What if solar cells worked at night? That’s no joke, according to Jeremy Munday, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC Davis. In fact, a specially designed photovoltaic cell 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, according to a concept paper by Munday and graduate student Tristan Deppe. The article was published in, and featured on the cover of, the January 2020 issue of ACS Photonics.

Munday, who recently joined UC Davis from the University of Maryland, is developing prototypes of these nighttime solar cells that can generate small amounts of power. The researchers hope to improve the power output and efficiency of the devices.

Munday said that the process is similar to the way a normal solar cell works, but in reverse. An object that is hot compared to its surroundings will radiate heat as infrared light. A conventional solar cell is cool compared to the sun, so it absorbs light.

In order to develop solar panels that generate electricity at night, you just need them to operate in the exact opposite way solar panels work during the day.

IBM found a way to make a battery with materials from seawater instead of cobalt or nickel which are harmful to the environment, and it charges much faster.

Lithium-ion batteries are just as important as solar panels and wind turbines in our pursuit of sustainable energy. The use of lithium-ion technology is sustainable, however, its materials are not. When the battery has served its purpose, if it’s not disposed of correctly, it has a profoundly negative impact on the planet. Furthermore, the making of the batteries involves sourcing of heavy metals that are expensive and come at a substantial humanitarian and environmental cost.

In search of a better option, IBM found a way to make a battery that relies on materials from seawater instead. Testing revealed that the new battery is just as good as the one made with heavy metals, such as cobalt and nickel.

In retaliation to the unethical practice of how heavy metals are attained, as well as the damage these metals cause when they leak out into the environment, companies like IBM have taken a considerable interest in developing alternatives that don’t require the use of heavy metals.

Might interest some.

Think of a train coming down the tracks to a switch point where it could go either to the right or the left—and it always goes to the right.

Photosynthetic organisms have a similar switch point. After sunlight is absorbed, energy transfers rapidly to a protein called the reaction center. From this point, the electrons could move either to an A-branch (or “right-track”) set of molecules, or to a B-branch (“left-track”) set of identical molecules.

New research from Washington University in St. Louis and Argonne National Laboratory coaxes electrons down the track that they typically don’t travel—advancing understanding of the earliest light-driven events of photosynthesis. The findings were published Dec. 31 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).