Polymer-based solar-thermal device soaks up the sun

Geothermal add-ons for heat pumps on the market today collect heat from the air or the ground. This new device uses a fluid that flows through a roof-mounted module to collect heat from the sun while an integrated solar cell generates electricity from the sun’s visible light.

‘It’s a systems approach to making your home ultra-efficient because the device collects both solar energy and heat,’ said David Carroll, director of the Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials at Wake Forest University. ‘Our solar-thermal device takes better advantage of the broad range of power delivered from the sun each day.’

A standard, rooftop solar cell will miss about 75 per cent of the energy provided by the sun at any given time because it cannot collect the longest wavelengths of light — infrared heat. Such cells miss an even greater amount of the available daily solar power because they collect sunlight most efficiently between 1000 and 1400.