6 \$\begingroup\$ So I'm finding different numbers online, but it seems that the consensus is that solar panels can generate around 0.2-0.3% of their rated power from moonlight, assuming good conditions (clear night, full moon, etc.) Now for a residential application, this results in a negligible amount of power. The average installation in the US seems to be 8kW, so 0.25% of that translates to 20W. You could maybe run a couple of night lamps from that, although in practice most residential solar systems simply shut down under a certain input. However, utility scale is a different story. It's again surprisingly hard to ascertain which is the current largest solar farm in the world, but it looks like it might be the Xinjiang facility in China, with an installed capacity of 5 GW. Going again by our 0.25% moonlight efficiency figure, that nets us 12.5MW of power under a clear full moon. That's not nothing. In fact, that's more than most utility projects in the US, which tend to be under 5MW. So the question is: do these large utility installations keep producing power at night, sky conditions permitting? Why or why not? solar-energy Share Cite Follow edited yesterday Timst asked yesterday TimstTimst 17944 bronze badges New contributor Timst is a new contributor to this site. Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering. Check out our Code of Conduct. \$\endgroup\$ 4 \$\begingroup\$ It is not worth the effort; there is nothing to be gained, only losses. \$\endgroup\$ – Dereck Commented yesterday 1 \$\begingroup\$ There is no reason why a solar farm could or could not work at night in theory. Whether any does work at night must be verified from a source. \$\endgroup\$ – Justme Commented yesterday 1 \$\begingroup\$ From casual googling, it looks like solar Inverters are ~95% efficient. Even if only 10% of the losses are fixed (do not scale with current), then this is a losing proposition. It may be possible to reconfigure the panels into a "nighttime" setup where they all share an inverter or something but I think the economies are just not there. \$\endgroup\$ – vir Commented yesterday 1 \$\begingroup\$ Whilst the numbers are not there, there are more-or-less serious proposals to have large area man-made reflectors in space that would direct light selectively to solar farms. Russia experimented with this in the 1990s. \$\endgroup\$ – Spehro 'speff' Pefhany Commented yesterday Add a comment  |