A Review of Integrated Systems Based on Perovskite Solar Cells and Energy Storage Units: Fundamental, Progresses, Challenges, and Perspectives

With the remarkable progress of photovoltaic technology, next-generation perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have drawn significant attention from both industry and academic community due to sustainable energy production. The single-junction-cell power conversion efficiency (PCE) of PSCs to date has reached up to 25.2%, which is competitive to that of commercial silicon-based solar cells. Currently, solar cells are considered as the individual devices for energy conversion, while a series connection with an energy storage device would largely undermine the energy utilization efficiency and peak power output of the entire system. For substantially addressing such critical issue, advanced technology based on photovoltaic energy conversion–storage integration appears as a promising strategy to achieve the goal. However, there are still great challenges in integrating and engineering between energy harvesting and storage devices. In this review, the state-of-the-art of representative integrated energy conversion–storage systems is initially summarized. The key parameters including configuration design and integration strategies are subsequently analyzed. According to recent progress, the efforts toward addressing the current challenges and critical issues are highlighted, with expectation of achieving practical integrated energy conversion–storage systems in the future.