solar panel diy power boost 30% from mirror panels
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- Опубліковано 4 вер 2024
- Using glass mirror panels, this photovoltaic solar panel power is increased by 30%. Using broken mirrors with solar panels to boost the power output of a regular PV photo voltaic DIY solar panels. Monocrystalline Solar. The Mirrors covered this panel equalling about a 2x factor total. This method done correctly can increase PV output by up to 50% but you risk overheating the cells. I suggest using one mirror maximum and do it for fun. If you need more power, get more panels.
Doubling the sunlight adds 25% more power. It is not a 1 to 1 ratio. CPV chips are totally different. They are more expensive per watt than regular PV after price factoring the tracking device, dish construction, cooling unit.
My experience. Panels deliver the power they claim in a perfect world. Real world, expect 20% loss in conversion, heat, batteries, wiring. So 80 watts = about 64 watts with perfect sun and perfect wiring.
You need to watch the temperature of the pv cells, higher temperatures decrease their life span and overall output. Temporary gain , long term loss. In colder climates this is a good idea up to a point obviously, In arizona, we see a decrease in our panels during the heigth of summer
Thanks for keepping the novice viewers thinking outside the box Dan! And thanks for using the K.I.S. (keep it simple) rule. Many of those who make their living off PV installation and maintenance who everyone to beleive that this is rocket science. Great video!
You also shorten the lifespan of the cells, by 4x with 2x light, getting only 50% gain, but in the end, you get 25% less in the end. (Under normal conditions.)
However, "cooled", using 2-10% of the abundant power, you gain closer to 65% from 2x more light, and only shorten life by 2x. (Eg, 30 year panel will die in 15 years, not 7.5 years, if cooled.)
If super-cooled, you extend the life and triple the output. (That is what solar focusers try to do, but generating steam for a turbine is much more efficient.)
Mount the solar cell on an aluminum sheet, bend the ends down and bond more "fins" along the back... Set it in water, and now you have a cooler/heater. Cools the solar cells, heats the water, gives you hot water and water distilling all at the same time. (Exhaust the hot steamy water over thin sheets of aluminum, not connected to the solar-cell and in another cooler source of water. The water will condensate and collect there. Perfect in a kiddie-pool with a cover over it.)
Hack-a-day, survivalist. Compounding all ideas into one large idea is better than having 100 independent ideas that are partially functional.
It is not worth adding mirrors but it was an excellent experiment. Thank you..
These have the newer MC Connectors which are designed for solid connections but you need the conversion kit. I suggest 12 gauge per panel.
Dan,
Ive been watching your videos for a long time & love them. Thx for your efforts.
Ive a 3.8kw solar array on my house pointing SW & have a time of use meter with Los Angels DWP. Since the power peaks in the afternoon when DWP pays the most and we are away from home in the afternoons we end up sending power to the grid at peak time. This really seems to be working well as DWP pays high peal rates at that time.
Keep up the good videos.
Ramsey
This is a fabulous video. Thank you for sharing, and thanks for articulating the different examples! Keep up the GREAT work!
honest experimentation...thanks..
Thank you for the nice comment. Mirrors are better as the Fresnel lens needs to be larger than the solar panel and that costs more than buying and additional solar panel. Mirrors are free and redirect light. Focusing many page magnifiers do nothing. The goal is to increase light to the panel. So either a lens larger than the PV PANEL or redirected sunlight with mirrors.
If you put an IR film on the mirror(s) wouldn't it still work and block the heat? From what I understand (which really isn't much), the PV cell uses the visible part of the EMS and so blocking the IR would allow you to have a number of mirrors without heating up the panel. Of course, I don't know how much light the cell could handle, there are built in limitations. Could you possibly double the amount with several mirrors in this way?
I worked with that years ago and doubled it, but it gets hot, and to cool it with h2o on the back is tough.
Thank you for the great comment Gill
:-)
Thank you for the nice comment, :-) Thank you for the invite.
Good experiment, bad alligator clip wires. A quick way to alleviate the overheating thin wires are to just double them up so they share the load.
wonderful, another great creative idea to save humanity.
Dan, nice one, you could add plain white painted areas around the solar panel, as you know often used in filming / photography, a cost effective light reflector. If your into green engineering, just add another panel may not be the way forward.
Thanks for this video. I had thought about trying this, but don't yet have the meter. If we experience harder times AND can't easily get more solar panels/supplies, this info may prove helpful.
Agreed, the have the MC connectors, bought some MC to pigtail bit they did not fit. Same side, different manufacture. So I will just rip the connectors off.
It is usually similar to non-reflective glass used for art framing (pebbled surface). The DIY method is a very light scuffing. Testing the light transfer of different methods and sanding mediums.
You have shown in a previous video that submerging the cells in water that you were able to better control the heat. Doing so should allow you to concentrate more mirrors on the cell I would imagine.
luv this thinking outside the box and taking a hypothesis and testing it and not killing us with numbers, and math, and academia and theories, it's all meat and potatoes just the way I like it
I thought of this too!You beat me to it though.
It increases yes
I have bifacial panels. I would like to add mirrors to bounce the sunlight on the backside of my panels. Going to do some experimenting.
That's 57 Degrees Celsius compared to 46 degrees Celsius for anyone who takes numbers seriously.
Great Video btw.
I love how he moves hand when he is talking.
Look at shadow at 4:37
Lol
Interesting to see what's more efficient; maybe an array of focusing lenses infront of the panel to focus the light beams onto the panel itself might increase the power output. What's your opinion on that?
And have you considered an automated motor attached to the mirror that could be used to reflect the sun to the panel at all times regardless of it's place in the sky?
thanks for sharing this very informative video
I see this effect in winter when we have a layer of nice white snow on a sunny winter day. The output can go up by as much as 30%.
Captain , A Phaser will only Drain so fast , and THAT'S IT !
When you try to get more out of a VW Beetle Maybe it's time to get a Cadillac Coupe 472 cu. .
Don't you mean "time to get an Audi"?
Thanks, I was wondering about this.
and now my wire is smoking...lmao!!!! very funny, I too was interested in how mirrors increase output. keep up the good work
That's a nice short term solution, but it also causes the solar panel to age much faster, so be aware of that and take it into account into your ROI calculation.
got me thinking about catching the reflection off of windows and lakes/ponds. Very interesting.
great work bro, love to watch your videos
Thank you for the great comment!!!!!
welcome bro
Sorry for the delay, the grid tie inverter gradually draws a max load vs a short circuit so the working load is more realistic for long runs and accommodates for resistance from increased heat with the additional light. If the panel is tabbed (mono-poly-multi crystalline) vs amorphous, make sure the light is balanced over all the cells or the voltage/current can drop even with additional light, like a blocked cell.
Tell me how to implement it in large plants
-- That is an interesting idea. But the water would evaporate. You would have to have the water sealed in a glass case on top of the solar panel.
You could increase the efficiency by spraying water on the surface of the panels. The colder the water, the more power it could generate.
Fuses are a wonder, but testing is understandable. But if your large wires start burning, I think you're having problems. haha
I get it; saturate the cell evenly and avoid burning the cell up/the place down. NJ TY
Fascinating. Have you done any more recent tests? I wonder how MPPT technology would be affected by using mirrors on a small array (say, 1KW). You could position a mirror on a couple of panels and boost their output, but the other panels wouldn't be affected. The MPPT voltage algorithms who likely be messed up and cause the panels to operate at incorrect voltages. Still, interesting video...thanks! Betcha had fun!
If you were going to do this, I would do sun angle calculations. Face it towards the south, and have mirrors about 30% lager than the panel itself along the bottom. at such and angle where you get a full reflection right between noon and dusk. and about half the reflection at noon, to avoid burning out the panel, as well as getting a bigger boost during the time of day with less light.
Very informative video. Got to learn a lot from it.
I'm doing a study on this subject as a masters project. I'm using two mirrors on the sides to increase the output. Some guys who did experiments measure the short circuit current of the panel to determine the increase in output. Can you describe better how your load is better than that? I'm using a fixed resistor for my study, but improving my measurements is always a good thing. Thank you!
You could build a simple border like a light oven with tin foil behind plexi glass would probably boost any panel by 20% and could be done in a day.
How would this affect the longevity of the solar panels?
I don't think the added heat would hurt the cells but too much heat could definitely damage the EVA (ethyl vinyl acetate) the cells are laminated in.
CPV, or Concentrated PhotoVoltaics, is explained in the SciShow episode titled "Solar Energy" at 7:30 min.
Hank Green says they're using mirrors that are 10 x larger than the photovoltaic cells and in this way they cut down on costs and get a much more efficient use of the expensive solar cells.
Judging by the above experiment, this requires better wiring? Better cooling?
My fresnel lenses are 4 x as big as my solar panels [small ones] and i hope to increase my output in this way but i appreciate the warning about overheating!
Just an idle thought, the 54 Watts does not mean there's 26 Watts of loss. The panel will do 80W only under ideal conditions which means virtually never (without help from the mirrors). Also, the max he got 71 Watts with mirrors, which was pretty close to 80W given that the smaller inverters have as much as 5 Watts of loss.
Check out the video in the yellow box above the ratings. Also Search "CPV SOLAR"
Put a water jacket behind the panel to cool it and concentrate more solar on it...
I'd like to see a test done with panels mounted at a lower azimuth and the sun in the winter's sky then aim the light from that sun onto the panels using a mirror at varying angles while noting the panel output under load.
My system is mounted at 150 degrees azimuth at 14 degrees elevation, so it might be interesting to see what happens if I employ the use of mirrors this coming winter.
Fun times.
Nice work Dan... as always!
Peace
Gill
Nice video, Thank you - I am guessing that a person who made an air heater or a water heater solar panel could focus as many mirrors as possible (as long as they made the box of high heat materials like metal studs and fiberglass insulation) and get very high heat increases!
I need to try this!
Thanx again
nice exprement keep it up
The point of the answer was that it depends on each device's individual power consumption. For example: 10 halogen light-bulbs = ~600 watts, 10 LED light-bulbs = ~150 watts, three laptops or mini-PCs = ~300 watts, three gaming PCs = ~1500 watts, so the answer that you want would be: anywhere from 800 watts to 3000 watts.
I don't know why tracking isn't compulsory on all rooftop installations.
Here in Australia it's mid-winter and my panels start generating about 7am and continue until about 5pm and if my panels were lifted to face the sun in the morning and afternoon I'd probably get another 2kw/h a day on a 2 kw system.
It doesn't need to track constantly - just a morning, noon and afternoon position would do.
reminds me of the idea I had to take scrap fiber optic cables to bring more light to a solar panel. around the sides of the panel you would have light capture stations that channel the light through the fiber optics to the solar panel to boost the light it gets. I thought that might make them more effective and usable in cloudier areas... I had a friend who installed fiber optic cable and they have tons of 6' or less scraps they throw away...
Makes me speculate if adding light filters could provide as much or more benefit than mirrors alone. If you gather only the most useful wavelengths of light, you could discard the rest, thereby reducing heat (perhaps)--much the same as plants benefit from blue light for photosynthesis. Which wavelengths do PV cells "prefer"? Time for some research...
In fact, your thin jumper probably limited your current output fairly significantly.
Its kinda like snow on a bright day. I would suggest highly reflective white paint or white cardboard
Look on the back of the module, it should have temperature coefficients. When the module gets to hot the amperage goes down, when its really cold the volts goes up. Needs a balance of the two to get watts. What the wattage of the module, yeah you are going to lose some power through the inverting process about 85% is going to be usable.
Simple but could add power as long as you don't burn anything out.
Could see a good use during cloudy days tho, since theirs like 70% less ( for instance ) sun then mirrors would help get power when wouldn't get much/any if that makes sense lol
Have you tried individual solar cells without encasing? e.g. mono vs poly, and mono cells where the metal traces are on the bottom vs the type with them on top? Maybe individual cells could be concentrated onto.... a simple bicylinder dome would give twice the surface area (should be 2x total), but would probably concentrate in the very middle. A diffuser could solve that potentially. Also the top bicylinder dome should probably be stronger than a flat piece of glass, considering it should deflect hail and such better. Or, a simple bowl upside down as those are already manufactured, but don't match the square cells as well. a well fitting piece of glass could be glued to the bottom, making a well sealed single module. I'm not sure if inert gas fill or vacuum could help but if so might be feasible in such a design. Heated air could be what shortens the life span by reacting, and getting rid of a reactant gas could enable higher temps without shortened lifespan potentially.
When entirely sealed in glass, there should be a very good thermal interface for drawing the extra heat away for use both in the winter and summer. If there's just too much at times, maybe a simple system could be used to shade when needed? i.e. passive gain in lower light, active shading in peak light. Maybe an aluminum-coated 'cocktail' umbrella in the center that unfolds automatically? That should be more reliable than a tracking system... it could be made with expanding paraffin probably, so it would be totally free of electronics or digital control. Another maybe better option might be to have the 'thermostat' valve move the cell down out of focus.... half of r I think for 1x power, or 1.5" for a 6" cell. It's not flat but it's still very low profile compared to any tracking system, especially on a roof. Nitinol or dimetal might do the trick best.
+Charles Hansen Getting too technical won't get you far. Removing the metal frame means you are removing the protection out of the set up. We live in a real world where there's hails, flying debris (bird poops, tree branches, rocks, golf balls, rain water, anything...) and wind that can do all kinds of damage to the solar cells.
Another great video. Thanks for sharing!!!!!
You could add plywood wings to your solar panel and use foil to cover the wings for reflection.
@SwindleFlu Hi,
Yes
@iulian28ti The fresnel lens might heat it up a bit much and put too much light in one area. Unless you find a way to spread it to the whole panel, I think that would be too much for a single panel.
Boosting a panel with mirrors just shortens the life presumably. And it requires clear sunlight and actively tracking.. so..
it always ends up being easier just to use purely solar panels.
@midairmark Check the video response above.
Cool vid. I did a similar experiment and got similar results. There is definitely a lot of free mirror out there so it's worth exploring.
I also built my own solar panel and started experimenting with this plastic/corrugated board (the type they use for political campaigns) that i got. Seems like a good material being weatherproof, relatively strong and lightweight and yes...cheap. Wait until the day after an election and just grab some!
Sunpower C60 cells -- Broad Spectral Response SunPower cells capture more light from the blue and infrared parts of the spectrum, enabling higher performance in overcast and low-light conditions.
we ive in the north & we see a major power increase when there is snow on th ground...
I worked with that years ago and doubled it, but it gets hot, and to cool it with h2o on the back is tough.
I always wondered if putting a magnifying glass on a solar panel would help gain more energy so if you know could you tell me?
There's a problem with this. To be useful you would need to put the mirrors in robotic arms to move with the sun?
Not sure, I think one mirror or white reflector is okay I would not do it on a large expensive install:-)
Thermoelectric generators on the back to make power from Sun heat maybe able to increase power a small amount.
Protomaker Black Sprint Original 3D Printer yeah but then you have to cool the Tegs which adds more problems. TEGs produce power with a temp differential. Not just a heat source
Great Video. So Mirror can increase PV Output. Have anyone try a prism so that only the related light (nm) hits the PV Panel. The other light can be use for other ie cooking & etc. Plus, lower the PV Panel temp.
i got 1 ref and 10 light bulb plus 3 computers, my questions are: how many watts should be my panels and how many deep cycle batteries should i need? also how many watts should be my inverter... thank u and more power and projects from u guys.. happy new year 2013
Hi Dan, I really love your videos. Do you think efficiency might increase by adding anti-reflective film to the panel? Maybe you could give that a try?
Thanks,
Laszlo, Netherlands
well, when you're using 18 or 20 gauge radio Shack Alligator clips, OF COURSE the increased current is going to burn it up!
I think galvanized mirrors or white rock will help also.
Dan you showed in a previous video that cooling a solar cell increased the effeciency, remember, in the fish tank?? What if you combined these two methods?? Just how many watts can you get with that "80w" pannel??
can we remove the metal frame and the glass
the thing is the sun moves and those mirrors dont move wont that affect the reflection back on the solar panels? just thinking if you was to fix mini mirrors on the sid of the panels????
HOLY CRAP!!!!!
THATS ALOT!
Hey Dan, Good to see you again, In some of your other videos you mentioned that heat will cause the solar panels to work as well as they should. Yet I have watched so many videos and people put them flat on the roof of there homes. Would it not be better to raise them a foot or two ? As always great video ! take care
Would there be value in using the early morning sun with a mirror? To intensify that? Instead of trying to increase peak time production ?
Maybe using water is a bad idea.. So what other liquid could we use instead of water.. (I'm not an expert, nothing comes to mind).. what we could do is fool around with the water/other liquid ratio.. 60/40 maybe I dunno.. the purpose of the water would be to mainly increase the watts while the other liquids purpose would be to keep the panel cooled..(Segment 2)
Nothing new, now the hard questions: how much will be shortened the lifetime of the panel ,considering overheat and UV increase? Moreover, when the sun is missing, the investment is useless, since no significant power increse will be noticed..am I right?
try it again with fat cables! you know you had too much resistant on the burning cable so eventually the readings are not good and could be higher.
I searched for this, because I have a Nomad 13 watt solar panel, and want to place it inside the window vertically, and the mirror outdoors on the window ledge.
What is the best way to mount or place the mirrors? I don't feel like standing there all day.
What if you also used a magnification mirror, or even tempered, magnification glass, as well as a mirror in combination? Or a magnification mirror and magnification glass at the same time? You could aso try a large telescope crystal, let the sun shine on the rounded side, and aim the flat side at your solar panels like a directed beam flash light!
i want a solar panel to grow weed with one of those special lights in my woods.... :P
Are your bulbs CPF or LED? Also computers, laptop or tower. Monitors CRT or flatscreen. Fridge, age/make cu dimensions.
Happy 2013
What about if you just shine a really bright light at it? ;)
Where do I find cheap polycrystaline panels, tabbing wire, ect. to build my own panels?
Thanks for the test. Have u tried your parabolic mirrors or magnifying. Glass on a panel yet ?
I went swimming yesterday with my woman. We both were in the pool for about 30 mins.. I got out and tried to tan... she stayed in the water. When we went inside I tried bragging to her I got a tan (and yoouuu didnt!)...so my amazement she got the better tan.. So I wonder if you were to put a inch or so of water on top of the solar panel.. but touching.. would you harness more Watts? (Segment 1)
You may have already answered this question: Have you posted this test with the solar panel submerged in the fish tank??
That can be said about the solar panel itself too