Solar Panel Angle Experiment
how does the output of a solar panel vary with the angle of the light?
how does the output of a solar panel vary with the angle of the light? I need to do a experiment about it. Is anyone can help me create a experiment to test it? Thx.
By the sine of the angle. If you haven’t taken trig yet, I’ll just mention that the sine of an angle is the ration of the length of the adjacent side of a right triangle to its hypotenuse and refer you to wikipedia for more detail.
What you need to do is set up a light source such as a 100 watt light bulb perhaps about 1/2 meter over a table. Hot glue the straight sides of 2 protractors to the bottom of your solar cell. Then you can use little props like maybe a couple of erasers so that you can angle the solar cell any way you like, reading the angle indicated by the protractors where they touche the table top.
Then you need a voltmeter and a load. A good load for an average solar cell might be a 100 ohm resistor from Radio Shack. Connect the resistor across the output of the solar cell via a pair of wires, hook the voltmeter across the resistor, and take readings of the voltmeter at say every 10 degrees from 90 to 0 degrees. Make a graph.
I don’t know how sophisticated you intend to get with this, or your grade level. The above setup will give you a very basic experiment. The voltage output will increase with angle up to a peak at 90 degrees. But it is the power output of the solar cell that will be proportional to the sine of the angle of incidence, and power equals voltage times current. Email me if you want more information or have questions.
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