Radiative cooling might reduce the need for costly batteries in some applications.
That was good news for Assaworrarit isn't an astronomer grateful that clouds didn't block starlight from traveling through the atmosphere and reaching the mirror of his telescope. An electrical engineer, he welcomed the cloudless nights for an entirely different reason: a clear night means infrared light from the surface of solar panels can freely radiate out into space.
On a clear night, the device Assawaworrarit tested on the Stanford rooftop generates roughly fifty milliwatts for every square meter of solar panel . Another good use for the technology is powering the immense network of environmental sensors researchers use to keep tabs on everything from weather conditions to invasive species in far-flung corners of the globe. Again, solar panels that generate a small amount of electricity at night could reduce the need for batteries — and the maintenance and replacement costs they incur.
“It’s a sort of light,” Assawaworrarit says. The infrared radiation that glows from the warm Earth has wavelengths that are too long for eyes to see, but it does carry energy. In fact, more than half of the total amount of solar energy that hits the Earth goes through this process, eventually returning to space.
It’s a strange phenomenon that only happens when skies are clear. That’s because clouds warm the ground by reflecting infrared light back onto Earth’s surface. “You won't be able to see it because it's happening in a wavelength that humans can't see,” but radiative cooling happens all the time, Assawaworrarit says.
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