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 4/10 Good --- ecoworldly.com http://ecoworldly.com/feed
| International Environmental News for the World Citizen ... |
Saturday, May 17, 2008 --- 67 days ago http://ecoworldly.com/2008/05/17/south-korean-scientists-find-real-efficiency-of
 Manufacturers of photovoltaic (PV) solar panels know the panel’s theoretical efficiency, but it’s much more difficult to tell the actual efficiency. For this, solar companies send their panels to a lab for testing under real weather conditions.
Recently, I visited such a solar testing lab — the Solar Power Research Lab at Chosun University in Gwangju, South Korea. I was greeted by Mr. Choi Jong-sik, an engineer and a graduate of the department, who took me to see the lab with the most solar panels.
Out front of this lab, a small field of solar panels soak up sunlight. The panel’s designs range from flat to arched and even rotating; some are varicolored polycrystalline , others are neatly lined monocrystalline . Rotating panels have tracking devices that follow the sun (pictured here). The panels can rotate 180° and swivel vertically 53°, following the sun’s path across the sky. The array and variety of panels is stunning.
Inside the lab, computers whir busily. Numbers displayed on the screens climb and fall, recording the electrical input from each array of solar panels.
Theoretical efficiency measures how much of the light hitting the solar cell can be converted into electricity under standard test conditions (STC). These conditions are very strict:
a constant temperature of 25°C
the equivalent of 1.42 cm of water vapor in the column of sky above the panels
0.34 cm of ozone in the column of atmosphere abov ... |
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