Solar power, with a side of hot running water
MIT researchers and their collaborators have come up with an unusual, high performance and possibly less expensive way of turning the sun’s heat into electricity.
Their system, described in a paper published online in the journal Nature Materials on May 1, produces power with an efficiency roughly eight times higher than ever previously reported for a solar thermoelectric device — one that produces electricity from solar heat. It does so by generating and harnessing a temperature difference of about 200 degrees Celsius between the interior of the device and the ambient air.