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esearchers at Stanford University have built a prototype of a small solar panel that can generate electricity day and night.
According to the paper published in Applied Physics Letters, it acts like a classic solar panel, converting sunlight into electricity during the day. At night, embedded thermoelectric generators (TEGs) "harvest electricity from the temperature difference between the photovoltaic cells and the surrounding environment."

They attached photovoltaic cells with an insulating material called a thermoelectric module, said Shanhui Fan, an electrical engineer at Stanford University who led the research. The material acts like a hydroelectric dam, absorbing heat flow and generating energy from it.

Experts believe that this kind of power generation equipment is very suitable for installation in areas with large temperature difference between day and night, such as northwest China and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, where there is enough direct sunlight during the day, and the air temperature is very low at night, so the geographical environment is very favorable for this kind of power generation equipment. be effective. my country is the world's largest producer of solar panels and the largest country in solar power generation, so this technology may be of great significance to the development of my country's solar energy industry.

After the publication of the paper, the technology has been regarded as a breakthrough in the field of solar photovoltaic power generation, but at present this power generation device still produces very little electricity at night, and the power generated at night is only 50mW (milliwatts) per square meter, driving A 100-watt light bulb requires several tens of square meters of solar power panels, so it is basically still difficult to use effectively, while standard solar panels are about ideal daytime power generation, with a power of about 1000W per square meter (Watts), the power generation during the day and night cannot be compared at all, and the heat stored by photovoltaic power generation cools faster at night, and the power generated by this technology will decay very quickly until there is no power, so although this invention is amazing, it is It is still far from practical application.

However, the inventor believes that the current design is just an attempt, there is a lot of room for improvement, and its power generation efficiency at night will also be greatly improved in the future.

Source from: cnbeta.com