Solar panels can only generate electricity for half a day, so researchers at the University of New South Wales in Syney have found something for the other half. The new panels generate electricity with the heat left over from the ground at night, thanks to special diodes. The efficiency is still rigorous, 100,000 times less than a modern solar panel, but the first steps have been taken.
How can you use solar panels when the sun isn’t even shining? Well, the researchers only use the sun indirectly. During the day the sun warms the earth and this heat is absorbed by everything, then at night this energy is sent back into space. According to the researchers, residual heat from the sun can therefore be converted into electricity at night.
used by researchers thermoradiative diodes to convert infrared heat radiation into electricity. The diodes are made of the same material as the main component in night vision goggles. This process is called photovoltaic, that is, the conversion of sunlight into electricity. “Wherever the energy flow is, people can transform energy into other forms. (…) thermoradiative process; We redirect infrared (heat) energy to the cold universe before leaving the hot earth.”
For now, the result is very small, but the researchers stress that the first solar panels were also only 2 percent efficient in converting solar radiation into electricity. Today it is rapidly increasing to over 20 percent. The goal of this new technology is to eventually match one-tenth of a solar panel’s power capacities to those nightly panels.
Said thermoradiative diodes; tiny cells that can convert heat from the sun into electricity
Source: UNSW Syney
Source: Hardware Info
