RK Partners Small Businesses

We partner with private and public business on smart hybrid power plants to build smart communities. Unlike solar panels and solar cells, which rely on photovoltaic technology for the direct generation of electricity, these hybrid devices capture heat from the sun and store it as thermal energy. This addresses some of the issues that have stalled wider-scale adoption of solar power, Providing a way of using solar energy around the clock, despite limited sunlight hours, cloudy days and other constraints. The work, described in a paper published in Joule magazine, combines molecular energy storage and latent heat storage to produce an integrated harvesting and storage device for potential 24/7 operation. The researchers report a harvesting efficiency of 73% at small-scale operation and as high as 90% at large-scale operation. Up to 80% of stored energy was recovered at night and the researchers noted daytime recovery was even higher.