eli5: Do solar panels only work with sunlight, or can they be tuned to capture energy from other wavelengths outside the visible spectrum?

Question

eli5: Do solar panels only work with sunlight, or can they be tuned to capture energy from other wavelengths outside the visible spectrum?

In: 2876

Answer 1

So there’s work and *work*. Infrared is terribly bad at generating electricity but really good at heating water. UV is good at electricity, but there isn’t enough of it. Visible is generally useful for electricity.

I guess your ideal panel has a photovoltaic which absorbs visible light for electricity generation and heats up naturally from both that and IR, then is cooled by water which is then used for heating. But it isn’t my area of engineering: I don’t know where this is between ‘common practice’ and ‘madness, nobody would do it’ and ‘good idea but unfeasible’.