New Solar Panels Can Produce Electricity at Night - Myth or Truth?

It is a known fact that solar panels harness sunlight to produce electricity. But a recent breakthrough in solar power technology has astonished the industry.

Solar electricity produced at night?

You read it right!

Over 770 million people around the world have no access to electricity. With fuel getting expensive each day, affording electricity has become problematic for those using power from utility grids. 

Solar panels are the most efficient and affordable source to power homes and buildings. A typical PV panel only generates energy from sunlight; for nighttime, people have to switch to either grid supply or battery power. 

The only drawback that affected solar panels' performance was their inability to produce energy in the dark.

Scientists considered this issue and started working on the better performance of solar cells. 

In 2022, researchers at Stanford University published a paper in the Journal of Applied Physics Letters explaining the process of generating energy through solar panels at night. They have already found that the erected solar panels could be modified to generate electricity at night.

The technology that produces electricity from solar panels at night uses radiative cooling. When the sun sets, the earth cools down and releases the absorbed heat into the atmosphere. The whole process of the earth cooling down is known as radiative cooling.

As per researchers, solar panels can be modified by installing thermoelectric generators to harness the power produced by the natural radiative cooling process. Thermoelectric generators can make solar panels work in a reverse manner at night by heating the PV panels through energy emitted by the earth.

Here are some remarks from the researchers on this groundbreaking invention;

“You want the thermoelectric to have very good contact with both the cold side, which is the solar cell, and the hot side, which is the ambient environment. If you don’t have that, you’re not going to get much power out of it.” Sid Assawaworrarit

“What we managed to do here is build the whole thing from off-the-shelf components, have a very good thermal contact, and the most expensive thing in the whole setup was the thermoelectric itself.” Zunaid Omair

“None of these components were specifically engineered for this purpose. So, I think there’s room for improvement, in the sense that, if one really engineered each of these components for our purpose, I think the performance could be better.” Shanhui Fan

In 2020, research students at the University of California proposed a similar anti-solar panels technique.

The working principle is simple; the solar panels radiate the heat to outer space during the night, creating a temperature difference between the panels and the air. The thermoelectric generators utilize the temperature difference and produce electricity.

Scientists are working day and night to optimize the newly modified solar device's thermal insulation and thermoelectric components. Moreover, they are exploring engineering improvements to the PV cells to enhance the radiative cooling performance without affecting the solar energy harvesting capabilities.

Also Read: Leaf-Like PV Devices Can Generate More Power Than Solar Panels