#[1]alternate

  (BUTTON)

  [2]Thor Benson
  2.2.2020 1:00 PM

  A solar panel seen against the night sky

  No Sun, no problem

Anti-solar panel can generate electricity at night, researchers say

  In order to develop solar panels that generate electricity at night,
  you just need them to operate in the exact opposite way solar panels
  work during the day.
  Shutterstock

  One of the problems with solar panels is that they don't generate
  electricity at night, so we have to store the electricity they generate
  during the day to power things during the evening. That works fine, but
  what if we could develop solar panels that did generate electricity at
  night? It's possible, and the way it works is pretty surprising.

  Researchers from the University of California, Davis explain in a new
  [3]paper that was just published in the journal ACS Photonics that if
  you want to create a solar panel that generates electricity at night,
  then you just have to create one that operates the exact opposite way
  solar panels work during the day. It's being referred to as the
  "anti-solar panel."

  Solar panels are cold compared to the Sun, so they absorb the Sun's
  light and turn it into energy. Space is very cold, so if you point a
  panel on Earth that is comparatively warm toward it, it will radiate
  heat as invisible infrared light. This allows you to generate
  electricity by capturing that power. The paper claims such a device
  could generate about a quarter of the electricity at night that a
  normal solar panel generates during the day.

  Jeremy Munday, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer
  Engineering at UC Davis who is an author of the paper, tells Inverse
  that whether it's a solar panel or this anti-solar panel, these things
  are essentially just "heat engines."

  "You have heat energy coming from the Sun towards the Earth and that
  normal solar cell picks off that energy as it's transmitted from the
  Sun to the Earth, so basically you need these two different temperature
  bodies and some way of converting that power," Munday says. "What this
  nighttime device does is a similar sort of thing—where it's just taking
  a hot body and a cold body—but now the relatively hot body is the Earth
  and space is the cold body. As this heat is flowing from the Earth to
  outer space, it's picking that off and converting that into power."

  This kind of device uses what is called a thermoradiative cell to
  generate electricity, as opposed to the photovoltaic cell used by a
  conventional solar panel. Where a solar panel is typically made of
  silicon, which is good at capturing light that's largely in the visible
  spectrum, this device has to be made of something that can capture
  extremely long wavelength light. Munday is currently looking at mercury
  alloys that would be good for this.

  Munday and his team are currently working on developing prototypes to
  see how well they can make this concept work.

  See also: [4]A 200-year-old technology could help millions living off
  the grid

  Other researchers are also looking into how to make solar panels, or
  "anti-solar panels," that generate electricity at night. Researchers at
  Stanford published a [5]paper in the journal Jouele in November showing
  how a [6]thermoelectric generator that radiates heat to the sky can
  generate electricity.

  "Unlike traditional thermoelectric generators, our device couples the
  cold side of the thermoelectric module to a sky-facing surface that
  radiates heat to the cold of space and has its warm side heated by the
  surrounding air, enabling electricity generation at night," the paper
  reads.

  Our batteries have been slowly [7]getting better for years, and so have
  [8]our solar panels, so we don't necessarily need solar panels that can
  generate electricity at night to meet our energy needs. However, if we
  can devise a system that can generate clean energy 24 hours a day, we
  could possibly produce more energy than we need and store it for
  various purposes, such as an emergency. It's better to have too much
  energy than to come up short.

    Abstract: Photovoltaics possess significant potential due to the
    abundance of solar power incident on earth; however, they can only
    generate electricity during daylight hours. In order to produce
    electrical power after the sun has set, we consider an alternative
    photovoltaic concept that uses the earth as a heat source and the
    night sky as a heat sink, resulting in a “nighttime photovoltaic
    cell” that employs thermoradiative photovoltaics and concepts from
    the advancing field of radiative cooling. In this Perspective, we
    discuss the principles of thermoradiative photovoltaics, the
    theoretical limits of applying this concept to coupling with deep
    space, the potential of advanced radiative cooling techniques to
    enhance their performance, and a discussion of the practical limits,
    scalability, and integrability of this nighttime photovoltaic
    concept.

  Related Tags
    * [9]Solar Energy
    * [10]Physics
    * [11]Climate Crisis

  Share:

More like this

  Innovation
  5 hours ago

Anti-solar panel that can generate power at night may be ready by 2021

  By Thor Benson
  Science
  1.31.2020 4:50 PM

4 graphs that suggest we can’t blame climate change on solar activity

  By Ian Whittaker and Gareth Dorrian
  Innovation
  14 hours ago

What's next for Tesla's solar roof?

  By Mike Brown

EARN REWARDS & LEARN SOMETHING NEW EVERY DAY.

  ____________________ (BUTTON) SUBMIT

  [ ]

  [ ] (BUTTON) (BUTTON)
  Results for:
  ____________________
  (BUTTON)
    * [12]Science
    * [13]Innovation
    * [14]Entertainment
    * [15]Culture
    * [16]Gaming
    * [17]Mind and Body

    * [18]About
    * [19]Newsletter
    * [20]Terms
    * [21]Topics
    * [22]Privacy
    * [23]Archive
    * [24]DMCA
    * [25]Browse
    * [26]Advertise
    * [27]Contact

  INVERSE © 2020 Bustle Digital Group

  [p-xPmcrFNGfHkBg.gif]
  [p?c1=2&c2=17519299&cs_ucfr=0&cv=2.0&cj=1]
  [tr?id=1636673763227734&ev=PageView&noscript=1]

References

  Visible links
  1. https://www.inverse.com/rss
  2. https://www.inverse.com/profile/thor-benson-18846920
  3. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsphotonics.9b00679
  4. https://www.inverse.com/article/60184-generating-electricity-from-cold-night-sky
  5. https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(19)30412-X
  6. https://thermoelectricsolutions.com/how-thermoelectric-generators-work/
  7. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/batteries-have-gotten-better-but-theres-still-room-for-improvement/
  8. http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2019/future-solar-bright/
  9. https://www.inverse.com/topic/solar-energy
 10. https://www.inverse.com/topic/physics
 11. https://www.inverse.com/topic/climate-crisis
 12. https://www.inverse.com/science
 13. https://www.inverse.com/innovation
 14. https://www.inverse.com/entertainment
 15. https://www.inverse.com/culture
 16. https://www.inverse.com/gaming
 17. https://www.inverse.com/mind-body
 18. https://bustle.company/
 19. https://www.inverse.com/newsletter
 20. https://www.inverse.com/terms
 21. https://www.inverse.com/topics/a
 22. https://www.inverse.com/privacy
 23. https://www.inverse.com/archive
 24. https://www.inverse.com/dmca
 25. https://www.inverse.com/browse
 26. https://bustle.company/advertise
 27. https://www.inverse.com/contact

  Hidden links:
 29. https://www.inverse.com/
 30. https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.inverse.com%2Finnovation%2Fresearchers-have-a-counterintuitive-concept-for-solar-panels-that-work-at-night%3Futm_term%3Dshare
 31. https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.inverse.com%2Finnovation%2Fresearchers-have-a-counterintuitive-concept-for-solar-panels-that-work-at-night&via=inversedotcom
 32. https://www.inverse.com/innovation/researchers-have-a-counterintuitive-concept-for-solar-panels-that-work-at-night
 33. mailto:?to=&subject=Check%20out%20this%20cool%20story%20on%20Inverse!&body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.inverse.com%2Finnovation%2Fresearchers-have-a-counterintuitive-concept-for-solar-panels-that-work-at-night
 34. https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.inverse.com%2Finnovation%2Fresearchers-have-a-counterintuitive-concept-for-solar-panels-that-work-at-night%3Futm_term%3Dshare
 35. https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.inverse.com%2Finnovation%2Fresearchers-have-a-counterintuitive-concept-for-solar-panels-that-work-at-night&via=inversedotcom
 36. https://www.inverse.com/innovation/researchers-have-a-counterintuitive-concept-for-solar-panels-that-work-at-night
 37. mailto:?to=&subject=Check%20out%20this%20cool%20story%20on%20Inverse!&body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.inverse.com%2Finnovation%2Fresearchers-have-a-counterintuitive-concept-for-solar-panels-that-work-at-night
 38. https://www.inverse.com/innovation/this-researcher-is-working-on-anti-solar-panel-prototype
 39. https://www.inverse.com/science/four-graphs-that-suggest-we-cant-blame-climate-change-on-solar-activity
 40. https://www.inverse.com/innovation/tesla-solar-roof-2020
 41. https://www.inverse.com/
 42. https://www.facebook.com/inverse
 43. https://twitter.com/inversedotcom
 44. https://www.instagram.com/inverse/
 45. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEA0LA7k6hwZM-xocspYQjQ

You are viewing proxied material from 1436.ninja. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.