Solar Panel Experiment Using Fresnel Lens!
Welcome back to another solar video in today’s video. I’d, like to do a little experiment using this tiny solar panel, a mini panel RadioShack used to sell these, and I picked them up when the stores were going out of business.
I think I only paid around 50 cents apiece. It was like 80 % off. I did purchase a bunch of them, so I do not mind destroying this during the test. What I’d, like to do, is first, take a look at the power output for this panel.
We’re, going to take a look at open circuit voltage. We’re, going to take a look at short circuit current once I do that, then I want to take a Fornell lens. This is a fernell, magnifying lens and position.
The panel in such a way that the light is going to be concentrated over the entire surface of this panel and see what kind of an effect the increased light exposure has on power output. We’re, going to be taking light readings using this lux meter and we’re, also going to take temperature readings off this panel.
Okay, let’s get started. A mini solar panel is pointing directly at the Sun and it’s at the correct angle. Let’s, take a look Sri ting and, as you can see, we’re right around seventy six thousand lux.
Now let’s, take a voltage reading and we’re at four point. Seven four move this over to milliamps all right, so we’re, looking at right, around 85 miller amps of current from this panel at seventy six thousand lux.
The next thing i want to do is take the Fornell lens, and i got to figure out where to position it to have enough light focus on the entire panel. I want to make sure that it’s going to cover from end to end.
I don’t want a concentration of light in the center or off to the side. It needs to cover the entire panel for this test. This panel is a smaller panel. It only measures two inches by four inches or 50 millimeters by 100, but, as you can see, each one of the cells that are connected in series have spaces between them, so in reality this would probably be only about that big, not as long as it is.
Okay, let’s. Take a quick temperature reading of the panel that’s 50 C or 120 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit. Okay, let me put some sort of a frame together for this panel and we’ll, be right back. This is what I came up with and it’s going to do the job perfectly.
Have these two rails, the distance is just right from the back of that Fornell lens all the way down to these rails. All I’m going to do is take the solar panel position, it stick it down and then we’re, going to see what kind of power output we can get using this lens and this panel and right there should be pretty Good okay: now I’m, going to take this and position it perpendicular to the Sun, and then we’re, going to take short circuit, current open circuit voltage and we’re going to see if we can actually use This panel now as a USB charging panel due to the increased light, and that looks right – there looks pretty good, let’s.
Take a look at the voltage and we’re four point: nine two, nine one and, as you can see as that’s, heating up just like any other solar panel voltage will start to drop all right. So let’s. Take a look at the short-circuit current.
Now let’s. Go all the way over to here, Wow 380 Miller amps. Now so before it was only 85. Now we’re almost five times as much current current is holding steady, let’s, go back to the voltage again back to here and see what’s going on with that, and we’re going lower.
Four point: five: six and you can see the voltage still going down. Let’s, measure light intensity, 118,000, 800 lux and look at that voltage continuing to go lower. Let’s, go back to the current again let’s.
See if that’s, holding steady and still around 380 Milla amps and clip back to voltage, let’s. Take a temperature reading now of the solar panel, 206 or 97 C. So that thing is pretty hot peers to have leveled off right about there.
So if we were able to take this panel place it in water to keep it nice and cool and then use the setup we have here, the voltage here would be higher and we would still have the higher current output.
So it’s. An interesting little experiment just to see what could be done with one of these panels, but it also demonstrates how heat lowers the output voltage of the panel and right here is a look at that panel after that demonstration just a little bubble underneath there another one Over here the exception of that it seems to be intact, I don’t feel any delamination, and that is it.
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