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Scientists Design A Solar Panel That Generates Electricity At Night

18 April 22

Is it possible for solar panels to generate energy even when the sun isn’t shining? Most people would think not, but scientists have proven otherwise. 

Scientists at Stanford University have created a solar panel that doesn’t require sunlight to generate electricity. This means that it can produce electricity both during the day and night, resulting in a 24-hour source of green power. 

How does a solar panel generate electricity?

When the sun shines on a solar panel, the photovoltaic cells in the panel absorb the energy from the sun. This energy causes electricity to flow by forcing electrical charges to shift in response to an internal electrical field in the cell. Technically, this wouldn’t work at night because the photovoltaic cells present in solar panels need sunlight. 

How can a solar panel generate electricity at night?

“During the day, there’s a light coming in from the Sun and hitting the solar cell, but during the night, something of a reverse happens,” researcher Sid Assawaworrarit says. “There’s actually light going out [from the solar panel], and we use that to generate electricity at night. The photons going out into the night sky actually cool down the solar cell,” he says. 

When photons leave the solar panel’s upwards surface, they bring heat with them. That means a solar panel’s surface will be a few degrees cooler than the air around it on a clear night when there are no clouds to bounce infrared light back towards the Earth.

Assawaworrarit and his colleagues are taking advantage of the temperature difference. A thermoelectric generator can absorb part of the heat that is being transferred from the warmer air to the cooler solar panel and convert it to energy. 

This technology only produces a modest quantity of energy, just enough to light a few LEDs or charge a mobile. It might, however, be utilised by the nearly 1 billion people who are off the grid, some of whom rely on solar energy yet do not have access to electricity at night.

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