Co-harvesting universe coldness and solar energy for tri-generation of cooling, electricity, and heating

Passive daytime radiative cooling (PDRC) provides sustainable sub-ambient cooling, yet most PDRC designs reject incident sunlight that could otherwise be harvested. Here, we introduce hybrid PDRC-solar technologies that co-harvest universe coldness and solar energy to deliver cooling, electricity, and heating from the same area at the same time. The system combines a transparent PDRC emitter, which permits solar transmission, with a tandem concentrated photovoltaic-thermal collector on a two-axis solar tracker. The transparent PDRC emitter achieves cooling of 6.5°C below ambient, while the photovoltaic-thermal collector produces 60.6 W/m$^2$ of electricity and stores heat reaching 110.8°C. Replacing the photovoltaic-thermal collector with a spectrally selective solar-thermal absorber increases the stored temperature to 266.8°C, while the emitter maintains cooling of 2.4°C below ambient. This simultaneous harvesting is enabled by decoupling light intensity and limiting thermal exchange between the colder PDRC emitter and the hotter solar collector.