To address inefficiencies in transmitting electricity over smart grids, engineers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and their collaborators have developed a light-activated switch that, if fully deployed, could reduce carbon emissions by more than 10 percent.
Capable of sending high-voltage, direct-current power along grid lines and switching high voltages up to 10 times faster than today’s solid-state devices, the transistor-like technology has been licensed to a California company for commercialization. The device is described in a paper published online by Scientific Reports.
LLNL scientist Stephen Sampayan, the project’s original principal investigator, said the device could be used to efficiently control and transmit power with substantially lower energy losses. By allowing more energy to flow into the power grid, deploying the devices in smart grids will result in less carbon dioxide creation for the amount of energy used. Researchers concluded this could potentially reduce billions of metric tons of CO2 from being released globally per year.
“A new and faster high-voltage, transistor-like device is coming of age,” Sampayan said. “The real breakthrough is that this is the first time we’ve been able to do bulk conduction of electricity with light control. Most of the light switches that exist now have been used as on-off switches, and you have virtually no control over them. This is more than an on-off switch — this technology gives users the ability to control the power more efficiently, essentially mimicking a transistor.”