Thursday, March 28

Stanford engineers create a solar panel that also generates electricity at night


A team of Stanford engineers invent a solar panel that generates electricity not only during the day, but also at night. The explanation for it is very interesting, and we are going to show it to you.

Sid Assawaworrarit, a researcher at Stanford, and his team, have managed to assemble a normal solar panel with an integrated thermoelectric generator, is capable of achieving a small amount of electricity thanks to the temperature difference between the air and the residual heat of the solar panels.

As this researcher expresses, “During the day it makes a light that comes from the Sun that hits the solar panel, but at night, something happens the other way around. There is actually light coming out of the solar panel, and we use that to generate electricity at night. The photons leaving the surface of the panel, what they do is cool the same

This happens because solar panels (like anything with a temperature above absolute zero) emit infrared radiation, and this Stanford team wants to take advantage of it.

The amount of energy that the earth receives from the Sun is overwhelming, close to 173,000 terawattsof which the 30% is reflected by clouds, particles in the atmosphere and reflective surfaces such as snowy mountains. The rest heats the land, oceans, clouds, the atmosphere and all the rest of the planet.

Those previously mentioned photons leaving the surface of the panel they carry heat with them. That means that on a clear night sky (if there are no clouds to reflect infrared light back to Earth), the surface of the panel will be less cold in temperature than the air around it.

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That difference in temperature is what Assawaworrarit and his team are taking advantage of to obtain energy, using a device called a thermoelectric generator that can capture some of that heat and convert it into electricity.

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This device was tested outdoors on the roof of Stanford University and generated hardly any 50 milliwatts per square meterand likewise Sid found himself excited with that result, saying that this is just the beginning and that they are not going to stop there.

Assawaworrarit comments that with a couple of improvements and in a more optimal location, could generate twice the amount of electricitydata that is very encouraging.

We recently told you that one of the options being investigated for the future had to do with solar panels that do not need direct sunlight, and that it would be a very important advance.

And it is that the Sun is one of the most productive sources of energy in our universe, as they also demonstrated being able to generate drinking water using only sunlight. Or like Elon Musk himself, who took the opportunity to suggest to the President of Spain the idea of ​​generating an array of solar panels to power the whole of Europe.

It is interesting to see how technology advances little by little, and in this case in a good way, since everything that allows us to use renewable energies will be beneficial in the medium and long term. We will be waiting to see how this technology advances.

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