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Maximising power output from solar panels

Former Member

There is an ongoing debate in the sector about how best to maximise the power from a solar panel and minimise shading effects: do you use a micro-inverter with built in MPPT or do you use a solar tracker. Both have cost implications, but what is your preference from a technical viewpoint?

  • 0 in reply to smartengineer

    Cooled to what ?  Kelvin is the relevant scale.  Cooling by 10C is going to use more energy than you gain from the PV.

    On another point, that of MPPT, I suggest that, in order to charge batteries to the maximum, the PV would need to charge a large capacitor, then through a buck-boost converter, so that even in low light conditions, some power would be acquired.  The converter would determine where the MPP is, and draw current from the PV/capacitor into the the batteries to meet MPP requirements.

    Plain ol' PWM won't do that, regardless of it's intelligence.  This is particularly relevant where average light isn't great.

  • 0 in reply to Former Member

    To transport power, it is still necessary to convert to AC. The battle between Edison and Tesla was over a hundred years ago, Tesla (and Westinghouse) won. DC is ok for short distances - like the length of a car - but not for transporting through the grid. But I do agree, solar is the future.

  • 0 in reply to sbkenn

    A big capacitor is not necessary. In low light, just slow down the charging. That does mean that many off the shelf charger chips are not suitable for this use.

  • 0

    Regardless of the mechanism for concentration of solar input, dust and other barrier particulate materials will degrade you power output over the long term - particularly when you rely on a protective covering for the PV panels that can be affected by the environment (pitting, oxidation, etc) that decreases your output. For traditional PV panels, cooling the substrate will allow for thermo-voltaic conversion while simultaneously improving the PV panel's output for the same input radiance. I used this process with submerged flexible panels in the Solar Seaweed design, which was intended to also use piezoelectric film to capture wave energy as well.