• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Corporate News
  • Generation
  • Oil & Gas
  • Regulation
  • Renewable
    • Climate
    • Solar
    • Wind
  • Storage
  • Tech
  • T & D
Energy News Desk Logo

Energy News Desk

Energy News and Data

Anti-solar cells: A photovoltaic cell that works at night

January 29, 2020 by Solar Industry Mag

What if solar cells worked at night? That’s no joke, according to Jeremy Munday, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC Davis. In fact, a specially designed photovoltaic cell could generate up to 50 watts of power per square meter under ideal conditions at night, about a quarter of what a conventional solar panel can generate in daytime, according to a concept paper by Munday and graduate student Tristan Deppe. The article was published in, and featured on the cover of, the January 2020 issue of ACS Photonics.

Munday, who recently joined UC Davis from the University of Maryland, is developing prototypes of these nighttime solar cells that can generate small amounts of power. The researchers hope to improve the power output and efficiency of the devices.

Munday said that the process is similar to the way a normal solar cell works, but in reverse. An object that is hot compared to its surroundings will radiate heat as infrared light. A conventional solar cell is cool compared to the sun, so it absorbs light.

Space is really, really cold, so if you have a warm object and point it at the sky, it will radiate heat toward it. People have been using this phenomenon for nighttime cooling for hundreds of years. In the last five years, Munday said, there has been a lot of interest in devices that can do this during the daytime (by filtering out sunlight or pointing away from the sun).

Generating power by radiating heat

There’s another kind of device called a thermoradiative cell that generates power by radiating heat to its surroundings. Researchers have explored using them to capture waste heat from engines.

“We were thinking, what if we took one of these devices and put it in a warm area and pointed it at the sky,” Munday said.

This thermoradiative cell pointed at the night sky would emit infrared light because it is warmer than outer space.

“A regular solar cell generates power by absorbing sunlight, which causes a voltage to appear across the device and for current to flow. In these new devices, light is instead emitted and the current and voltage go in the opposite direction, but you still generate power,” Munday said. “You have to use different materials, but the physics is the same.”

The device would work during the day as well, if you took steps to either block direct sunlight or pointed it away from the sun. Because this new type of solar cell could potentially operate around the clock, it is an intriguing option to balance the power grid over the day-night cycle.

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of California – Davis. Original written by Andy Fell. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Original source: Science Daily

Filed Under: Solar

Primary Sidebar

Join The Daily Charge

This week's top 5 stories in your inbox. No spam ever.

Trending

  • Apollo Makes Structured Investment in U.S. Wind Inc.
  • The Canadian Renewable Energy Association Names President and CEO
  • UMD Researchers Receive Grant to Examine Solar, Agriculture
  • Carbon Trust: 70 GW of Floating Wind Capacity by 2040
  • Offshore Wind Industry Needs 77,000 Trained Workers by 2024
  • Enel Starts Construction on Lily Solar+Storage Project
  • eia.gov logo U.S. liquefied natural gas exports remain at low levels this summer
  • eia.gov logo U.S. jet fuel consumption during the week of Thanksgiving was about half of last year’s
  • Standard Solar Completes Brownfield Solar Project
  • K-12 Schools Increasingly Turning to Solar for Savings

Footer

Trending

  • Apollo Makes Structured Investment in U.S. Wind Inc.
  • The Canadian Renewable Energy Association Names President and CEO
  • UMD Researchers Receive Grant to Examine Solar, Agriculture
  • Carbon Trust: 70 GW of Floating Wind Capacity by 2040
  • Offshore Wind Industry Needs 77,000 Trained Workers by 2024

Recent

  • Quick Tips To A Sustainable Future
  • Stem Provides Smart Energy Storage Solutions to Today’s Power
  • EIA's AEO2021 shows U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions rising after the mid-2030s
  • Homeowners associations still a barrier for some would-be solar customers
  • Commentary: With open standards, U.S. can build EV charging infrastructure faster

Search

Contact Us

Write For Us

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2023 · EnergyNewsDesk.com