These Solar Panels Don’t Need the Sun to Produce Energy

Solar panels that don’t require direct sunlight have been invented in another leap forwards for clean energy.

Carvey Ehren Maigue, 29, won the James Dyson Foundation Sustainability Award in 2020 for the panels he constructed at Mapua University in the Philippines.

Maigue developed AuREUS by turning fruit and vegetable crop waste into a luminescent material that can convert UV light. Mixing that with a resin and lining it with a solar film, he created glass-like panels that can produce a surprising amount of electricity. His prototype is a single 3-by-2-foot panel that he installed in the window in his apartment.

Tinted lime green but transparent, the test panel can generate enough wattage per day to charge two phones. Scaled up, he says, these panels could enable buildings to produce all their own electricity.

As they do inside crops, these particles absorb the sun’s ultraviolet rays and turn them into visible light. The panels are then able to convert this harvested light into electricity.

Ultraviolet rays still reach us on cloudy days, meaning there is huge potential to scale the technology up in urban areas – as well as in other places that a conventional solar panel wouldn’t sit.

The new solar material could even be fitted to our clothes

Discussing his invention in 2020, Maigue said he wanted to bring the product to the market immediately while also investing in further research.

“I want to create threads and fabric so that even your clothes would be able to harvest ultraviolet light and convert it into electricity.”

The prototype was a three-by-two foot panel installed in a window of Maigue’s apartment, capable of generating enough electricity to charge two phones each day. But he has ambitions to clad whole buildings in AuREUS, turning them into vertical solar farms.

Despite not facing the sun, skyscrapers with this exterior could absorb UV that bounces off walls, pavements and other buildings. “We are also looking to create curved plates, for use on electric cars, aeroplanes and even boats,” Maigue said.

The electrical engineering student added that he wanted to democratize his new product. “AuREUS has the chance to bring solar energy capture closer to people,” he said.

“In the same way computers were only used by the government or the military and now the same technology is in our smartphones, I want solar energy harvesting to be more accessible.”