It will depend on the panels, usually the Pmax is around 40C and drops by about 1% efficiency per degree C above that and a different % per degree colder.
seems like you'd be better off slapping them on a pressure chamber filled with water/coolant and using that to run a steam turbine rather than just putting huge fields of them out...
Course, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, so take me with a grain of salt, lol.
That's essentially the solar collector systems, where, instead of panels they reflect all the solar energy into a single point to super-heat a tank of some type of salt, the molten salt then flows to boil water.
You may not 'know what you're talking about,' but this is a pretty good example of intuitive/creative thinking.
There aren't many of them that I'm aware at least, California has one I believe. It was in the ballpark of 700F hitting the convergence point, so, you might as well put something in it that can hold the heat.
As an add-on to existing solar stations, it's one of those where there's extra heat you could soak up, but not quite what you could use to spin a turbine with, not without taking that creativity an extra level.
40C oh boy. That is not a high temperature at all for electronics, and would be a normal temperature in most places where solar would have its best effect, especially when you consider the thermal radiation hitting it all day.
Especially when you factor in that roofs are the most common install area which will be sitting 10-20 degrees hotter than the ground level. Or if in a field, the color of the panels is that dark material which will absorb heat to a similar extent.
I've seen systems like those water cooled heat sinks for PCs tied to the panels to keep them at a good temperature while pre-heating water going to hot water tanks.
But yes, the constraints on solar are far more than is brought up in the sales pitch.... sorry, got me thinking of Cernovich once pushing solar panel installations as a good career and got mad at me for bringing up that, in most cases, is a losing proposition that is akin to 'pre-paying' for electricity and that personal integrity should get in the way of that choice as a career path.
I feel like if you have to water cool a solar panel you are expending a lot of electricity on pumps and a lot of money on maintaining those pumps at scale.
Didn't even consider darker colors and the heat rising angle either.
At grid scale, there's not really a feasible way to cool the panels without impacting the bottom line of the production.
When I was in school, the average panel would convert about 40% of solar energy into electrical energy, the math I did suggested that panels would need to hit about 80-85% efficient before they would be truly viable anything north of the northern Texas border, and those areas tend to get too hot.
It was around that time that Germany put 400B into solar panels, and so I ran the same numbers and it appeared that the projects stood to return approximately 125B over the 20 years (average output for optimal time). That meant they were going to be the cautionary tale.
It will depend on the panels, usually the Pmax is around 40C and drops by about 1% efficiency per degree C above that and a different % per degree colder.
seems like you'd be better off slapping them on a pressure chamber filled with water/coolant and using that to run a steam turbine rather than just putting huge fields of them out...
Course, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, so take me with a grain of salt, lol.
Honestly, that's not in the worst thinking.
That's essentially the solar collector systems, where, instead of panels they reflect all the solar energy into a single point to super-heat a tank of some type of salt, the molten salt then flows to boil water.
You may not 'know what you're talking about,' but this is a pretty good example of intuitive/creative thinking.
honestly, i was just thinking you'd use the waste heat from the panels, getting the best of both worlds
I do know they use boilers for some solar setups, I just didn't know molten salt was involved, lol
There aren't many of them that I'm aware at least, California has one I believe. It was in the ballpark of 700F hitting the convergence point, so, you might as well put something in it that can hold the heat.
As an add-on to existing solar stations, it's one of those where there's extra heat you could soak up, but not quite what you could use to spin a turbine with, not without taking that creativity an extra level.
40C oh boy. That is not a high temperature at all for electronics, and would be a normal temperature in most places where solar would have its best effect, especially when you consider the thermal radiation hitting it all day.
Especially when you factor in that roofs are the most common install area which will be sitting 10-20 degrees hotter than the ground level. Or if in a field, the color of the panels is that dark material which will absorb heat to a similar extent.
I've seen systems like those water cooled heat sinks for PCs tied to the panels to keep them at a good temperature while pre-heating water going to hot water tanks.
But yes, the constraints on solar are far more than is brought up in the sales pitch.... sorry, got me thinking of Cernovich once pushing solar panel installations as a good career and got mad at me for bringing up that, in most cases, is a losing proposition that is akin to 'pre-paying' for electricity and that personal integrity should get in the way of that choice as a career path.
I feel like if you have to water cool a solar panel you are expending a lot of electricity on pumps and a lot of money on maintaining those pumps at scale.
Didn't even consider darker colors and the heat rising angle either.
Yikes.
At grid scale, there's not really a feasible way to cool the panels without impacting the bottom line of the production.
When I was in school, the average panel would convert about 40% of solar energy into electrical energy, the math I did suggested that panels would need to hit about 80-85% efficient before they would be truly viable anything north of the northern Texas border, and those areas tend to get too hot.
It was around that time that Germany put 400B into solar panels, and so I ran the same numbers and it appeared that the projects stood to return approximately 125B over the 20 years (average output for optimal time). That meant they were going to be the cautionary tale.