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What happens to solar power when it isn't sunny? A simple question with an amazing answer.

"How does solar energy work when there's no sun?" has been a question for pretty much about as long as solar energy has been a thing.

Of course people wouldn't want solar panels on their houses if installing them meant that, come sunset, the movie they were watching suddenly shut off, forcing them to read by candlelight like colonial settlers. Making solar power a viable option, even when the sun sets or disappears behind some clouds, was one of the first things scientists and engineers had to figure out.

Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images.


When the first devices that could capture the sun's energy were invented, they weren't very efficient.

Much like touch screens or video chatting or Dorito-flavored taco shells, solar power is one of those perfect ideas that took a while to get just right. Believe it or not, the earliest solar devices were introduced in the 1800s.

In 1878, Augustin Mouchot invented a device that could freeze water using the concentrated power of the sun. It was a cool experiment but not exactly reasonable or viable options for large-scale energy production.

No one wants this on the roof of their house. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Mouchot won a gold medal at the Universal Exhibition in Paris for his invention, but his device was gigantic, and coal was quickly becoming the go-to for efficient energy, so it didn't catch on.

The other downside to his invention? The solar-powered water-freezer only worked on (you guessed it) sunny days. But, that was 1878. Things have changed a lot since then.

Over the last century, the efficiency and feasibility of solar power has dramatically increased, and it's getting better every day.

Just look at this fun, easy-to-read chart!

OH GOD, MY EYES!Photo via National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

I know, I know, it's a lot to take in. Just know that it's showing you that since 1975, we've gotten better and better at efficiently converting the sun's rays into energy that can power our homes, businesses, and even a few cars and planes.

So how does solar energy keep providing power when the sun goes down?

The answer is pretty simple: storage.

Photo by Uriel Sinai/Getty Images.

Today's solar panels are designed to soak up more energy from the sun than we actually need and store it for later.

The way they do it is pretty amazing. Photons (aka light particles) hit the solar panel really hard — so hard that electrons (aka what electricity is made of) get knocked loose. Then the solar panel guides those loose electrons into a battery or superconductor that can store them. If an area has a reliable electricity grid, homeowners can just hook their solar panels right up to it. For them, nothing changes from their normal source of power except (usually) a smaller electricity bill.

A lot of people don't realize that going solar doesn't have to mean going "off grid," says Dan Whitson, solar manager for Green Audit USA in Long Island, N.Y.

"The grid is pretty reliable here, so battery options aren’t necessarily cost-effective on Long Island," Whitson explained over the phone. "But that’s something we have to explain to homeowners that, you know, you’re still going to be connected to the grid even though you’ve gone solar."

If there are solar panels on your roof, it's not like your PlayStation is plugged directly into them. The solar panels run into your regular power lines and help offset some of the energy cost, or they run into a box that will store the electricity, quite literally, for a rainy day.

Solar farms are power-plant-scale versions of this concept.

A solar power plant in China. Photo by STR/AFP/Getty Images.

They can be built in the middle of a desert where the sun is incredibly powerful and cloudy days are rare. The panels can even pivot automatically to follow the sun's path across the sky.

After the panels soak up as much energy as they can, the energy is transported to nearby cities. There's a solar farm in Austin, Texas, that produces enough power for 5,000 homes and offsets over 1 billion pounds of carbon dioxide emissions.

Oh and, yes, solar panels can still collect energy on cloudy days. They're just not as efficient about it.

That's because clouds don't block all the sunlight, just some of it. If you walk outside on a cloudy day and can still see, that's because there's still sunlight, even if it's a bit more muted than usual.

The sun is unstoppable. Photo via iStock.

That's where storage and the grid come in. Energy companies rely on the grid to offset any dips in production they might experience on a cloudy day.

"All of the reputable solar production calculators out there take in 20 to 30 years of weather data based on region," Whitson said. "So they can predict how much sun you’re going to get throughout the course of a year. Most projections are taking into consideration that it’s not going to be sunny every day."

Also, as previously mentioned, efficiency is one of the key things scientists are constantly trying to improve about solar panels.

"How does solar energy work when there's no sun?" is a simple question that cuts right to the core of a pretty huge idea.

It's the type of question that scientists, engineers, researchers, and experts around the world have to ask every single day in order to get better at what they're doing.

Photo by Ian Waldie/Getty Images.

It's the type of question that brought solar energy from an obscure experiment to a feasible source of electricity that powers millions of homes around the world.

A pitbull stares at the window, looking for the mailman.


Dogs are naturally driven by a sense of purpose and a need for belonging, which are all part of their instinctual pack behavior. When a dog has a job to do, it taps into its needs for structure, purpose, and the feeling of contributing to its pack, which in a domestic setting translates to its human family.

But let’s be honest: In a traditional domestic setting, dogs have fewer chores they can do as they would on a farm or as part of a rescue unit. A doggy mom in Vancouver Island, Canada had fun with her dog’s purposeful uselessness by sharing the 5 “chores” her pitbull-Lab mix does around the house.

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Let's not curse any more children with bad names, shall we?

Some parents have no trouble giving their children perfectly unique, very meaningful names that won’t go on to ruin their adulthood. But others…well…they get an A for effort, but might want to consider hiring a baby name professional.

Things of course get even more complicated when one parent becomes attached to a name that they’re partner finds completely off-putting. It almost always leads to a squabble, because the more one parent is against the name, the more the other parent will go to bat for it.

This seemed to be the case for one soon-to-be mom on the Reddit AITA forum recently. Apparently, she was second-guessing her vehement reaction to her husband’s, ahem, avant garde baby name for their daughter, which she called “the worst name ever.”

But honestly, when you hear this name, I think you’ll agree she was totally in the right.

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An English doctor named Edward Jenner took incredible risks to try to rid his world of smallpox. Because of his efforts and the efforts of scientists like him, the only thing between deadly diseases like the ones below and extinction are people who refuse to vaccinate their kids. Don't be that parent.

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Kudos to the heroes who had 90 seconds to save lives in the Key Bridge collapse

The loss of 6 lives is tragic, but the dispatch recording shows it could have been so much worse.

Representative image by Gustavo Fring/Pexels

The workers who responded to the Dali's mayday call saved lives with their quick response.

As more details of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore emerge, it's becoming more apparent how much worse this catastrophe could have been.

Just minutes before 1:30am on March 26, shortly after leaving port in Baltimore Harbor, a cargo ship named Dali lost power and control of its steering, sending it careening into a structural pillar on Key Bridge. The crew of the Dali issued a mayday call at 1:26am to alert authorities of the power failure, giving responders crucial moments to prepare for a potential collision. Just 90 seconds later, the ship hit a pylon, triggering a total collapse of the 1.6-mile bridge into the Patapsco River.

Dispatch audio of those moments shows the calm professionalism and quick actions that limited the loss of life in an unexpected situation where every second counted.

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Yale's pep band had to miss the NCAA tournament. University of Idaho said, 'We got you.'

In an act of true sportsmanship, the Vandal band learned Yale's fight song, wore their gear and cheered them on.

Courtesy of University of Idaho

The Idaho Vandals answered the call when Yale needed a pep band.

Yale University and the University of Idaho could not be more different. Ivy League vs. state school. East Coast vs. Pacific Northwest. City vs. farm town. But in the first two rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament, extenuating circumstances brought them together as one, with the Bulldogs and the Vandals becoming the "Vandogs" for a weekend.

When Yale made it to the March Madness tournament, members of the school's pep band had already committed to other travel plans during spring break. They couldn't gather enough members to make the trek across the country to Spokane, Washington, so the Yale Bulldogs were left without their fight song unless other arrangements could be made.

When University of Idaho athletic band director Spencer Martin got wind of the need less than a week before Yale's game against Auburn, he sent out a message to his band members asking if anyone would be interested in stepping in. The response was a wave of immediate yeses, so Martin got to work arranging instruments and the students dedicated themselves to learning Yale's fight song and other traditional Yale pep songs.

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