There will be no Plug Points in the Future!

How is it possible? Where will we charge our phones from? Where will we get electricity from?

Nature made us, we are nature, we will be nature. Nature has always inspired us and awed us.

If you have all seen the TV show Richard Hammond's Engineering Connections (Which I am a big fan of) we see most design & engineering solutions directly come from nature or at least inspired from nature.

Inspired by an fern, scientists have developed a new graphene based electrode that could boost the capacity of existing solar integrable storage technologies.

The solar technology had a limitation, energy storage for the time when sun is not shining. RMIT University, Melbourne have developed a prototype. The intricate structure of this plant, particularly of the Polystichum munitum species, recently inspired a group of researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia to adapt this design to a solar-powered application.

The newly developed design of this energy storage unit integrates laser scribed graphene micro-supercapacitors.

The immense storage capability of this device brings a new perspective into the reality that solar electricity options can one day become a cost-effective platform for all. One of the greatest challenges present in the solar industry is the development of storage units that maintain the original amounts of stored energy to be used for future use, such as during seasonal changes where energy may be more difficult to be readily collected.

On the other side of the world in Purdue University has made a revolutionary material advances. A new crystalline material that could replace silicon and double the efficiency of solar cells without a significant cost increase.

This material identified by researchers at Purdue University and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the US could double the amount of electricity produced without a significant cost increase.

This would create solar cells thinner than conventional silicon solar cells, and is also flexible, cheap and easy to make. The most common solar cells use silicon as a semiconductor, which can transmit only one-third of the energy because of the band gap, which is the amount of energy needed to boost an electron from a bound state to a conducting state, in which the electrons are able to move, creating electricity.

The electronics and processing is becoming so efficient and heat-less that they would consume few micro ampere of current to get the job done, appliances too would be very efficient with advances in electronic circuitry and overcoming resistance. Also the new batteries in devices of the near future could generate electricity from light, movements and heat. We may never need sockets and plugs anymore.