Comments on: New Solar Panels That Work At Night

By: Panouri solare ce functioneaza si noaptea -- Panouri Solare

Panouri solare ce functioneaza si noaptea -- Panouri Solare — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:56:21 +0000

[...] Sursa Taguri: inovatie, Panouri Solare din categoria Informatii utile [...]

By: Ruppal Mandloi

Ruppal Mandloi — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 11:02:27 +0000

hai, i m from india & this type of invention very helps for our rural people who havent seen electricity yet .pls. send more details on my mail .Thanking you
Ruppal Mandloi Indore M.P.(INdia)

By: PaTrond

PaTrond — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 20:10:06 +0000

-What’s the price??? I’m buying!
-How light is it?
-Does it survive winters/ -30′C?
-How does it work on winter?

If itsurvives -70′C, it can be used on airplanes.

By: oakling

oakling — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 01:27:51 +0000

Yeah, I hope they are just at the “how do we fund and mass-produce this” stage already! :)

By: Danie Nel

Danie Nel — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 10:14:21 +0000

Bart, no these aren’t IR panels and they do not need to be cooled. Roger, it looks like you’ve got the truth there except for: A good antenna is a good emitter, but only when driven; when acting as a load only partial amount of energy is re-transmitted, not so? But in terms of your day/night argument, I cannot comment and would think that you are right. Additionally I disagree that the optimum shape would be a dipole. What factor are you optimising? Gain? Directivity? Bandwidth?
Just thoughts… :)
I would like to know what is holding them up? They mention no earth-shattering, insurmountable obstacles?? Not even the down-conversion sounds like a serious problem, though the frequency is a bit up there…

By: Ken

Ken — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 16:35:20 +0000

Sounds more like the antennas are absorbing electro magnetic wave energy and when you consider our abundant use of cell phone, microwave and rf use there is no shortage of charged waves floating around even if the cell depends on the harmonics of these transmissions to resonant and attain maximum energy absorbsion.

By: Nick

Nick — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 14:12:21 +0000

I love cool stuff like this, I don’t know the in’s and out’s so I can’t comment on the technology itself!

By: Roger Carmichael, bsme

Roger Carmichael, bsme — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 23:22:59 +0000

INL is on a path to absorb ambient IR photons of 8um wavelength at night temperatures with nanoantennae.
But a good antenna is also a good emitter, so net effect is zero if IR panel is also at ambient night temperature.
(It’d emit as many IR photons as it received) Its the thermal difference of sun to earth that’d make this work by day.

But bulk of solar radiation occurs in the visible where photons are less than 1um wavelength. Optimum antennae
shape for both absorption and emission of a photon is a dipole FM antennae where the 2 opposing leads are set
at the halfwave of desired cutoff. For visible light this means lengths of less than 1/2 um somehow interconnected.

There is a viable photon model I’ve used to understand photon interaction with optical surfaces- refraction/scatter.
FYI, go to His magnespheres are representative of the shower of photons we call light.

By: Bart

Bart — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 17:24:26 +0000

One thing to not mentioned in the article: For IR panels to work they must be colder than the source of IR. So if the ground is at 70f, the panel must be colder than 70f, preferably much colder, like below freezing. This is hard to do when the air is about the same temperature as the ground. But it does work well for satellites. When they go into earth’s shadow, they get quite cold. Then they could produce power from the IR from Earth.

By: Brian

Brian — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 16:28:02 +0000

So, strictly speaking, these are solar/infrared panels. Not just solar panels.
It’s an interesting concept. We’ll just have to wait and see if they can make it affordable or not.