Highly Efficient Perovskite Solar Cell Photocharging of Lithium Ion Battery Using DC-DC Booster

Solar cells become a viable energy source to charge lithium ion batteries. Here a simple and efficient photocharging design approach is demonstrated, where a promising low cost single junction solar cell such as perovskite solar cell or dye sensitized solar cell efficiently charges a Li4Ti5O12-LiCoO2 Li-ion cell using a DC-DC voltage boost converter. The converter boosts the low input voltage of a single junction solar cell to charge a lithium ion cell and offers advantages including maximum power point tracking of solar photovoltaics and overvoltage protection for the lithium ion cell. This is the first demonstration of this technology. This approach leads to the highest reported overall efficiency of 9.36% and average storage efficiency of 77.2% at 0.5 C discharge for a perovskite solar cell-converter charging. The high efficiency for the perovskite solar cell-converter charging is attributed to maximum power harvesting along with high power conversion efficiency of the perovskite solar cell and low potential polarization between the charge and discharge voltage plateaus for the Li4Ti5O12-LiCoO2 Li-ion cell.