Solar panels depend on raw sunlight to produce electricity and raw sunlight contains a number of various particles. The most important particle for solar energy is the ‘photon’. When photons from the sun are exposed to solar panels, the electrons inside the panel charge and create a usable energy current. When the sun goes down, the electrons are no longer exposed to sunlight and therefore will not charge to create any electricity.
The moon does not generate its own light like the sun does and the reason why the moon lights up is because the sun’s light energy reflects off the moon’s surface area, thus creating the moon to shine. The moon produces no photons and none of its own light so unfortunately, it is not able to charge solar panels.
If you were to put a solar panel on the moon itself, it would generate electricity from the sun’s light but only during Earth’s night time hours, because the sun lights up the moon when the sun has gone down. So in theory, the only way for a solar panel to generate electricity at night time, would be to stick it on the moon!
However, all is not lost. So we’ve established that the moon cannot charge solar panels, but what about the other light in the sky? That’s right- the stars. Like the sun has solar energy, stars have stellar energy. Stellar energy is the internal energy radiated by a star. If a material that is sensitive to stellar energy (the same way silicon is sensitive to solar energy) is used to create a ‘stellar panel’ then we might be able to combine the material with solar cells to generate energy from the light of the stars. Unfortunately this is yet to be made practicable but who’s to say it isn’t possible? Solar energy has come a long way as a result of research, so anything is possible.
Watch this space…
