I have a solar energy panel that works in every room except mine. I have those severely bright, energy efficient bulbs and it doesn’t work at all.
What do I do? Is the bulbs really causing this? Why?
You should still get some output but you do expect less under an energy efficient bulb even though it looks brighter. This is because old bulbs give out a lot of ‘light’ in the infrared that you can’t see. Which is completely wasted if you want it as a light bulb, but a solar panel may still harvest some of this energy!
Your solar panel is probably made of silicon. This has a ‘band gap’ of about 1.1 eV so any light with a wavelength shorter than about 1.1-1.2 microns be able to generate electricity. (shorter wavelength means higher energy)
Energy efficient bulbs give off the vast majority of their energy in the visible light range, which is about 0.45-0.8 microns. The spectrum looks something like this:
http://holeman.org/spectra/fluorescent%20-%2065%20watt%20CFL%20-%20%20spectrum.jpg
It’s hardly giving out any energy in the range from about 800-1100 nm, which is where the solar panel is most efficient at converting light into electricity (each photon can make 1 electron, which will give a specific amount of output power – any excess photon energy is wasted heating up the panel). The panel should still catch those photons and turn them into electricity, but it’ll make far less current.
By contrast a non energy efficient light spectrum looks like this:
http://www.sciencebuddies.org/mentoring/project_ideas/Phys_img039.jpg
It’s giving off a good chunk of its energy as light in the range 800-1100nm which the solar panel can efficiently harvest into electricity. As a lightbulb though, this energy is being wasted because you can’t see light of those wavelengths!
You should still get some output but you do expect less under an energy efficient bulb even though it looks brighter. This is because old bulbs give out a lot of ‘light’ in the infrared that you can’t see. Which is completely wasted if you want it as a light bulb, but a solar panel may still harvest some of this energy!
Your solar panel is probably made of silicon. This has a ‘band gap’ of about 1.1 eV so any light with a wavelength shorter than about 1.1-1.2 microns be able to generate electricity. (shorter wavelength means higher energy)
Energy efficient bulbs give off the vast majority of their energy in the visible light range, which is about 0.45-0.8 microns. The spectrum looks something like this:
http://holeman.org/spectra/fluorescent%20-%2065%20watt%20CFL%20-%20%20spectrum.jpg
It’s hardly giving out any energy in the range from about 800-1100 nm, which is where the solar panel is most efficient at converting light into electricity (each photon can make 1 electron, which will give a specific amount of output power – any excess photon energy is wasted heating up the panel). The panel should still catch those photons and turn them into electricity, but it’ll make far less current.
By contrast a non energy efficient light spectrum looks like this:
http://www.sciencebuddies.org/mentoring/project_ideas/Phys_img039.jpg
It’s giving off a good chunk of its energy as light in the range 800-1100nm which the solar panel can efficiently harvest into electricity. As a lightbulb though, this energy is being wasted because you can’t see light of those wavelengths!
References :
I’ve done lab work with solar cells.
get a voltage tester and test the output from the panel if it is a 24 volt output which is then inverted the reading should be that of the inverter. however if you solar panel installer installed an LCD panel that controls the electricity you can monitor any faults from the panel. Make sure that the panel you feel is not working is producing the same amount of electricity as the others. As for the bulb buy a new one from a different make and see what happens but by testing the output voltage and power you are bound to find the fault..
I have just thought of this the panels supply electricity to big batteries that then distributes power to all the house perhaps the battery supplying power to your room is faulty or the connections to the inverter might be faulty.
BEST option if you can afford it because it will be expensive is to buy a solar monitoring system that control the panel and batteries you can even connect it to your laptop and control all the power.
References :
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