Most of the energy that hits a solar panel is wasted. Energy technology researcher Peng Wang told IE that less than 20 percent of the energy that hits a solar panel gets turned into electricity.

The rest is turned into heat, which can cause the panel to become even less efficient.

Researchers have spent decades figuring out how to squeeze more electricity out of solar panels, coming up with solutions like harvesting energy from more colors of light by replacing silicon with quantum dots. 

Wang’s team at King Abdullah University in Saudi Arabia takes a different approach. They found a way to use the waste heat.

Their system, described in a paper published this week in the academic journal Cell Reports Physical Science, uses the otherwise unusable energy to pull water from the desert air.

Wang earned his Ph.D. from the University of California Santa Barbara in 2009, just a few months before the grand opening of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology.

An NPR journalist reporting from the event called the university the king’s “pet project” and described it as “a graduate-level institution that will research how to harness solar power, desalinate water, and genetically alter plants to survive in the harsh desert.”

The university, funded by a $10 billion endowment, made big promises to lure Wang.

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