Solar Power can now be generated at NIGHT! It's really TRUE!
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- Опубліковано 19 жов 2024
- Solar power is a fast growing contributor to our global electricity grids. After all that sunshine hits our planet during the day, some of it goes back up into the atmosphere, mostly at night time. Until now, harnessing that energy has been regarded as too difficult to do. But now a team at the University of New South Wales has achieved that elusive goal. So, can we look forward to 24-7 solar power?
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Original video about solar power (and perovskites)
• Perovskite Solar Cells...
ABC article
www.abc.net.au...
UNSW Research Paper (unfortunately behind a paywall)
pubs.acs.org/d...
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As my thermodynamics professor always told us: the climate crisis won’t be solved by a silver bullet, but by silver buckshot.
Grin! That's a great analogy.
Climate change not a werewolf.. gotcha.
As a professor of bullshit, the climate crisis will be solved by acknowledging its not a crisis.
A more honest thing to say would have been “the climate crisis won’t be solved”
It’s already far too late
@@jb76489 Yeah well, more signs point to it being blown out of proportion. Simply because they don't have the data to support those claims.
Call you bozo? Never! You are awesome, Dave!
Yep, master communicator of complexity to real bozos like me.
I even caught the gist....which beats catching cold.
Didn't specify what type of...
Mercury and cadmium. Definitely something you want to deploy everywhere humans live.
I was a scientist/engineer working with HgCdTe infrared detectors for night vision sensor for over 31 years. HgCdTe diodes are outrageously expensive. (some of the state of the art sensors the size of a postage stamp can cost tens of thousands of dollars). There is so little energy to be harvested per square inch that even if the cost can be brought down to that of modern "traditional" solar cells, the cost to harvest infrared energy seems impractical.
It's the same thing in 99% of these types of videos.
It doesnt take a genius to work out there is VERY little energy around at night unless you are in the middle of a desert.
Shh , we don't need your sciency engineery type of thinking around here this whole universe of "renewable" energy relies on unicorn farts, fear and unwarranted hope
@@manoo422 deserts tend to be quite cold at night. The average night time temperature in the Sahara Desert is -4°C or 25°F.
@@phizc Yes that was the point, deserts give up huge amounts of energy every 24hrs, going from 40C+ during the day to -4C at night.
You are quite right to cover this Dave! Perfect for low power IoT, although your eye candy cover picture is a little misleading 😂
Is it? How much energy is required to produce, ship and sell these cells and all the incredibly low-power microelectronics to make them work? These cells may never recover their initial energy cost.
Thank you as always Dave - doing all that research and giving it to us in simple language.
This is the thermodynamic equivalent of the Law of Diminishing Returns.
But it IS also an optimization issue and I'm going to guess that the amount of work done on it is small in comparison to the potential for optimization. If they come up with some combination of doping constituents then it can be a game changer.
EDIT: But even at it's current efficiency, it likely has real world implications for select devices, such as satellites and IoT.
Most people think that a trip to the Sun would be very dangerous, but I have always thought the trip would be much safer if they just went at night. 🙂
LOL
Suggest that idea to Mr Musk, he'll probably throw a few million dollars at it.
@@Rob-e8w He wouldn't
This comic put a smile on my face. Thx! 🙂
Get there by the break of dawn and rush back home before the sun actually comes out. Sounds doable.
Interesting technology and something to look forward for potential commercial applications in a few years' time. The small device powering option seems the more plausible candidate.
LED are also becoming more efficient... what if sun solar power made enough energy to make using LED on the solar panels a win in production at night... its close already
The future of energy from photonics is indeed promising 🎉
So, it's a quite inefficient Peltier device.
Isn't Peltier effect the opposite, i.e. the current creates a temperature difference, like in a 12V DC fridge, or a dehumidifier? The opposite would be the Seebeck effect I think. From my experiments with Peltier devices you need a beefy current to make anything useful.
@@pixelfrenzyyou can use a peltier element also for generating a current. Just provide a temp-diff between the two sides and it will give you a current. You can also observe this, when you switch of the peltier-cooler and then measure the voltage at its connectors.
Since it operates on a different principle, but is yet another type of heat engine, it is a heat engine that is less efficient than a peltier device.
Existing Stirling engines have moving parts so they aren't super reliable, but when they work well, they generate an order of magnitude more power than a Peltier device.
If there is a temperature gradient and a load is connected to a Peltier device, it will generate power. Alternatively, you can feed power into a Peltier device to move heat against the thermal gradient.
@hamjudo there's a Stirling design with no physical contact between parts designed by NASA
The issue with using radiative cooling to run a heat engine is not the device that makes work.... It's getting the radiators to make a temperature difference while heat is flowing.... so the diodes will work fine in space given big enough radiators, but the I thermal powered watch will be awkward.....
A quick look at the Seebeck effect and the associated Peltier effect shows that there are other possibilities, even if some of them date back centuries
Yeah, the Seebeck effect was discovered in 1821. However, the Seebeck effect can generate more power per degree-K because it uses conductors instead of semiconductors.
But isn't the problem with thermocouples it's low efficiency? If I'm wrong, kindly educate me. 😁
Thanks, Dave! I love hearing new ways to tap into the available energy that surrounds us.
As someone who painted floor black with a large south facing window, turning heat to energy sounds better than installing AC.
Whoops. Almost sounds like something I might do!
Any techno trick that can turn ambient heat into usable energy is definitely worth looking into.
So far, this is just one more idea than looks good in the lab but has yet to prove itself out in the real world.
Even so, I'm always excited to hear about stuff like this because, someday one, or more of these clever ideas is going to make it out of the lab and prove itself highly useful
It’s been proven in service to have up to 10% of the energy density of traditional solar. Experiments go back maybe 50 years on this, It’s just a simple thermal gradient supplying the power, the cold of space in the night sky on one side and the relatively warm earth on the other.
Always appreciate your research! Keep up the good work!
Your videos are always uplifting and full of joy. Thank you for your warmth and light!🪖🌾🥂
Hear, hear!
Shill
wow is this a new type of scam message? I really wonder how well _this_ kind of a message works.
I'm 76 soon to be 77 love your info and don't tink I make it to that day of energy business liberation but I'm hopeful for the world.
I'm one year behind you. I just hope to make it to lunch each day.
Best channel on the entire Internet
Great video as usual 👌
Great video, Dave, we'll have this tech before fusion is available for sure
Thank you, Dave. The application for wearables is exciting. Yet another potential challenge and opportunity to harness energy that is currently being ‘wasted’.
I always enjoy your videos. Always positive and very easy for the layperson to understand.
Another great insight - I worked with a company that replaced pub cellar cooling with air source heat pumps/ no silver bullet but a very useful removal of about 25000 kWh of energy per pub ! Shame it peaked too early as a business. Must contact the Heatgeek!
Congratulations! You've managed to make someone who's allergic to good news honestly excited.
Thank you!
Generating power from waste heat seems fun, could also be great at cooling spacecraft.
Ah, now there's an idea
That's an interesting thought - the heat differentials between the inside and outside and the dark and light sides are huge.
Cooling requires heat rejection to be at a certain rate. That rate is low if you are using heat to generate energy.
Thank you, Dave. I hope everyone is having a great day or night wherever you are.
I’m looking forward to seeing Pervoskite PV solar panels on homes and remembering that I heard it here first! Thanks Dave, keep up the good work!
A battery storage breakthrough will turn everything on its head, Dave. Keep up the great work, what you do is fantastic.!
awsome vid dude! love it! could've watched another hr on the subject
No way am I going to bag out the good folks at UNSW Solar. All power to them!
Im scared that this is gonna get the car that runs on water / cancer cure / stemcell research treatment and just somehow dissapear into nothing despite being promising
The smartwatch angle is actually REALLY compelling.
Seek equality in freedom, not equality in oppression.
Back in 2012, we had a guy from MIT come in to do a presentation on solar, his company was researching materials to make full spectrum solar panels. They could detect and measure infra red and close spectrums but couldn't transform it into an economical usable energy. At that time it cost four times that of nuclear. Looks like the cost is coming down.
Don't forget that clouds act as a thermal blanket and reflect infrared; quite possibly being another avenue of energy production at night!
I agree that we can use all available forms of energy, and use it wisely. War is a waste of resources!
As an aerospace guy, I think the coolest space application of this tech would be micro RTGs for power in deep space.
I don't think thermoradiative pannels will ever produce enough power off even the difference between room temperature and deep space to power more than simple wearable sensors.
This is good start. Scale is the answer in the early days.
Thank you so much for showing us these new sources of energy. Makes me optomistic we'll solve our climate change problem and have a cleaner environment as well!
Was really excited to see that, one of those 'crazy' new battery technologies, I'd followed on my favourite UA-cam channels; The 'Iron/Air' Battery, was about to be installed quite near where I'm from. 1 GWh storage, Yipee, come on flow batteries, water-from-air generators, Electricity-from-humidity, gravity storage and on. Why was I hearing about this miracle of cheap and safe materials, 150 locals had gathered to protest it:.......because it's new. Royston Vasey, or what?
From what I understand most if not all modern grid tie inverters are equipped to receive instructions from the electrical utility company to tell the inverter to perform grid regulation services such as adjusting the phase relationship between current and voltage and also smoothing the wave form.
This free power adjusting capability provided to the utility at thousands of end user connections can provide enormous cost savings to the utility and increases power quality and reliability.
Oo let’s strap them on a couple of cows to offset their methane emissions
Sounds exciting & futuristic for small or microdevices
Straight over my head this time!
any energy is better than none. And given how hot the ground gets in summer in Australia, dispersing some of that heat to generate power would be a win-win
I love the phrase "jiggery pokery."
you can capture sunlight from moonlight - people tend to forget that. Not to mention there are other stars in the sky that we can get light from. Even when there's clouds - the sunlight from far away gets bounced off the clouds to the panel. So whoever says you can't get sunlight when the sun goes down clearly doesn't know what they're talking about at all.
Hmmm sounds like they're borrowing "using temperature differential" from the Stirling Cycle Engine. Great idea.
This has been accomplished previously through the use of peltier thermo generators and sky cooling coatings.
as usual, thanks for the great presentation!
I'm excited about the watch idea. I gotta have a watch. Lol
If you could improve the efficiency by a factor of 20 - which is very optimistic - we are at 50mW/m².
Let your watch have 10cm² of area for collecting, it would be 50μW in an ideal (!) situation. But only in the winter, you don't have the temperature difference in the summer.
An Apple watch needs about 50000μW on average! An simple Apple watch battery can provide 50μW for 3 years with one charge.
Also, it would need to be able to radiate the IR, so it would need to be on the top of the smart watch, and you couldn't wear any clothes over it..
This is, of course, the type of thing an engineer like myself can't help but to always return to, "How can I harness some of the energy from this transfer of heat from here to there?" The classic solution is to cross 100°C and convert the cost of the phase change of water into mechanical work, but that's a very limited, and specific temperature range. We have thermocouple technology that can get a high as 8%, but that's not very much. LEDs/photodiodes tend to be active at very limited spectra, but any technology that moves us more in that direction is good news to me!
This doesn't just mean technologies for power generation, it can also provide mechanisms for power efficiency when devices can convert portions of it's waste heat back into electricity at the cost of lowering thermal conductivity, meaning your device runs hotter. Where a device or component can tolerate this, efficiency can be improved. Even WORSE (by which I mean "better but less sane") it can facilitate multiplying or dividing heat (a. la. AC / heat pump) though inefficiencies are _multiplied_ at each conversion.
At 4:17 it's not nighttime release of energy - it's releasing energy all the time.
I'm sure they will have thought of it already but there is a huge source of radiant heat that comes off our cities and buildings at night. If you could tap that to power some lights say, that would be useful.
When the price of power stops doubling every couple of years in Oz I'll be happy.
great work as usual
As I’ve studied Automation and Electrical Technologies, I’ve realized that there are a myriad of ways to solve the global energy crisis. This solution is interesting… especially since it uses a temperature gradient to produce electricity. My question is how efficient is this? Could more energy be produced if coupled with a thermistor? I think that’s what it’s called. It’s commonly found in cheap electric mini fridges. If the difference in temperature is larger, will it produce more electricity exponentially, logarithmically, or linearly? I would love to know how the lab made this so I can test it myself as well.
Thank you.
A certain kind of person keeps putting up roadblocks to solutions by saying things like "That's no good because it only does this...or that. It's useless."
You're right, there is no silver bullet to solve all the things we need to solve; silver bullets are for werewolves. Multifaceted approaches are needed for solving our multifaceted problem. No-one expects a single home appliance to do it all (a washing machine that also vacuums, refrigerates, cooks, scrubs the tub etc), so why expect a single technology to do it all?
do show on invention of NHIM batteries for EV - patent was bought by BP - they sat on it for 10 yrs - then sold to Chrysler and they sat on it for longer -
Just imagine how efficient the first solar panels were all them years ago compared to now. The Earth receives and admits a hell of a lot of energy. There must be more ways to capture that energy. We just need to find a way.
I don’t see us wearing a mercury based product anytime soon but if the same result can be achieved with safer materials and higher efficiencies, harnessing infrared emissions is a great idea. This seems especially useful in urban environments where there is a lot infrared emissions from stored solar heat and human activity.
It's always worth while to look at new technologies to find new solutions even if they take a long time to develop.
No orderly queue, sorry, not all of us are from the UK or Japan. 🙂
Haha, yeah I've been in some very disorderly queues in my time (India and Greece spring to mind), but not to bash anyone on their presentation of scientific research 😊
Wow! What an interesting subject.
I think you're correct, in that powering our hones & EV's is many years away.
However, I'm interested in the Smart Home & IoT applications 🤯
This is certainly a technology for smaller devices currently.
I'll keep my ears to the ground to see how this all pans out...
🙏
Great video 😎
Even if these can be made into insanely cheap panels, and they get from the current 2% to near 100% efficiency, I can't see this working for anything other than niche uses for very low levels of power generation. A full size solar panel (around 2m²) would only generate 0.25W at 100% efficiency, which is more than it could reach.
If the efficiency can get near regular solar PV at about 20% (still over 10x current efficiency), a full-size 2m² solar panel would get you 0.05W, which might just about run a dim standby LED. Seems that physics says no to this idea being useful on a large scale unfortunately
Saying it could power your wifi router is generous. Lower power routers use around 5W. If they can improve the efficiency of these thermoradiative diodes tenfold to 18% (similar to good PV) instead of 1.8% and you had 20m2 of these on you roof you would get 0.45W of power, a tenfold shortfall on power demand of the router. I'm all for multiple solutions but this is really a distraction which in reality will have very low power niche applications if any.
Curious as to how much this technology might be able to actually reduce warming, by converting infrared heat into electricity? I suppose it doesn't, since that heat would be re-released by the objects/machines that use the electricity generated. Radiative cooling is probably the only thing that removes infrared heat from the earth's atmosphere.
Another great topic. Thank you!
Thank you. I have been seeing more arguments against solar power these days. One argument is that: The cost of mining the materials, building the panels, installing the panels, maintaining the panels, removing panels at the "end of life", extracting and recycling any materials of value in the panels at end of life, recycling all other materials, disposing of the most harmless materials, and isolating any dangerous materials, makes the economics of solar power a questionable solution. I would be delighted to learn that there are solutions to these problems.
Have you done a video that addresses these points? Similar analysis could serve us well in our assessment of wind power, nuclear power, geothermal, and other energy "sources."
This would be helpful. Right now, most of what we know about these "energy technologies" comes directly from the companies and individuals who stand to extract a lot of wealth from these efforts whether or not they offer any real solutions. We need to be very skeptical in this case.
There have been studies done on this. All I can remember from one is that the energy ROI for modern panels is 2-5 years depending on location. That means it takes 2-5 years for the panel to generate as much energy as was consumed in making it.
As important as that is, no-one ever asked the same question about an oil rig or a gas turbine power station I guess but any alternative has to be squeaky clean apparently even if it does offset itself over its lifetime 😐
Love watching your informative content but let me just say I love that light blue sweater of yours.
A very interesting line of research.
I will be more encouraged when we harness all the energy around us in the form of magnetic energy that is useful.
Solar cells can collect 1% during a clear night during a full moon. It's minimal. But remember it's light it's absorbing, not heat.
Brilliant info as always thanks.
5:42 Sorry, what now? Yikes, I can usually keep up but that was a mouthful.
It's really TRUE!
I really wish we could lean more into energy sources that just have very specific applications like devices or machinery that could help their use be less reliant on grids and supply lines. But no everything has to be the proverbial panacea to have any capital thrown at it at all. Although what a lovely dream it is, that the "waist heat" of the whole world to power our lives.
We have heat engines, and even direct thermoelectric generators already, that's not new. And the fact that possible efficiency in extracting work from a temperature difference is limited by the difference in temperature between hot and cold, relative to absolute temperature has been known for about two centuries. So, with a very low temperature difference, the efficiency will be low, and without thermal storage the amount of input heat energy will be insignificant, and thereby the amount of "useful" energy that is theoretically possible to extract will be ridiculous.
With concentrated solar power it's possible to collect heat during the day, and use that heat to produce power during the night, with decent efficiency, and reasonable cost. Solar PV is much cheaper, but if CSP is refined enough, it can take care of much of the duck curve at an acceptable cost in areas with enough sun year round.
Many industrial processes could work on solar thermal, that IS cheaper and doesn't need the costly metals and sophisticate technology of PV.
Industries that works on the low heath range could well make much more from their roofs and spare land to reduce their energy usage.
No no I think you're right, this has legs. No it won't power your house. But getting IoT device's, personal wear items disconnected from the the grid, and even chemical storage will put a dent in our grid demands. I bet it would be enough to run emergency lights and possibly keep network infrastructure up. form that stand point it's worth looking into.
As much as I was disappointed by the molten salt array (so much promise and yet) this could add a resurrection style revival to that technology.
You can think of our modern society as a pipeline with materials and energy entering on one end and waste heat and garbage exiting at the other end. A lot lest attention is being paid to the exit side. You present an interesting option of recycling waste heat.
Where did you find that black hole model that sits on shelf behind you?
Thankyou for you informed positivity on a daily basis. In this day and age it can be a challenge. So the NSW Uni crew stated the chase, now they will be joined by those crazy buggersvat Sydney and Macquarie Unis to push all the bits over the hill to reality.
Such a system, generating at night from radiant heat, bulit into and with regular solar farms, especially in countries like Australia and other similar climates would be an energy game changer. Add to that energy generated on moon lite nights and of future looks brighter. (Bad pun)
Hahahah, "no, don't switch off!". Great line. But it doesn't look practical even if they manage to get high efficiency conversion. 2.26 mW/m^2. 2.26 milliwatts verses roughly 1000W in daylight. That's not just 1000 times less. That's 442000 times less. Approximately. I'm glad they are doing the research though.
In anycase, a wifi router burns around 15W. Ignoring efficiencies and running it from a DC source, 12 hours of operation is 180 watt-hours of energy. Which is to say, a very small 15Ah 12.8V LiFePO4 battery.
We can scale that up to useful amounts of overnight wattage but it still translates to a relatively small LiFePO4 battery that could just soak up that energy during the day, store it, and dish it out at night.
-- POWER DEVICE WITH SOLAR AND A POWER STATION --
$160 - EcoFlow RIVER 3 or similar power station
$60 - 1 x 100W solar panel
Use 12VDC output from RIVER 3 to power the 12V device. Most wifi routers and other small digital devices use wall power adapters that produce 12VDC. You can run these directly from a power station's 12VDC output instead of using the power adapter if you want. Look at the power adapter for the device carefully to see if it's compatible.
Additional tools and probably some 5521 or 5525 barrel adapters will be needed to clip its power adapter and wire in the 12V directly to the device.
-- SAME THING WITH DISCRETE PARTS (NO POWER STATION) ---
A fun DIY home project that anyone can do on the cheap to run a 12V appliance. Or just wants to get started playing around with solar and LiFePO4 batteries. Quick equipment list. No AC output here, just as the final output (though nothing prevents you from connecting up a little pure sine wave car inverter to the 12VDC battery).
$50 - 1 x 20Ah 12.8V LiFepO4 battery (scale-up as needed).
$67 - 1 x Victron Smart Solar 75/15 charge controller (can parallel more controllers w/ bigger batteries).
$60 - 1 x 100W solar panel (expandable to three or four in parallel with that charge controller)
$20 - 12 AWG red and black wire (up to 15A, roughly).
$20 - Auto blade fuse kit including fuse holders and wires and a fuse assortment (use a 2A to 4A fuse between the battery and the device as appropriate).
$30 - MC4 crimp kit: $30 (crimper, MC4 ends, etc... for solar panel interfacing to the charge controller)
$20 - misc butt crimps or WAGOs or whatever you need.
Wiring:
Solar panel -> "solar" input of Victron
Victron BAT output -> battery
battery -> fuse -> device to be powered
The output can be run to any 12V appliance up to 250W or so. Check the wall warts for your various routers, devices, etc. They usually output 5VDC or 12VDC. This stuff can run 12VDC appliances.
Total: $270 or so, not including tools (wire stripper, wire cutter, misc screw drivers, or device interfacing), and not including longer cabling for the solar panel.
--- BONUS PROJECT - ADD UPS / LOAD SHIFTING FEATURE --
Bonus Project: For reliable operation of the device in all weather conditions, or to use the system as a load shifter, then you can wire the original power adapter into the circuit to backup the solar + battery when the battery gets low.
$8 - 20pcs 20SQ060 Schottky Barrier Rectifier Diodes 20A (can handle 4A in free air without a heat sink).
NOTE: Device limit is 50W. Put more diodes in parallel to handle devices that take more than 4A to prevent diode overheating.
Connect the original power adapter for device with the negative common to the battery negative, and the positive running through the diode. Take the battery positive and also run that through another diode. The common output from the two diodes (the side with the painted stripe on the diode) can be tied together and then go first to the fuse, and from the fuse to the device to be powered.
As long as the original power adapter outputs a voltage in the 11VDC to 12.5VDC or so, the LiFePO4 battery will power the device until it gets too low and then the power adapter from the mains will continue powering the device after that until the battery recharges from solar again the next day.
If the original power adapter outputs a higher voltage than this it will act more like a UPS rather because the power adapter will have priority over the solar + battery system much of the time.
-Matt
It could have potential as a substitute for Peltier/Seebeck like TEGs since the production might be cheaper than those if done at scale. But it would have to be more efficient and be able to operate at higher temperatures.
But it's never going to replace batteries or be able to harvest enough body heat to power a wearable device.
Lunar panels.
Nice video. I'd like to point out there's been solar power at night for years - concentrated solar power that is, not photovoltaic. That relies on stored thermal energy to power a turbine. In a sense I guess this new tech is relying on thermal energy stored by the Earth? (Although there's also significant downward IR power still before dawn if that could also be harnessed somehow.)
PV electricity is not generated by a temperature gradient. It sounds like what the Australians have developed is a more sensitive thermocouple.
Thanks ❤
You can do the same thing with a Peltier device. It's not revolutionary to collect elevmctricity from temperature differences.
What are the issues associated with designing solar panels comprised of a top layer for harnessing the energy of short wavelengths and and a secondary panel beneath that is designed to harness the energy of longer wavelengths that pass through the first layer?
Thank you ✨🤗✨😊✨
How is this different from the peltier effect, used in small electric cooler box.
It's a first step. No reason to expect it to scale as good as say semi-conductor technologies, but it might be helpful. Taking body heat to power things like smart watches are good. Then again, on the wavelengths of infrared alone, we cannot expect it to be wondrous and miracle tech. But it does sound good and promising.
You can definitely get some small amount if power from just placing a Peltier device on your arm, because your skin is hotter than the environment around it. I'm surprised no one has tried to use this to power very low consumption things like wristwatches. You can always get some energy where there is a thermal difference. So I wonder how this new diode is better than that?
Point the panels at the hot buildings downtown, at night?
I've wondered about placing a thermistor (Peltier?) cell between the base of a solar cell and the eventual heat sink. Much the same principle, and also useful in space If it works.
same. _harness_ waste heat.
So you could power an led while burning out the solar cell?
If somebody figures out a high temperature solar cell, maybe, but the PV parts of a solar cell don't work so well at high temperatures, as they need pretty precise band gaps.
You're better off building an actual solar heating setup, where sunlight boils water to send through a turbine
@@lomiification I guess it doesn't work then. Which probably explains why it hasn't been done before.
If the power would be sufficient to help counter the "vampire" drain in our appliances overnight, it would be a winner!