Put Mirrors On Solar Panels

Pearce is a professor of engineering at michigan technological university.

Put mirrors on solar panels.

The reflectors are placed opposite the solar panels to send more light toward the modules in front of them. At a current cost of 0 70 usd watt on the low end for low end solar panels it would potentially be cost effective for a large 200 watt panel 200 0 70 140 usd if the wholesale cost of the mirrors would only add up to 20 the cost so in this case 28 usd. The second technology is concentrating solar power or csp. You may also be interested in csp concentrated solar power.

We therefore need to know during the year the maximum and minimum altitude of the sun at midday in order to discover how many degrees our panels have to be tilted. As i said earlier the more a solar panel is perpendicular to the sun s rays the more it produces electricity. Tenksolar is another u s. How much energy does a solar panel produce.

You can use more mirrors to reflect more light onto the solar panel and increase it s power further but on a sunny summers day the extra light can build up a lot of heat that may damage the panel. The maximum energy production is achieved at midday when the sun reaches its maximum altitude on the horizon. This technology uses mirrors to reflect and concentrate sunlight onto receivers that collect solar energy and convert it to heat which can then be used to produce electricity. Here mirrors or lenses concentrate sunlight onto a small area often a central tower to produce heat.

Each mirror is equipped with. There are eight heliostats on a pod with the mirrors motors operated by small two watt photovoltaic solar panels explained chief technology officer brad hines. Company one with innovative solar panel technology that recently announced it is winding down operations unable to compete with the low cost chinese panels. For the sake of example if you are getting 5 hours of direct sunlight per day in a sunny state like california you can calculate your solar panel output this way.

5 hours x 290 watts an example wattage of a premium solar panel 1 450 watts hours or roughly 1 5 kilowatt hours kwh. In july i had my 1 5w panel running at double its rated power for twenty minutes it got so hot you couldn t touch it. While the hot water is typically used to drive a steam turbine you can also use it directly to heating buildings and for other purposes. The light that hits them is reflected back toward the solar panels to produce more.