Continue to Site

Eng-Tips is the largest engineering community on the Internet

Intelligent Work Forums for Engineering Professionals

  • Congratulations Toost on being selected by the Eng-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Reproducing Solar light

Status
Not open for further replies.

beerbaron

Electrical
Aug 17, 2005
37
Hi, I have solar panels without specifications to test and I'm trying to reproduce the solar light or a light that would give me as much power output from the solar panel then if it is facing the sun.

So far I built a cube of 18"x18" with 4x40W Compact Fluorescent + 1x70 Metal-Halide and mylar as reflective surface. I tough this combination would have given me an adequate spectrum and intensity to reproduce sunlight. But it does not produce the expected results since I can only get 50% of the power that I get when I make it face the sun. The intensity of the box is around 85 000 lux right now.

What would you guys suggest?
Should I get rid of the compact fluorescent and replace them with 150W HPS?

Thanks
BeerBaron
 
Replies continue below

Recommended for you

The light level on a bright sunny day is about 10,000 fc.
One lux is equal to one lumen per square meter. One lux equals 0.0929 footcandles.
 
Thanks for the reference points. But to produce light with a solar cell we do not only need intensity, we also need wide spectrum since Sillicium reacts more to certain wavelenght.

Regards
Frederic Boucher
 
I believe the standard for sunlight simulation is usually a xenon arc tube. We used those in physics. You could smell the ozone whenever it was on because the UV generated it in the air.

Keith Cress
Flamin Systems, Inc.-
 
Nbucska, unfortunately if I have to wait a week for the sun to come out I'm loosing a week of potential results and It's stalling the designs. Also, going outside at -20 degrees celcius to do some tests is not what could be considered fun...

That's what we have been doing so far but at the expense of wasting valuable time.

BeerBaron
 
The trouble with fluorescent or HID lamps is that certain wavelengths are missing altogether. You might have better results with incandescent lamps and filters. Get a color temperature meter at a camera store and experiment to get 5500K (sunlight).
 
See GE Lighting's Specifying Light and Color Lighting Applicaation Bulletin. It gives a table & shows spectra of sunlight & their various lighting bulbs. From table: Fluorescent bulbs SPX50, CWX and C50 reproduce outdoor sunlight. C75 simulates overcast sky conditions. From the color spectra, C50 & CWX look more natural reproduction of the sunlight curve -- high baseline spectrum (rather than adding blue, green-yellow & red peaks as with the SPX50).


Also, many info links on their 'Learn About Light' page:
 
Check with a solar manfacture on methodes to test solar panels.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor