Anti-Solar Panels in 500 Words or Less
By: Asme Iiest Shibpur Student Section
Tags: Energy, Physics, Technology, Solar Energy, Science

By Garima

Can darkness be an energy source?

The answer is yes. And Anti-Solar Panel is the solution.

The anti-solar panel prototype. (Image credit: Stanford University)

It is based on the concept of using heat to generate energy but an inverse version of the solar panel. We know about the traditional solar-panel that generates electricity using the heat difference between the Sun and the Earth.

An anti-Solar Panel is a device that can generate electricity during the night by making use of the heat difference between the surrounding air and the surface of the device that is cooling itself by emitting infrared radiations towards the night sky.

Let us look at how it would work.

Schematics of the energy dispersion towards the night sky. (Image credit: Aaswath P. Raman et al, Stanford University)

These cells work on the principle of the ‘Thermoradiative Process.’ It says an object which is hotter than its surrounding will radiate heat as infrared radiation. A warm object in the space will radiate the heat to its surrounding, which is cooler than itself.

The anti-Solar Panel contains a thermoelectric generator, one side exposed to the air temperature and the other in contact with an aluminium plate. The thermoelectric generator-based device harnesses the variance in temperature between the Earth and outer space by using “a passive cooling mechanism known as radiative sky cooling to maintain the cold side of a thermoelectric generator several degrees below ambient temperature.” The aluminium plate, like a solar panel, actually an anti-solar panel, is facing the night sky and radiates thermal energy towards the sky. This lowers the temperature of the plate some two-degree centigrade less than the lower part of the device that has the same temperature as the air. The aluminium plate is isolated from the ambient temperature with a transparent insulating panel that lets the radiating energy go through but blocks the heat exchange.

What makes it desirable?

The panels produce about a quarter of what traditional solar panels produce in a day.

The researchers are confident that they can increase the efficiency of these anti-solar Panels. On a large scale, this night-time generator could be extremely significant. It could power electronic devices in remote or low-resource areas that lack electricity at night. These anti-solar panels are cheaper to make and could potentially operate at night as well as in the day.

According to researchers, these could be run on wasted heat leftover from the industrial process. It could help to achieve carbon neutrality when carbon emissions are balanced with carbon removal, so no net carbon is released. Of course, those practical applications are yet to be realized. But still, a technology that does not rely on the burning of fossil fuels for our energy needs is worth exploring. The Earth gives everything to us, and we should contribute to healing it by reducing the carbon emission by our small-scale efforts and if we can then that would be a great pleasure to the whole of humanity.