Solar Energy

There are a couple of different types of solar energy

Passive and Active

In active, you have a system that has parts that can be replaced and things that move. Solar panels for electricity (photovoltaic) and hot water or air are examples of this.

In Passive, you have static systems that are positioned to take advantage of the heating and cooling aspects of solar radiation. A window or a greenhouse are examples of this. South facing windows on a house will gather passive solar, overhangs or awnings above those windows will keep out the summer sun and help keep it cool. Water, stone and cement are good storage mediums for passive solar.

With the Solar panel, the cells are wired up in series. The output is supposed to be something like 3 volts, or the equivalent of two AA batteries wired in series. Add the voltage of the components of power sources when they are in series. Add the amperage of components of power sources when they are wired in parallel.

It could be useful to explore the solar cells with a voltmeter, though the panels are covered in epoxy, so you can't get at the individual cells to really see what is going on. I have a number of cells that we can experiment with, both raw cells and panels with four cells on them, but they won't be available this week. Wiring up the panels in series and parallel could be a neat thing to do, wiring two in series should give you 6 volts, three should give 9 volts and so on. Testing them in sunlight, even partial light will be useful. Testing them in incandescent (old light bulbs) and complact flourescent (new ones) should show that they have different outputs depending on what is striking the panels. Also, if you cover one cell of the array, it should shut down the whole panel because they are wired in series. If they were wired in parallel, this wouldn't happen, but your voltage would be way low.

Alternative Energy

Links:

Photovoltaics - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaics

Solar Hot Water - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_hot_water

Passive Solar design - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_solar_design

LEED building design - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership_in_Energy_and_Environmental_Design

Green Building - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_building