• Kairos@lemmy.today
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        13
        ·
        1 day ago

        Actually there’s also the mirror based solar which boils water in a central column.

        • rumba@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          11
          ·
          1 day ago

          It’s cooler than that; they use the heat to make molten salt, then use a heat exchanger to boil water with that, the salt gets stupid hot and holds energy into the night.

        • Smaile@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          edit-2
          22 hours ago

          its basically a bowl of water made of solar panels, i mean its not a bad idea at all but its nothing crazy either, probably a bitch to maintain tho.

          • Zink@programming.dev
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            18 hours ago

            If I may achkshually your achkshually, I believe that heat is the energy in the collective motion of particles of matter, and infrared photons are one way that energy can be radiated away from one body and absorbed by another.

          • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            18 hours ago

            I will uno reverse umm achkshually you. Heat is not synonymous with infrared light. Objects with heat will emit energy into their environment as EM radiation. That heat can also be conducted away through contact with another object.

            All objects with heat do give off a wide spectrum of EM radiation, with the uppermost frequency being proportional to the object’s temperature. A very cold object might only give off radio waves. Room temperature objects, like you, glow in the infrared. Above 500C or so, objects start glowing visibly red, then orange and yellow. A phenomenon we call incandescence.

            Objects that absorb light can and often do increase in heat, PV panels turn some of the energy that strikes them as light into electrical energy rather than thermal energy.