Solar panels can now generate electricity at night

Solar panels generate electricity during the day and cannot generate power at night, but now solar panels have been developed that will generate electricity even at night.

Stanford University in America has developed solar panels that can generate electricity even at night and for this radiative cooling has been used.

What is radiative cooling?

Radiative cooling is a technology that cools objects by reflecting or emitting heat, especially at night when the natural radiative cooling process is more active when the Earth emits infrared energy into space. It is done during which the temperature of an object and its surrounding atmosphere is different which can also be used to generate electricity.

Experts have taken this process into consideration by attaching thermoelectric generators to ordinary commercial solar panels to generate some amount of electricity from the heat emitted by the Earth.

They also modified the panels to produce 50 milliwatts per square meter at night.

It should be noted that usually solar panels generate 200 watts of electricity per square meter during daylight hours, meaning the amount of electricity generated at night was very low.

But that much electricity can also be used to power smaller devices like LEDs and sensors.