Thanks William. Always knew that increased temperature reduced the output power - thanks for reinforcing that with your experiments. What I am very interested in is how to cool them efficiently - air blown under them, water sprayed over them etc.
These folding panels have a layer of foam backing for impact resistance. It unfortunately also insulates the panels. I have stripped one panel of all its backing and will do a side-by-side test with an unmodified unit next.
An interesting variant would be in use Peltier cells to increase efficiency of solar panels and instantly provide better temperature conditions for operation. Water would provide necessary temperature disparity.
@@andybalsawood5182 Interesting idea. For a mobile application, this may get too heavy and damage the cells, but for a fixed install, where none of this matters it might work. All I know is that you have to pump current in to create a temperature differential (to cool one face of the cells), but I do know they have been used to extract energy from waste heat.
@@Bennyboy-dog That's right: if energy is applied -- you get diode-like temperature conductivity from cold-to-hot. If you maintain temperature differential between sides -- you get current flow through external load with temperature conductivity direction hot-to-cold. The initial idea was in usage of powering combo: solar panels on kayak produce electrical power but get very hot from unused energy beyond spectral reception. The Peltier cell has "hot" side connected to aluminium wafer (with a thinnest layer of insulator -- maybe just a sheet of paper permeated with something for water resistance and heat conductivity or just a layer of suitable varnish or paint...) with solar cells on it and "cold" side gets cooling from river/lake water. Maybe by a light weighted thin hosepipe with negligible angle sloped plastic funnel submerged under water to keep solar panels way above water level. The Peltier cell used by William in the video with head-worn light produces approximately couple/few dozens of watts with a maximum t differential applied. If we measure an average t with known area of a solar cell, measure water t, -- we'll be able to approximate the potential energy productivity of the idea. If we want to get too nerdy/realistic -- we can include parts' thermal resistance, calculate additional drug caused by funnel, etc. ;)
The old panel distortion means that the suns rays are not perpendicular to the panel which is effectively causing slight shading variation to the power output - have the same panels
Thanks William. Always knew that increased temperature reduced the output power - thanks for reinforcing that with your experiments. What I am very interested in is how to cool them efficiently - air blown under them, water sprayed over them etc.
These folding panels have a layer of foam backing for impact resistance. It unfortunately also insulates the panels. I have stripped one panel of all its backing and will do a side-by-side test with an unmodified unit next.
An interesting variant would be in use Peltier cells to increase efficiency of solar panels and instantly provide better temperature conditions for operation. Water would provide necessary temperature disparity.
@@andybalsawood5182 Interesting idea. For a mobile application, this may get too heavy and damage the cells, but for a fixed install, where none of this matters it might work. All I know is that you have to pump current in to create a temperature differential (to cool one face of the cells), but I do know they have been used to extract energy from waste heat.
@@Bennyboy-dog That's right: if energy is applied -- you get diode-like temperature conductivity from cold-to-hot. If you maintain temperature differential between sides -- you get current flow through external load with temperature conductivity direction hot-to-cold. The initial idea was in usage of powering combo: solar panels on kayak produce electrical power but get very hot from unused energy beyond spectral reception. The Peltier cell has "hot" side connected to aluminium wafer (with a thinnest layer of insulator -- maybe just a sheet of paper permeated with something for water resistance and heat conductivity or just a layer of suitable varnish or paint...) with solar cells on it and "cold" side gets cooling from river/lake water. Maybe by a light weighted thin hosepipe with negligible angle sloped plastic funnel submerged under water to keep solar panels way above water level.
The Peltier cell used by William in the video with head-worn light produces approximately couple/few dozens of watts with a maximum t differential applied. If we measure an average t with known area of a solar cell, measure water t, -- we'll be able to approximate the potential energy productivity of the idea.
If we want to get too nerdy/realistic -- we can include parts' thermal resistance, calculate additional drug caused by funnel, etc. ;)
@@andybalsawood5182 Thanks for the education Andy Balsawood.
The old panel distortion means that the suns rays are not perpendicular to the panel which is effectively causing slight shading variation to the power output - have the same panels