Solar panels that don’t require direct sunlight have been invented in another leap forwards for clean energy.
A Filipino engineering student designed the revolutionary material using luminescent particles from fruit and vegetable waste. Carvey Ehren Maigue, 29, won the James Dyson Foundation Sustainability Award in 2020 for the panels he constructed at Mapua University in the Philippines
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