Today's technology utilises the renewable sources such as sun, wind, water, etc in a very brilliant way to harvest electricity. This utilisation promises environmental as well as economical benefits. This article brings to you the utilisation of shadows to generate electricity.
Effect of Shadows
The National University of Singapore (NUS) explained the shadow effect to stimulate the flow of electrons. The power generation is made possible by the placement of solar cells in darker and brighter regions.
Working Principle
The solar panels are comprised of silicon wafers. We know that the fall of sunlight onto these solar panels stimulates the electron flow on their corresponding silicon wafers. The shadow effect procedure utilizes the energy difference between dark and light to produce electricity.
The NUS built a thin metallic (gold, silver, or tungsten) frame above the silicon wafers of the solar cells. These cells are then placed on the areas with shadows and sunlight. The metallic-framed silicon wafers of both these regions experience a potential difference. This potential difference stimulates the flow of electrons and thereby developed a voltage of 1.5V.
Is there any limitation?
The NUS is under the development of higher voltages by utilizing this shadow effect. They claim that the placement of these panels on no sunlight regions also can generate a very small amount of voltage. Several researches and experiments are going on to bring this miraculous shadow effect beneficial to the world.
