3 ms·

I don’t understand, isn’t this harvesting the same energy as a heat pump? (Warm earth, cold air)

• Enginerrrd 7y ago
  At it's core, yes, but I think it's less "cold air" and more thermally equilibrating with the radiative temperature of the night sky which is more like 3 degrees Kelvin. So in essence you are lowering the temperature of the cold sink until the ambient temperature is comparatively hot to extract work out of your heat pump.
• extrapickles 7y ago
  Almost, but same concept. It looks to be taking advantage of the temperature of space (or at least as much as you can on the ground) as it does have a cover that blocks heat transfer to/from the wind. Its basically using a standard thermopile/seebeck module or basically a peltier module that is optimized for generating power, rather than moving heat, to generate power from the temperature difference.