Stanford engineers invent a solar panel that generates electricity at night
Stanford University researchers have developed a method for using solar panels to generate electricity at night. The invention takes advantage of a phenomenon called radiative cooling.
The skies above Stanford, California, were unusually clear for several nights last October. That was good news for researcher Sid Assawaworrarit and his colleagues. Those conditions were “probably the best of the year,” he tells IE. Assaworrarit isn’t an astronomer grateful that clouds didn’t block starlight from traveling through the atmosphere and reaching the mirror of his telescope. An electrical engineer, he welcomed the cloudless nights for an entirely different reason: a clear night means infrared light from the surface of solar panels can freely radiate out into space. That flow…
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