text: Similar to microbial fuel cells, biological photovoltaic systems which employ whole organisms have the advantage over non-biological fuel cells and photovoltaic systems of being able to self-assemble and self-repair (i.e. the photosynthetic organism is able to reproduce itself).  The ability of the organism to store energy allows for power generation from biological photovoltaic systems in the dark, circumventing the grid supply and demand problems sometimes faced by conventional photovoltaics.  Additionally, the use of photosynthetic organisms that fix carbon dioxide means the assembly of the light harvesting material in a biological photovoltaic system could have a negative carbon footprint.
  Compared to microbial fuel cells, which use heterotrophic microorganisms, biological photovoltaic systems need no input of organic compounds to supply reducing equivalents to the system.  This improves the efficiency of light-to-electricity conversion by minimising the number of reactions separating the capture of light energy and reduction of the anode.  A disadvantage of using oxygenic photosynthetic material in bioelectrochemical systems is that the production of oxygen in the anodic chamber has a detrimental effect on the cell voltage.