New solar panels suck water from air to cool themselves down.

[Crossy]

Whilst looking for something else I found this:-

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/new-solar-panels-suck-water-air-cool-themselves-down

 

Quote

Like humans, solar panels don’t work well when overheated. Now, researchers have found a way to make them “sweat”—allowing them to cool themselves and increase their power output.

 

It’s “a simple, elegant, and effective [way] to retrofit existing solar cell panels for an instant efficiency boost,” says Liangbing Hu, a materials scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park.

 

 

Simple and elegant, will it ever catch on? Who knows?

 

[impulse]

2 hours ago, Crossy said:

Simple and elegant, will it ever catch on? Who knows?

 

Interesting that the cooling power from the gel (295 W/M^2) exceeds the output power of even a 25% efficient PV cell that would make 250 W/M^2 in a 1KW/M^2 location.

 

Maybe they're better off selling HVAC systems based on the gel technology.  But that sounds fishy.  Or maybe it's a poorly written abstract.

 

The atmospheric water harvester photovoltaic cooling system provides an average cooling power of 295 W m–2 and lowers the temperature of a photovoltaic panel by at least 10 °C...

 

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-0535-4