Nighttime Photovoltaic Cells: Electrical Power Generation by Optically Coupling with Deep Space

Abstract

Photovoltaics possess significant potential due to the abundance of solar power incident on earth; however, they can only generate electricity during daylight hours. In order to produce electrical power after the sun has set, we consider an alternative photovoltaic concept that uses the earth as a heat source and the night sky as a heat sink, resulting in a "nighttime photovoltaic cell" that employs thermoradiative photovoltaics and concepts from the advancing field of radiative cooling. In this Perspective, we discuss the principles of thermoradiative photovoltaics, the theoretical limits of applying this concept to coupling with deep space, the potential of advanced radiative cooling techniques to enhance their performance, and a discussion of the practical limits, scalability, and integrability of this nighttime photovoltaic concept.

Assessment of the Effectiveness of Photovoltaic Panels at Public Transport Stops: 3D Spatial Analysis as a Tool to Strengthen Decision Making

“…There are also agrivoltaic systems (APV) that avoid the competition between land use for installations and agricultural land use, reduce evaporation, and provide shade-loving crops from excessive heat [31]. Thanks to the latest technology, which is constantly being improved, in the near future it will be possible to obtain energy regardless of the time of day, which may be a breakthrough in the photovoltaic market [32]. The next step to ensuring the energy security of cities may be not only equipping buildings with photovoltaic installations, but also planning urban infrastructure integrated with solar panels and using appropriate tools to support making such decisions.…”

Editorial: Carbon- and Inorganic-Based Nanostructures for Energy Applications

“…As a rule, a look must always be directed towards new materials, fabricated experimentally (Uddin et al, 2014), or predicted theoretically (Sarker et al, 2013) and their properties (Zhang et al, 2019). For example, very recently the concept that uses the earth as a heat source and the night sky as a heat sink, known as thermoradiative photovoltaics, has been illustrated (Raman et al, 2019;Deppe and Munday, 2020). Materials for such devices will need a strong absorption and emission in the thermal radiation range, enough transparency to permit optical access to the night sky.…”

Application of the detailed balance model to thermoradiative cells based on a p-type two-dimensional indium selenide semiconductor

“…Therefore, the quest for clean energy needs to be encouraged, such as solar energy harvesting. Conventional photovoltaics, one of the solar harvesting energy systems, can generate electricity throughout daytime hours; however, it is not perfect for the nighttime [1]. Therefore, a new system is needed to generate electricity at night.…”

“…Therefore, a new system is needed to generate electricity at night. In this case, thermoradiative (TR) cells may play an essential role [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15].…”

“…The (TR) cells operate similarly to the photovoltaic (PV) cells; they generate energy by transferring radiative heat between two reservoirs with varying temperatures [1,[3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. The fundamental difference is that the PV cells generate the electric current kept at low temperatures.…”