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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday February 02 2020, @02:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the gotta-wear-shades dept.

A concept paper published in ACS Photonics, describes a photovoltaic cell that works at night.

According Jeremy Munday, one of the paper's authors and a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC Davis

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

The described cell is thermoradiative and emits infrared radiation to space, which has a much lower than Earth temperature of 2.73 Kelvin.

"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.

Journal Reference: [Nighttime Photovoltaic Cells: Electrical Power Generation by Optically Coupling with Deep Space, ACS Photonics (DOI: 10.1021/acsphotonics.9b00679)


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 02 2020, @08:22PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 02 2020, @08:22PM (#952828)

    The problem is they are wildly terrible at it.

    Not sure if he has found something novel here or just another iteration on the a thermometric generator. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_generator [wikipedia.org] You can buy them by the gross on alibaba and mouser.

    The issue with those usually is the heat dissipation and eventual equilibrium between the two sides. Usually the heat is removed from the system with one big giant heat sink on one side (a radiating body).

    So wait and see if it is something novel or just more of the same before getting too excited.

    They are neat though.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 02 2020, @11:19PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 02 2020, @11:19PM (#952915)

    I'm pretty sure it's more of the same, just about all of these articles end up being more of the same.