SPARCCI researchers have successfully begun working out how to install sensors inside batteries. The next step? Identify what conditions the sensors inside the battery should look for to detect imminent battery problems or failures.

The View Inside

SPARRCI is part of the Convergent Aeronautics Solutions (CAS) project, which is designed to give NASA researchers the resources they need to determine if their ideas to solve some of aviation’s biggest technical challenges are feasible and perhaps worthy of additional pursuit within NASA or industry.

One of the things that makes CAS activities like SPARRCI unique is the requirement for researchers from different technical disciplines and NASA field centers to collaborate and bring their unique expertise to bear on the problem.

For SPARRCI, that collaboration led to some memorable moments for battery and sensor researchers at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia, who have been working with their counterparts at NASA Glenn.

The Langley researchers evaluated batteries from Glenn using a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), a device similar to the ultrasound machines used in doctors’ offices and hospitals.

“Our goal was to collect images of the guts of the battery during a test without having to open them up post-mortem. This allowed us to see conditions changing in real time and run non-destructive scans to get a sense of the ‘topography’ of the internal surfaces as they morphed during operation,” DeMattia said.

What they saw during the scans was, well, out of this world.

“As we used the SEM to scan images of these lithium metal surfaces inside the battery they sometimes looked like the surface of the Moon! It was one of the coolest things. We spent hours around the computer, ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’ often thrown around, with an occasional ‘What on Earth is that?’ thrown in for good measure.”

“It’s not something that any of us have done or seen before, but the images did help us tie together the data we collected,” DeMattia said. “”We couldn’t have done this without the different disciplines coming together. It has been really exciting.”

SPARRCI was selected to be a two-year activity that began on Oct. 1, 2019. Interruptions in the pursuit prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic might lead to an extension, although nothing has been decided yet.

Once completed, information gathered, and experience gained during SPARRCI will be shared with others within NASA and the broader aviation community.

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Solar Energy

New system offers early warning of dust storms to protect solar power output

Published

4 days ago

April 16, 2025

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New system offers early warning of dust storms to protect solar power output

by Simon Mansfield

Sydney, Australia (SPX) Apr 10, 2025

A new predictive platform called iDust is poised to transform dust storm forecasting and improve solar energy output in dust-prone regions. Developed by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, iDust offers high-resolution, fast-turnaround dust forecasts that could help mitigate power losses across solar farms, particularly in arid zones.

The tool was created under the leadership of Dr. Chen Xi from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics and detailed in the Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems (JAMES).

“Dust storms not only block sunlight but also accumulate on solar panels, decreasing their power output.” said Chen, outlining the motivation behind the project. With China’s rapid expansion of solar installations in desert areas, the need for precise and timely dust forecasts has become increasingly urgent to avoid operational disruptions and revenue shortfalls.

Traditional systems like those from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) often lack the spatial resolution and processing speed needed for optimal solar planning. iDust addresses these limitations by embedding dust-related dynamics directly into its forecast engine. This allows the system to generate forecasts with 10-kilometer resolution-a fourfold improvement over previous models-while maintaining near-parity in computational load. Crucially, iDust can deliver 10-day forecasts within six hours of initial observations.

The effectiveness of iDust was put to the test on April 13, 2024, when it successfully tracked a severe dust storm over Bayannur in northern China. Such storms can distort solar energy projections by as much as 25% if unaccounted for, underscoring the value of integrating dust modeling into energy planning.

Designed for practical deployment, iDust aims to assist solar facility operators and grid managers in optimizing power production and reducing losses due to airborne particulates. As China pushes toward its carbon neutrality goals, innovations like iDust will be central to achieving sustainable energy reliability.

Researchers plan to expand the system for global application, allowing other countries with desert-based solar assets to benefit from enhanced dust forecasting.

Research Report:The Efficient Integration of Dust and Numerical Weather Prediction for Renewable Energy Applications

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Solar Energy

Solar park boom threatens Spain’s centuries-old olive trees

Published

4 days ago

April 15, 2025

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Solar park boom threatens Spain’s centuries-old olive trees

By Rosa SULLEIRO

Lopera, Spain (AFP) April 14, 2025

At his farm in southern Spain, Francisco Campos looked worriedly at a green sea of centuries-old olive trees that he fears will face the axe to make way for a proposed solar park.

“Cutting down olive trees to install solar panels is a crime,” the 64-year-old farmer told AFP in Lopera, a town of whitewashed buildings with 3,600 residents in the sunny southern region of Andalusia, Spain’s olive-growing heartland.

Spain is the world’s top producer of olive oil, but the fertile agricultural land long used by olive producers is now in high demand from power firms looking to install solar farms.

And with nearly 3,000 hours of sunshine per year, Andalusia is one of the Spanish regions with the highest number of solar panels as a renewables boom makes the country a European leader in green energy.

Renewable energy firms such as Greenalia and FRV Arroyadas have requested permission to build multiple solar farms near Lopera, which farmers say will affect up to 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres) of property.

The businesses negotiated agreements to lease the bulk of the land required for their projects but encountered significant opposition from hundreds of small landowners.

This prompted the regional government of Andalusia to announce it will expropriate some land needed for the plants, declaring them to be in “the public interest”.

“Is it in the public interest for them to take my land and give it to a company so that the company can profit? This has no benefit for us,” said Campos.

“Our way of life is going to be destroyed,” he added.

– ‘From our ancestors’ –

Campaigners predict that the eight solar projects planned for the area will require the removal of nearly 100,000 olive trees.

The regional government puts the figure significantly lower, at 13,000.

Local residents anticipated power companies would seek to install solar panels in the area, but they never imagined “they would come and take away your property,” said Rafael Alcala, a spokesman for a platform that represents the solar plants’ opponents.

In support of landowners impacted by the latest round of expropriations, dozens of farmers on tractors — some holding signs that read “We don’t want solar plants” — gathered on a recent morning outside Lopera.

“These lands come from our ancestors. What am I going to leave to my children now?” Maria Josefa Palomo, a 67-year-old pensioner, said at the protest.

Losing 500 hectares of olive groves would wipe out more than two million euros ($2.3 million) in annual revenues, according to local olive oil cooperative La Loperana.

Campaigners say 5,000 olive trees have already been uprooted from land belonging to a farmer in Lopera who signed an agreement with one of the firms behind a solar park. More could follow.

In an effort to stop the projects, opponents have filed lawsuits against the regional government and the companies involved.

– ‘Until the end’ –

Spain generated a record 56.8 percent of its electricity last year from renewable sources such as wind and solar, according to grid operator Red Electrica.

Leveraging on its sunny plains, windy hillsides and fast-flowing rivers, Spain intends to raise the share of renewable-generated electricity to 81 percent of the total by 2030 as part of efforts to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

The regional government has defended the renewables projects, saying less than one percent of the land they use in the region had to be expropriated from reluctant landowners.

Spanish solar industry group UNEF, which represents more than 800 companies, says the projects boost tax revenues in rural communities.

They generate “significant amounts” that can be used to improve public services, said UNEF head Jose Donoso.

Solar park opponents in Lopera disagree and vow to continue their fight.

“Until the end. Nobody is going to take what is ours away from us,” said Juan Cantera, a 28-year-old farmer.

“Olive oil is everything in Lopera”.

rs/ds/imm/gv/tym

RED ELECTRICA CORPORACION

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Solar Energy

Lighter flexible tandem solar cells set new benchmark in efficiency

Published

4 days ago

April 15, 2025

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Lighter flexible tandem solar cells set new benchmark in efficiency

by Riko Seibo

Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Apr 15, 2025

The Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER) has achieved a major milestone in solar technology by developing ultra-light and bendable tandem solar cells composed of perovskite and CIGS materials. These flexible solar cells have reached a record-breaking power conversion efficiency of 23.64 percent, the highest yet for their class.

Unlike traditional crystalline silicon-based cells, which are widely used due to cost efficiency and scalability, the new tandem design leverages thin-film technologies for enhanced adaptability. Silicon-perovskite tandems have reached up to 34.6 percent efficiency, but their weight and fragility restrict usage in weight-sensitive sectors such as aerospace and automotive. To address these challenges, KIER researchers turned to combining perovskite with copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS), a semiconductor known for its flexibility and suitability for curved surfaces.

CIGS thin-film solar cells can be fabricated on substrates like polyimide and metal foils, making them ideal for integration into non-flat surfaces. However, these cells have historically faced obstacles in efficiency and ease of production. KIER’s innovation lies in both its materials engineering and a novel lift-off fabrication technique.

The team introduced a process in which a glass base is first coated with a polyimide layer. The tandem solar cell is then constructed atop this foundation and subsequently detached from the glass, producing a freestanding, flexible device. This method offers stability during fabrication and improves layer uniformity, which enhances performance and consistency.

Another breakthrough came from managing alkali metal diffusion. During fabrication, potassium atoms from the glass substrate can penetrate the CIGS layer, creating defects that impair charge mobility. Using computational modeling, KIER scientists showed that the polyimide coating effectively suppresses this unwanted diffusion, resulting in fewer structural flaws and better performance.

The culmination of these innovations was a solar cell that not only surpassed the previous efficiency benchmark of 18.1 percent for flexible perovskite/CIGS tandems but also maintained 97.7 percent of its output after 100,000 flexing cycles, confirming its mechanical resilience.

“This research is a key achievement that demonstrates the commercial potential of next-generation high-efficiency solar cell technology with flexibility and lightness,” said Dr. Inyoung Jeong. “It serves as an important milestone toward realizing ultralight, flexible solar cells with 30 percent efficiency in the future.”

Dr. Kihwan Kim, principal investigator of the project, added, “The power-to-weight ratio of the fabricated solar cell is approximately 10 times higher than that of perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells, making it highly promising for applications in fields that require ultralight solar modules, such as building exteriors, vehicles, and aerospace.”

The study, published in the March issue of Joule (Impact Factor: 38.6), was conducted with support from KIER’s R and D Program and in collaboration with Professor Tae Kyung Lee of Gyeongsang National University and Professor Hae-Jin Kim of Yonsei University.

Research Report:Flexible and lightweight perovskite/Cu(In,Ga)Se2 tandem solar cells