Put Mirrors On Solar Panels

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.

Put mirrors on solar panels.

Each mirror is equipped with. 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. 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.

Here mirrors or lenses concentrate sunlight onto a small area often a central tower to produce heat. You may also be interested in csp concentrated solar power. The second technology is concentrating solar power or csp. The reflectors are placed opposite the solar panels to send more light toward the modules in front of them.

It is used primarily in very large power plants and is not appropriate for residential use. 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. The light that hits them is reflected back toward the solar panels to produce more. Tenksolar is another u s.

Thus the output for each solar panel in your array would. 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. A large increase of energy output at the system level by using mirrors could greatly change how solar panels are installed on solar farms during this time of artificially inflated prices for panels coming from outside the u s. As i said earlier the more a solar panel is perpendicular to the sun s rays the more it produces electricity.

The maximum energy production is achieved at midday when the sun reaches its maximum altitude on the horizon. 5 hours x 290 watts an example wattage of a premium solar panel 1 450 watts hours or roughly 1 5 kilowatt hours kwh. Pearce is a professor of engineering at michigan technological university. 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.