Researchers have developed special kind of Solar Cells that works at night.
These specially designed solar cells could generate up to 50 watts of power per square meter under ideal conditions at night, about a quarter of what a conventional Solar Panel can generate in daytime
Prof. Jeremy Munday at the University Of California (UC) Davis and graduate student Tristan Deppe has developed prototypes of these night time solar cells that can generate small amounts of power.
Professor and his collaborators hope to improve the power output and efficiency of the devices.
A regular solar cell generates power by absorbing sunlight, which causes a voltage to appear across the device and for current to flow. In these new devices, light is instead emitted and the current and voltage go in the opposite direction, but you still generate power,” Munday said.
He added “You have to use different materials, but the physics is the same.”