By J I Thacker reporting from the front line of the climate emergency
A new prototype solar panel from the Technical Institute of Copenhagen (TIC) promises to be a game changer for renewable energy prospects.
“Hitherto, daily and seasonal intermittency has been a killer for solar panels,” says Rickard Pierrot of TIC, one of the team behind the invention. “Only an idiot would make solar a major part of energy infrastructure in a developed country. But NightShine answers the sceptics, and then some.”
Pierrot first had the idea for his invention when he read a story about diesel generators masquerading as solar panels in Spain to claim the over-generous subsidies. The scheme was only rumbled when the “solar panels” continued to feed power into the grid at night time.
“What if solar panels could work at night?” Pierrot wondered. “At first, I thought of charging enormous batteries and then using them to generate light to shine back on themselves. But that was a dumb idea.” He laughs and sips his soya latte. “You might as well just send the battery power to the grid. Why illuminate the panels?”
His next idea was a true lightbulb moment. “Traditional solar panels work by intercepting photons. Naturally the Earth is opaque to photons, so at night the panels are useless. But the Sun emits another kind of particle that shines right through the Earth, even at night: solar neutrinos.”
The only problem for the team was finding a material that would intercept a particle that is extremely reluctant to interact with any ordinary matter. “Neutrinos only interact via the weak force,” Pierrot explains, demonstrating a salt-shaker dodging around a pepper mill. “That means you have to bring the neutrino extremely close to another particle before they notice each other. But what not a lot of people know is that although neutrinos pass through the Earth, they do change on their way through – a bit like the way white light is changed into a rainbow as it passes through a triangular prism.”
Keying in on this relationship, Pierrot was able to theorise a molecular structure that would be partly opaque to neutrinos, based on the precise orientation and atomic spacing of the lattice. A materials scientist at Bologna University produced a prototype to that specification that, according to Pierrot, “caught 10% of solar neutrinos in at least one of the three flavours.” He laughs. “Personally I like vanilla!”
The NightShine solar panel is still in its testing phase at the moment. The magical material may still be a trade secret, but we know it is expensive, and the panel’s lifetime is uncertain. But Pierrot is confident he’s onto a winner. “If we can catch 10% now, in ten years we’ll be able to catch 30%. This technology has the potential to be a game-changer in the fight against climate heating. By the way, are you single? You have the most incredible blue eyes!”
Pierrot’s work was funded by, among others, the European Union Onion Growers’ Union (EUOGU).
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I looked at the calendar.
It says April 1.
I’m not as gullible as the WaPo, Pravda (a/k/a the New York Times), NPR, PBS, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, the Associated Press (see the especially gullible fool Seth Borenstein) and the rest.
It speaks well for the scientific literacy of WUWT readers that this story was flagged for what it is, mere moments after it was posted.
The title gave it away.
My first thought was that he was going to have the solar panels catch the rays from a “fool” moon.
Not a fool moon, but a foolish blue moon would be better.
Such crapola, from Denmark, the sun-starved, wind turbine loving country, that could not exist, except for the Norway hydro plants to counteract the “moodiness” of wind
I thought the giveaway was the “soya latte”.
No it didn’t. Plenty out there like it that are published any day of the year.
If it were published elsewhere, I wonder how many would actually have believed it?
Well, at an Earth Day people signed a petition to ban Dihydrogen Monoxide.
And at one of those Climate Summit things people were interviewed and said they’d be willing to wear gas mask to capture their own CO2 emissions.
(I think CFACT did that last bit.)
It is exactly 47 years to the day that Mount Edgecumbe, the Alaskan volcano unexpectedly erupted after being dormant for 400 years, see here Eruption_of_mount_edgecumbe/
Sorry, it was beat to the punch some years ago
https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/reverse-solar-panel-power-at-night-outer-space/
That apparently dates from 2019. Earlier work goes back to before 2008:
“EXPERIMENTAL LUNAR COLLECTOR
Pendragon, G. L. P.; Satsuma, Damson G., Elboviani, F. Q., University of West Oklakota
“Abstract: A ten microfurlong diameter parabolic collector was constructed and tested in the 0.8 microfurlong to 0.1 microfurlong band during a full moon. The resultant lunar energy was re-radiated as a collimated lunar beam by means of a second parabolic reflector with an estimated efficiency of 0.31 %. . . ”
I believe the 10 𝜇furlong parabolic disk may have been a VW hubcap.
Every day is April Fools’ Day for climate warriors.
What’s the best place to advertise this to catch the maximum number of Democrat eyeballs?
the Yale 360 web site (which actually allows comments): https://e360.yale.edu/
or the Yale Climate Connection site (which doesn’t allow comments): https://yaleclimateconnections.org/
I post a lot of comments on the first- but hardly anyone reads the site. I complained to the 2nd site about the no comment policy- and of course they didn’t get back to me.
You are correct. Neutrino interactions are so rare that no suable power would be produced and the interactions could just as well destroy the compound and overall structure. Starts out taking about how they rarely interact and then develops a material that fixes that? They are still atoms and mostly space.
I like vanilla.
What is the point of catching 100% of particles that are essentially energy-less? I spotted the nonsense at the “10% remark. Catching one in ten trillion neutrinos is impossible.
Hold on a minute, this is not as stupid as it sounds.
The CO2 molecule radiates huge amounts of absorbed energy once insolation falls to zero according to the formula Jim Hansen devised
Eabsorbed/Eradiated = 0.1 (ln e)^2
Although this appear to be a very small ratio, the efficiency is far higher than it could be expected and as it happens is responsible for a significant part of global warming.
I ‘m in the market for some of these night time solar panels, however there is no link to the distributor company.
Vuk
If one actually measures IR from the sky at night you find a lot of molecular signatures, such as nitrogen species and hydroxyl, but not apparently (from what I’ve found published) anything from CO2.
Curiously the latest publication I could find about IR “night-shine” was in the 1940’s. Anyone have anything more recent?
https://orbi.uliege.be//bitstream/2268/72225/1/SWINGS_1945_a-strong-infrared-radiation-from.pdf
Stupid question I guess. Why would anyone want to experimentally test the CO2 “greenhouse” theory?
Hi Hatter,
How true, testing the above ‘Hansen’ formula (which I recommend to all to do) would open the door to unlimited energy of the CO2 re-radiation. Happy Easter to you and all.
Dear Mr. Garrett,
Don´t compare the former Pravda to NYT, please: The former Pravda was a very objective and high level media compared to NYT, WaPo, AP, CNN, Guardian, Reuters, Forbes, etc. I have paractical experiences with both sides.
There was a woman who was semi famous for combing the back pages of the NYT and coming up with the most ‘amazing’ stuff. The lies would be at the front of the paper but apparently it was possible to find the truth by combing through the back pages.
April 1 again.
Happy April Fools
Neutrinos that do not interface in the thickness of the Earth are gonna inteact with the atom in a crystal lattice. When does it become a culpable lie not to be laughed off?
When it’s an April Fool’s joke.
I couldn’t understand why they just didn’t use a series of hundreds or thusands of mirrors to reflect the sunlight around the world to the dark side.
You should apply for funding to develop that idea- might get you millions! :-}
First, you convert the sunlight to laser beams . .
Time to watch “Batman & Robin” again?
Only useful quote in this SiFi article is “Only an idiot would make solar a major part of energy infrastructure in a developed country. “. The rest is the thinnest speculation. Just exactly what happens when a particle with no mass and no charge gets ‘captured’. Physicists out there, please enlighten me.
Nice. Especially on this day of the year!
I hope they have them in Strawberry flavor.
Nite-time solar panels would be made of black licorice, to absorb all the neutrinos. Ummm, Good & Plenty…..
If your first thought after reading the headline wasn’t “Oh right. Its April Fools Day” then you just aren’t paying attention.
What an incredible load of horse shit! 💩💩💩 Neutrinos are so rare the idiot could catch all the neutrinos going through the panel and it would amount to squat.
Take a look at the date today, chum.
Yah, I got totally punked on that one…
But I bet a lot of climate alarmists might bite on that one- somebody send it to Saint Thunberg.
She can see neutrinos
That’s quite a special talent! She may be the only matter in the universe capable of reliably converting neutrinos into anything else!
Don’t worry, it happens to us all. In any case, it’s no more absurd than some of the Warmunist claims.
Interacting with a Neutrino is rare, however 10 trillion of them pass through you every second.
But if you could catch all of them, how much energy could you extract from them (unrealistic best case scenario of course)
I don’t know, but when one collides with in a heavy water detector it creates a detectable flash.
And just this flash illuminates the solar panels 😀
If they didn’t go all the way through would I put weight on?
No, it would destroy one of your molecules and you would lose an atom, but you would gain heat.They are traveling near light speed.
The panels are coated with a material created by two scientist named Fay and Ree. In a pulverized form the Fay-Ree dust is spread on the panels, making them almost magically cost effective.
Ever get the feeling someone is shining you on?
Methinks some commenters have forgotten what humor is, as well as today’s date.
His first name “Hercule” ?
No, Rickard. Hercule’s long lost cousin. 🙂
But what if the particles don’t identify as neutrinos?
In EE techspeak they’re called “queertrons.”
They’d have to be neutrinos-of-color, like quarks.
President Joe Biden Pulls Off Massive April Fools Joke.
The Biden administration revealed today that President Biden orchestrated one of the greatest April Fools day jokes ever. In a statement Biden noted that the press and near totality of the political class fell hook, line and sinker for his 1.9 Trillion dollar Infrastructure plan and then compounded their error by also falling for his 10 Trillion dollar Green New Deal proposal. “No one should have accepted these proposals as anything other than a joke” Biden’s statement read. “No one proposes spending tax-payer money on this scale without first doing individual project specific comprehensive engineering studies and cost-benefit analysis.” Biden’s statement continued. Biden said “Doesn’t anybody know how much a trillion dollars is? Come on man it’s like a hundred billion or something. I mean it’s a lot of money. We could never even pay back what we already owe- what … oh my staff says I shouldn’t have said that. Never mind.”
The Whitehouse also pointed out that many of the specific example projects that were mentioned in the Infrastructure and GND bogus proposals were obviously impossible or just plain silly. Anyone who actually looked at these “proposals” who has half a brain should have known they were intended to be comical. The immediate reaction of the Main Stream Media to today’s announcement has been that it is itself an April Fools joke.
Isn’t Biden himself an April Fool ? 😀
… and May, and June, and July and August and and and and and
It is obviously a joke because Biden isn’t capable of such logical analysis, even on a good day. But, I give a ‘thumbs up’ for creativity.
“We could never even pay back what we already owe”
And nobody ever seems to ask about the elephant in the room. Pay back…to whom?
For most of humanity, creditors tend to re-possess the stuff, or worse.
I have already perfected this technology in my garage as a hobby over the last six months or so.
I am currently catching 95% of the neutrinos that hit my panels, generating enough power for my house and my three EVs, plus enough to sell back to the grid for a monthly income of $13,000 or so.
It’s April first, folks!
Chekov: [to a policeman] Excuse me, sir! Can you direct us to the naval base in Alameda? It’s where they keep the nuclear wessels.
[He pauses, looks at Uhura, and tries again]
Chekov: *Nuclear wessels*.
Excuse me, but this new invention of reaping “night shine” pales in comparison to the one I patented just several months ago.
I was motivated to look for new, “green” energy solutions to the climate crisis and realized the opportunity to capitalize (emphasis on capital) on such under the Biden administration. I also happened to read an article that talked extensively about Earth’s energy “budget” and the energy escaping as long wavelength infrared radiation (LWIR) from Earth’s land and sea surfaces.
It was a “BINGO” moment! I reasoned, why let all that LWIR energy—literally terrawatt-hours per day—escape??? Why not capture some of it to replace the need for fossil fuels and nuclear energy?
So, my patent is to develop and use the LWIR equivalent of “solar cells”. I envision placing these, LWIR cell-side facing down, on nearly all areas of Earth’s readily-accessibly deserts where they can work harvesting LWIR 24/7/365.25 without any major environmental impact. Also, there is a version that I plan to retrofit to the underside of existing solar panels so that humanity can also capture LWIR from rooftops as well as from the ground.
It’s so simple, I am wondering to this very day why anyone hadn’t previously considered this.
🙂
You could probably eke out a few more percent by situating them under street lamps too.
With a couple of sturdy brackets you could put some in front of car headlights
With the right design, they could also function as deer catchers.
Put them on the headlights of EVs. EUREKA perpetual motion, I’m gonna be so rich.
Hold on – not so fast. That would only be a perpetual motion machine if ALL the electricity for the EVs came from wind and solar. Do you think we’re dumb or something?
Dam cancel the order on the range rover.
Mark Zuckerberg drives a Honda Fit, if you want to live the lifestyle of the rich and famous, and that’s no April Fools.
…. it did get me thinking (again) about life on Earth’s fight against entropy though. Solar has essentially been a virtual almost-perpetual motion machine, as long as your kids procreate. With life being, as someone said Animated Water, even slugs can give the middle finger to entropy. Heck, further on down, even politicians can too if they can learn to spell it.
I had to look up Honda Fit, it’s a Jazz in UK. Entropy seems to be the goal for politicians.
I haven’t yet figured out how this works, but it appears to be somewhat akin to your plan. https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5089783
(If anyone can explain how it works, or is supposed to, in English, I’d be muchly grateful.)
Well, its obvious! Its capturing the dark light radiated from the dark matter, which we are assured is everywhere, and vastly exceeds normal matter. Try to keep up!!
I did, sold it to G.E. for 300 million, by the time they figured it out I had completely changed my identity. Did you know that I have a perfect replicate of Bob Hope’s fingerprints
I need more coffee… In spite of knowing what day it is, your comment makes sense… especially if one was a climate true believer that frets about all the lwIR being bounced back to earth by the co2 in the air.
Yes, you could trap lwIR and make them bounce up and down between panels, until they exhaust all their energy
Don’t listen to these skeptics as I have this Neutrino Engine Development public float to get you in on the ground floor with. That’s where all the big neutrino money is to be made.
Change the name of your public float to Neutrino Engine Rapid Development, and just from the resulting acronym, you’ll be able to reap at least 10X more money.
Better yet, many new job opportunities will be opening up for certified neutrino engine quantum mechanics. Think of this classified ad in the back pages of Popular Science: You too can be a certified quantum mechanic!
The future has passed you by! I’m developing a new virtual currency based on neutrino capture. My NewtCoin ( Neutrino plus New) will enable money to fly right through you and come directly to me. I seem to have a tremendous amount of interest from politicians!
You mean NewtCon
“His next idea was a true lightbulb moment.” Excellent punage throughout. Truly reflects a warped mind.
The greenhouse effect relies upon “back radiation” which is made up of photons. This radiation is present day and night. Yet no solar panel is able to operate at night on “back radiation” photons.
Yet many WUWT articles themselves argue that solar and back radiation have the same warming potential when measured in watts per meter squared.
Apparently all photons are equal, but some are more equal than others.
Cancel Planck.
Just had the same thought, if the clouds are heating us back on the ground with heat ‘trapped’ by co2, why does it cool down at night? An over-simplified, accounting-style look at the energy balance makes art-history majors wet themselves that the world will catch fire. The CO2 can only slow down the cooling, and that only of the warmth of the ground – O2 and N2 in the air give up their energy by bouncing into the CO2 thermally, which then radiates the energy all over, with slightly less than half coming back down.
This guy is way off base. Neutrinos are so yesterday.
I am licensing the quantum singularity tech from the Romulans, that is the future.
People just don’t keep up.
Yeah, but you’d have to be careful of those creatures that live in quantum black-holes that power the Romulan Birds-of-Prey.
The quantum singularity tech would seriously be amazing – just feed it anything, like a Mr. Fusion, and as the garbage plunges down the gravity well it gives off energy equivalent to 30% of its mass. Of course we don’t really have a way of efficiently converting gamma rays to electricity.
Just put the Hulk on a treadmill and reverse the polarity.
You’re wasting your time… I developed a cloaking device in 2007, and it works so well that there’s been no warming since, anywhere within several hundred miles of where I live.
Some twit stole it in early February and I’m pretty sure my security camera got a picture of the car… it had Texas license plates.
Instead of Monday Mirthiness, is this Thursday Thirstiness?
Windmills that don’ require wind but still kill birds.
Yawn! This was published already 7 years ago, and NOT on April 1st!
https://www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/beta-ray-elektromobilitaet-tagsueber-solarstrom-nachts-lunarstrom-a-957232.html
Beta.ray Bill
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/thats-not-actually-how-it-works-each-way-albo-murray/ar-BB1fa7Jp
“Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese’s suggestion that it will be possible to use solar panels overnight to charge electric vehicles is “not actually how the system works,” according to Sky News host Paul Murray.”
I saw the video somewhere yesterday where Albanese actually claimed that Ausralian EV owners could recharge their car batteries overnight with solar panels on their roofs. I can’t find the video now.
For the life of me, the guy seemed like he was actally serious — it wasn’t an April Fool’s joke. After watching the video a few times, I just sat their shaking my head in disbelief.
Albanese is Labour, and an idiot; but, then again, it’s hard these days to find a politician who’s not an idiot.
Thi is a joke, yes?
U.S.Navy Patent https://e-catworld.com/2021/03/26/us-navy-patent-application-published-for-low-energy-nuclear-reactor/ is better than this- and it’s terrible.
Actually, LENR is real. It is based on the Widom Larsen theory and involves the weak nuclear force. Inverse of beta decay. You add energy to make a ‘heavy’ electron (IIRC about 700 ev, either using phonons (NASA) or EMI (Brillouin) and it combines with a proton to make a slow neutron with a large capture radius. Hydrogen=>Deuterium=>Tritium=> ‘quatrium’ (Mouse That Roared joke) =>Helium plus energy. Wrote about it in the Recognition chapter of ebook The Arts of Truth.
Both Navy and NASA have done years of research. I illustrated the Publicly available Navy work based on Pons-Fleischman approach in the chapter. The problem is, the energy output/input ratio is experimentally only 2. The Brillouin Energy design to get to 4, tested at SRI, failed to achieve 3. According to ITER, a minimum of 7 is needed, and preferably 10, to be potentially useful.
Too funny…..call it LENR, or “Cold Fusion”….. the mass energy difference between a proton and a neutron (1MeV) is greater than that of the mass energy of an electron.
But, you can make a boatload of money from investors selling them shares in this snake oil.