How To Use Solar Panels At Night

The photovoltaic cells in solar panels must have sunlight to create electricity.

How to use solar panels at night.

Solar panels offer two indirect nighttime energy solutions. Both allow consumers to access energy from the solar panels even without the sun on the rise. Researchers at the university of california davis have published a new paper in the journal acs photonics that says anti solar panels can generate night solar electricity. By david biello on february 18 2009.

Solar panels do not produce energy at night. Thermoradiative cells are already being tested in fields such as manufacturing where they are used to convert waste heat such as the high temperatures generated by an engine. There are two main ways to make solar panels work at night. Molten salts can store the sun s heat during the day and provide power at night.

Instead the excess power your solar panels produce during the day is exported to the utility grid. A cloud floats overhead and the plant is suddenly at an energy standstill producing nothing. Store the sun s energy so you can use it when the sun s not available. You receive credits for this power which accumulate in your account.

An innovative thermal battery being developed by curtin university researchers will be key to a solar power system capable of producing electricity overnight rivaling fossil fuels as a viable. But that s not the bottom line. In the case of a night time solar panel pointing such a cell at the cold night sky is a way to harness this process. Through net meteringand solar energy storage technology or batteries.

The solution is a simple one. Solar panels work hard all day producing electricity from the sun. If your solar panel system doesn t have storage you can still use your surplus solar energy at night. The research team from leibniz ipht and the university of jena is now presenting a molecular approach to the storage of solar energy which for the first time makes it possible to decouple photochemical reactions from the day night cycle and allow them to take place independently of daylight.

It also makes solar generated power unavailable at times like at night when power demand is greatest.