willbish Posted March 14, 2018 Share Posted March 14, 2018 Producing an electric current from PV’s come rain or shine! Is this going to be a significant development for PV panels? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Onoff Posted March 14, 2018 Share Posted March 14, 2018 Every time I have a good idea someone nicks it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeSharp01 Posted March 14, 2018 Share Posted March 14, 2018 (edited) As with many great combinations there is a trade off here in that the the TENG on top of the PV cells does reduce, allbeit quite small, the amount of light (energy) arriving at the PV surface so the TENG has to make that up before you get into payback mode and at 33nA @ 2.14V its a long way off yet. However the potential (pardon the pun) looks exciting especially given the amount of rain we have had recently. Edited March 14, 2018 by MikeSharp01 Qualification Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted March 14, 2018 Share Posted March 14, 2018 (edited) Is there enough kinetic energy in a moving raindrop to make it worthwhile? You can work out the potential energy from PE = Mass x Gravity x Height. If you take the rainfall from a very heavy shower, so 40mm/hour, ready to roll down a standard module of 1m by 1.6m at 30° inclination, that is: PE = 0.056 [kg] x 9.81 [m.s-2] x 0.8 [m] PE = 0.436 [J] The Laws of Energy Conservation state that energy can be neither created or destroyed, but only change form, so how does this changing from potential energy to static electrical energy create anything useful? Is there some magic PR going on? Edit: Thinking about it, the average height of a module should be used, so that is half the energy available to convert to static electricity. Edited March 14, 2018 by SteamyTea Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProDave Posted March 14, 2018 Share Posted March 14, 2018 "According to the team, the device had a peak short-circuit current of about 33 nA, and a peak open-circuit voltage of around 2.14 V. That's not particularly high, but it is enough to demonstrate that the concept works, and might be scalable. " So that is LESS than 0.7nW generated then. I wonder what the payback time would be? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeSharp01 Posted March 14, 2018 Share Posted March 14, 2018 Sceptical lot you are... in 1986 I got a thing called a mobile phone, people said to me that it will never catch on - how right they were. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nickfromwales Posted March 14, 2018 Share Posted March 14, 2018 Just blows my mind how they even think of this stuff. Where would we be without clever sods eh? Now wheres my blow lamp? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted March 14, 2018 Share Posted March 14, 2018 (edited) 2 hours ago, MikeSharp01 said: Sceptical lot you are... in 1986 I got a thing called a mobile phone, people said to me that it will never catch on - how right they were. That is a societal change, not a technological one though. The phone was invented in 1854, radio communication in 1887. So just 99 years to sort the two out I was promised rocket ship holidays to the moon and a hovercar. The only things that that I seem to remember Tomorrows World getting right was my cataract operation. A bit of digging dragged this 1986 broadcast up. TW's 21st birthday. http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/tomorrowsworld/8027.shtml Edited March 14, 2018 by SteamyTea 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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