The Big Picture of Solar Power

In the posts that will follow this one I want to start putting up information about the technical aspects of solar panels. However for this post I wanted to just share my perspective on solar energy and it's place in the grand scheme of things. It is my hope that that analysis will explain a little more about why I am interested in the idea of DIY Solar Panels in the first place.

If we begin by considering our prime energy source that we currently use to produce electricity, which I think most people would agree it is oil, we are able to track the origins on this energy source directly back to energy supply from the sun. In fact this is true for both coal and oil. Coal was once plant matter which grew by using the energy of the sun to run the process of photosynthesis. In this way energy was converted from solar power to chemical bond energy. Oil was once living creature whom consumed these plants and used this energy to grow. Therefore solar energy is already a huge contributor to our current energy source. However there are several drawbacks to using these decayed plant and animal matter as a energy source. One big problem is that it takes an incredibly long time for this oil and coal to be made therefore making it very difficult to have a sustainable system. The over problem is the way in which we use these natural resources. Conversion of oil and coal to carbon dioxide and water is was produces the most amount of energy however the carbon dioxide that is produced is often just emitted into the atmosphere and many believe that this is causing environmental problems. But whether we choose to believe these concerns or not it is obvious from the overall perspective that this system of energy utilization is just not sustainable.

Now if we want to use solar energy as a source we need to answer several questions. How much energy does the sun actually provide to the earth? How much energy to I, the consumer, require? How efficiently can I convert this solar energy into something useful, namely electrical energy? Well to answer the first question we can look at the solar constant which tells us that the number is somwhere around 1.4 kW/m². We can estimate the average household consumes about 72000 MJ of energy per year or about 2.29 kW. If we assume the average house reside on 180 m² then the power density for an average house is about Lastly we can consider the low energy of 12 W/m². So can a solar panel help? Well solar panels are currently highly inefficient and they can only convert around 8% of the solar energy to electricity or about 11.2 W/m²! Well these back of the envloped calculations that I just did seem to suggest that yes DIY Solar Panels can help. As you can see that efficiency number is extremely important and that will be the subject of the next few posts that I make.

Construction of Solar Panels

When I first thought about starting this blog the first blogspot web address that I tried to get was: http://diysolarpanels.blogspot.com/ however it was taken. I must say that I did enjoy reading through that blog and I recommend that others who are interested in DIY Solar Panels do the same! Although the blog has not been updated since 2008 the progress that the blogger made on his solar panels is documented very nicely. Also from 2008 I learned about a research group that was investigating transparent transistors. Part of the difficulty with the efficiency of solar panels lies in that fact that it is difficult to actually capture all of the incident sun and convert it into electricity. This is also partly due to the fact that solid electrodes need to be placed on either side of the photovoltaic (PV) cells as well. Additionally the solar panels have to be spread out, convering large areas. I can foresee these transparent transistors being incorporated into stacks of PVs which might help boost efficiencies! Efficiencies may even double. From the best of my knownledge current efficiencies are typcilly around < 15%. If these transistors are incorported and efficiencies reach 30% that would be an incredible advancement for this technology. I would keep an eye on the company XE Solar, I believe they bought out this technology!

DIY Solar Panels Blog

Hello and welcome to my blog on solar panels! I am an graduate engineering student with an interest in alternative energy technologies and in this blog I will be discussing different aspects of solar panel technology. I will be investigating the different do it yourself projects that are available and discuss ways of making them cheaper and more efficient. Before I start blogging about DIY solar panel projects I would like to initiate this blog with a short discussion regarding the motivation for this blog.

 Energy is one of the most valuable commodities in the world. The cost of this energy however is dictated by big business and foreign relations because the main source of energy comes from oil. Many sources of energy are available however and oil used simply out of technological convenience. As the oil supplies inevitably deplete the search for alternative energies ensues. For an alternative energy to be appropriate it must be cheap and technologically convenient. 

What do I mean by technologically convenient? It means that the technology that produces the energy must be reliable, easy to work with and it should work! But what exactly is the goal of this technology? If one were to take a purely "physics" perspective it becomes clear that energy is all around us. Molecules in gas are moving about chaotically with lots of energy and sometimes even less chaotically in the form of wind which is easier to capture. Electromagnetic radiation, for example in the form of radiowaves and light, are propagating around us constantly and contain a certain amount of energy. Have I lost you yet? The main point that I am trying to establish here is that energy is all around us however that energy is chaotic and difficult to capture. It is the goal of technology to capture this energy and target it towards some useful application, such as electrical energy production. Solar panels is one such technology. But why solar panels?

With the current infrastructure energy is produced at one location and distributed. An alternative method would be to produce energy at the location where it is required therefore eliminating the need to distribute the energy. The distribution of energy is a very inefficient process and is a major source of losses for energy companies. As a direct result of this, producing energy in your own home automatically increases efficiencies. I find DIY solar panels fascinating because they can be made at home and they are not very expensive. Some of the links that I will post on this blog will direct you to projects that I am investigating and will be talking about on here. Please feel free to join me on these projects and who knows maybe will we be energy independent in no time! Thanks for reading and please check back shortly for more in-depth analysis on solar panel projects!