Engineering
If you want to improve the output of solar energy systems, why not also run them at night? That's the question researchers in Qatar and Jordan addressed as they successfully devised a system that promises to more than double ...
Energy & Green Tech
To tackle global warming, engineers have been trying to develop increasingly advanced technologies that can generate and store electrical energy more sustainably. The most renowned among these technologies are solar cells, ...
Energy & Green Tech
An inexpensive thermoelectric device harnesses the cold of space without active heat input, generating electricity that powers an LED at night, researchers report September 12 in the journal Joule.
Sep 12, 2019
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Engineering
Engineers have designed a new system that can help cool buildings in crowded metropolitan areas without consuming electricity, an important innovation at a time when cities are working to adapt to climate change.
Aug 5, 2019
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Energy & Green Tech
As traditional energy methods increase in cost and take their toll on the environment, Penn State researchers are turning to two underutilized renewable resources, the sun and outer space, for solutions to generate electricity ...
Mar 14, 2024
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Energy & Green Tech
In order to prevent power grid failure in a society where electrification is supplied increasingly by variable sources like solar and wind, researchers in Sweden report the development of artificial intelligence algorithms ...
Feb 28, 2024
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71
Engineering
University of Maryland researchers aiming to combat rising global temperatures have developed a new "cooling glass" that can turn down the heat indoors without electricity by drawing on the cold depths of space.
Nov 13, 2023
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Business
Researchers report that 53% of European freestanding homes could have supplied all their own energy needs in 2020 using only local rooftop solar radiation, and this technical feasibility could increase to 75% in 2050.
Nov 2, 2023
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77
Engineering
In recent years, engineers at ETH Zurich have developed the technology to produce liquid fuels from sunlight and air. In 2019, they demonstrated the entire thermochemical process chain under real conditions for the first ...
Oct 27, 2023
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Engineering
It's viable to produce low-cost, lightweight solar panels that can generate energy in space, according to new research from the Universities of Surrey and Swansea.
Oct 24, 2023
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Sunlight, in the broad sense, is the total spectrum of the electromagnetic radiation given off by the Sun. On Earth, sunlight is filtered through the atmosphere, and the solar radiation is obvious as daylight when the Sun is above the horizon. Near the poles in summer, the days are longer and the nights are shorter or non-existent. In the winter at the poles the nights are longer and for some periods of time, sunlight may not occur at all. When the direct radiation is not blocked by clouds, it is experienced as sunshine, a combination of bright light and heat. Radiant heat directly produced by the radiation of the sun is different from the increase in atmospheric temperature due to the radiative heating of the atmosphere by the sun's radiation. Sunlight may be recorded using a sunshine recorder, pyranometer or pyrheliometer. Sunlight takes about 8.3 minutes to reach the Earth. The World Meteorological Organization defines sunshine as direct irradiance from the Sun measured on the ground of at least 120 watts per square metre.
Direct sunlight has a luminous efficacy of about 93 lumens per watt of radiant flux, which includes infrared, visible, and ultra-violet light. Bright sunlight provides luminance of approximately 100,000 candela per square meter at the Earth's surface.
Sunlight is a key factor in photosynthesis, a process crucially important for life on Earth.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
