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Solar Panels installed at the Sumac

Tash [alan lodge] | 31.10.2007 20:33 | Climate Chaos | Ecology | Technology

In pursuit of a little more self-sufficiency, Sumac supporters installed at set of solar panels on the front of the building. A south facing wall that seems to get sunlight for most of the day.






















Solar Panels installed at the Sumac

In pursuit of a little more self-sufficiency, Sumac supporters installed at set of solar panels on the front of the building. A south facing wall that seems to get sunlight for most of the day.

They have already seen some service, and being of much older stock, it would be a shame to see such tech thrown away. So they have been polished up a bit and recyled in use.

The object is to provide sufficient power to recharge 12V batteries. Because of their age, there are a number of surface blemishes and thus, they are unlikely to reach their full potential voltage. To begin with, power can just be taken from the setup, 'neat'.

Eventually, they hope to include a control box in the wiring, to act as a cutout on the battery becoming fully charged. Also, being wired together in parallel, current will continue to flow, even if one of the panels should fail.

Now, I can see this is a pretty 'low-tech' project, but being so promenantly placed, an objective is to inspire visitors to the centre to give some thought on how they might do something similar themselves ..... to consider a variety of solutions.

Every little helps ...... !


Photovoltaic module - wikipedia
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaic_module

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell

ow do Solar Panels Work?
 http://www.wisegeek.com/how-do-solar-panels-work.htm

____________________________________________
ALAN LODGE
Photographer - Media: One Eye on the Road. Nottingham. UK
Email:  tash@indymedia.org
Collected Web:  http://tinyurl.com/ynttvo
Member of the National Union of Journalists [No: 014345]
____________________________________________
"It is not enough to curse the darkness.
It is also necessary to light a lamp!!"
___________________________________________

Tash [alan lodge]
- e-mail: tash@indymedia.org
- Homepage: http://tinyurl.com/ynttvo

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wicked !

01.11.2007 08:19

nice one..

john


Optimising output

01.11.2007 11:13

Well done to all for the planning and effort on this.

I am not sure if this is the best place for a technical question but perhaps the answer can be helpful to other readers.

I had understood, and found in practuce that to get the best, and in low light levels any useable, output from solar panels they should be oriented so that the sun's rays hoit them at 90 degrees. Of course the sun moves thoughout the day so to achieive this we'd need the panels to move, which is not practical/cost effective. As a compromise we find a best average angke for them and a rulw of thumb is to mount them at an angle equivalent to the latitude of the location. Nottingham is at 52 degrees.
So, does anybody know how much more efficient they would be if mounted at an angle as opposed to vertical?


Dean


A guess at an answer

01.11.2007 13:08

Assuming 52 degrees is the optimal we can work out what a 90 degrees panel projects onto the 52 degree surface - if the panel is 1 square metre it will look like sin(90-52)=0.61 square metres...

So it's getting 60% of the light. I understand that as well as output being proportional to intensity so is efficiency which would imply they'll perform even worse!

I've read about people using satelite disc mounts and their associated motors to track the sun.

Tom D
mail e-mail: dexterdixon@gmail.com
- Homepage: http://v3power.org


solar panles at angles

09.11.2007 19:51

The above calculation loooks correct. The best angle is less than 50deg if you want more output in summer and more than 50 if you want more output in winter. At 90 degrees we get less than 60% of the maximum output as we miss the sun in the summer when we get most. However, as the panels are mainly for charging batteries over the winter 90deg is not too bad.

chan