A newly developed photovoltaic cell harvests energy from the environment during the day and night, making use of the heat leaking from Earth back into space. At night solar cells radiate and lose heat to the sky, reaching temperatures a few degrees below the ambient air. This device uses a thermoelectric module to generate voltage and current from the temperature gradient between the cell and the air. The setup is inexpensive and, in principle, could be incorporated within existing solar cells. It’s simple, so construction in remote locations with limited resources is feasible.
Journal Reference: Sid Assawaworrarit, Zunaid Omair, Shanhui Fan. Nighttime electric power generation at a density of 50 mW/m2 via radiative cooling of a photovoltaic cell. Applied Physics Letters, 2022; 120 (14): 143901 DOI: 10.1063/5.0085205
https://web.stanford.edu/group/fan/
https://spectrum.ieee.org/solar-cell
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/04/220405115222.htm