SOLAR TECHNOLOGY

Energy from the Sun

The Earth receives 174 petawatts (PW) of incoming solar radiation

(insolation) at the upper atmosphere.

Approximately 30% is reflected back to space while the rest is

absorbed by clouds, oceans and land masses

Earth's land surface, oceans and atmosphere absorb solar radiation,

and this raises their temperature

Warm air containing evaporated water from the oceans rises, causing
atmospheric circulation or convection

When the air reaches a high altitude, where the temperature is low,
water vapor condenses into clouds, which rain onto the Earth's surface,
completing the water cycle

Sunlight absorbed by the oceans and land masses keeps the
surface at an average temperature of 14 °C

By photosynthesis green plants convert solar energy into

chemical energy, which produces food, wood and the

The total solar energy absorbed by Earth's atmosphere,

oceans and land masses is approximately3,850,000 exajoules
(EJ) per year
SOLAR TECHNOLOGY

Solar technologies are broadly characterized as either passive solar or
active solar

Depending on the way they are captured, converted and distributed

solar energy.

Active solar techniques include the use of photovoltaic panels and

solar thermal collectors to harness the energy.

Passive solar techniques include orienting a building to the Sun,

selecting materials with favorable thermal mass or light dispersing
properties, and designing spaces that naturally circulate air.

Active solar technologies increase the supply of energy and are

considered supply side technologies.

while passive solar technologies reduce the need for alternate
resources and are generally considered demand side technologies
Applications of solar technology

(1) Architecture and urban planning

Sunlight has influenced building design since the beginning of

architectural history.

Advanced solar architecture and urban planning methods were first

employed by the Greeks and Chinese who oriented their buildings
toward the south to provide light and warmth

The common features of passive solar architecture are orientation

relative to the Sun, compact proportion (a low surface area to volume
ratio), selective shading (overhangs) and thermal mass

When these features are tailored to the local climate and environment
they can produce well-lit spaces that stay in a comfortable temperature
range
passive house designed specifically for the humid and hot subtropical
climate
(2) Agriculture and horticulture

Agriculture and horticulture seek to optimize the capture of solar
energy in order to optimize the productivity of plants

French and English farmers employed fruit walls to maximize the

collection of solar energy. These walls acted as thermal masses and
accelerated ripening by keeping plants warm

Applications of solar energy in agriculture aside from growing crops

Include pumping water, drying crops, brooding chicks and drying
chicken manure

Greenhouses convert solar light to heat, enabling year-round

production and the growth ( enclosed environments) of specialty
crops and other plants not naturally suited to the local climate

Primitive greenhouses were first used during Roman times to produce

cucumbers year-round for the Roman emperor Tiberius
Greenhouses convert solar light to heat, enabling year-round production
and the growth
Solar lighting

Daylighting systems collect and distribute sunlight to provide interior

illumination

This passive technology directly offsets energy use by replacing

artificial lighting, and indirectly offsets non-solar energy use by
reducing the need for air-conditioning

Although difficult to quantify, the use of natural lighting also offers

physiological and psychological benefits compared to artificial
lighting.

Daylighting design implies careful selection of window types, sizes

and orientation; exterior shading devices may be considered as well

When daylighting features are properly implemented they can reduce

lighting-related energy requirements by about 25%.
SOLAR THERMAL

Solar thermal energy (STE) is a technology for harnessing solar

energy for thermal energy (heat).

Solar thermal collectors can be low-, medium-, or high-temperature
collectors.

Low temperature collectors are flat plates generally used to heat
swimming pools.

Medium-temperature collectors are also usually flat plates but are
used for creating hot water for residential and commercial use.

High temperature collectors concentrate sunlight using mirrors or
lenses and are generally used for electric power production
A typical example of Solar thermal collectors

Apart from the above mentioned solar application, it also have
application in

(i) Heating, cooling and ventilation

(ii) Water treatment
(iii) Cooking
(iv) Solar vehicles e.t.c
 SOLAR POWER

Solar power is the generation of electricity from sunlight.

This can be direct as with photovoltaic's (PV)

Or indirect as with concentrating solar power (CSP), where the sun's

energy is focused to boil water which is then used to provide power.

Solar power has the potential to provide over 1,000 times total world
energy consumption in 2008, even though it provided only 0.02% of
the total that year

The largest solar power plants, like the 354 MW SEGS, are
concentrating solar thermal plants.

The 46 MW Moura photovoltaic power station in Portugal and the 40

MW Waldpolenz Solar Park in Germany are characteristic of the trend
toward larger photovoltaic power stations.
 Concentrating Solar Power (CSP)

Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) systems use lenses or mirrors and
tracking systems to focus a large area of sunlight into a small beam

The concentrated heat is then used as a heat source for a conventional

power plant.

A wide range of concentrating technologies exists; the most developed

are the (i) parabolic trough, (ii) the concentrating linear fresnel
reflector, (iii) the Stirling dish and (iv) the solar power tower

Various techniques are used to track the Sun and focus light.

In all of these systems except stirling dish system, a working fluid is

heated by the concentrated sunlight, and is then used for power
generation or energy storage.
(i) A parabolic trough

Consists of a linear parabolic reflector that concentrates light onto a
receiver positioned along the reflector's focal line.

The receiver is a tube positioned right above the middle of the

parabolic mirror and is filled with a working fluid.

The reflector is made to follow the Sun during the daylight hours by
tracking along a single axis.

Heat transfer fluid (working fluid,usually oil) runs through the tube to
absorb the concentrated sunlight.

This increases the temperature of the fluid to some 400°C.


The heat transfer fluid is then used to heat steam in a standard turbine
generator.

The process is economical and thermal efficiency ranges from

60-80%.

The overall efficiency from collector to grid, i.e. (Electrical Output

Power)/(Total Impinging Solar Power) is about 15%, similar to PV
(Photovoltaic Cells) but less than Stirling dish concentrators.

Parabolic trough systems provide the best land-use factor of any solar
technology.

An example of Parabolic trough solar power systems can be found in

Mojave Desert of the U.S. which has been in operating at a capacity of
350 MW for over 15 years.
Parabolic trough systems
(ii) Stirling dish technology

An individual solar parabolic dish - stirling engine unit consists of a

two axis tracking, parabolic dish reflector that focuses incoming
sunlight onto a stirling cycle engine/generator.

The engine/generator uses the Stirling thermodynamic cycle to

produce electricity without producing steam as an intermediate step

The parabolic dish reflector which moves to continuously face the sun,
thus producing a high temperature approximately (~1452oF) .

Individual solar parabolic dish - stirling engine units typically produce

3 to 25 kW each.

By using many units in an array for a solar plant, solar power can be
produced at the MW level in a solar plant.
The Stirling dish Systems in Spain.JPG
Advantages

The high fluid temperature attainable by the two axis tracking solar
parabolic dish leads to high conversion efficiency of solar power to
electricity (for a heat engine).

Conversion efficiency approaching 30% has been achieved.

This is the highest conversion efficiency of the concentrating solar

power technologies.

The solar parabolic dish - stirling engine system can be used as a
relatively small distributed power source, because a single unit is self-
contained

By combining a lot of the units, MW levels of electricity from solar
power can be produced. The solar parabolic dish - stirling engine
system has only a very minimal water requirement.

The engine is air cooled, so no cooling water is needed and the
performance
(iii) Concentrating Linear Fresnel Reflectors

CLFR-plants which use many thin mirror strips instead of parabolic

mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto single tube with working fluid.

i.e. it uses a single receiver above the array of linear fresnel reflectors,
rather than individual tubes used for each parabolic trough reflector

This has the advantage that flat mirrors can be used which are much
cheaper than parabolic mirrors, and that more reflectors can be placed
in the same amount of space, allowing more of the available sunlight
to be used.

Concentrating linear fresnel reflectors can be used in either large or

more compact plants
Concentrating Linear Fresnel Reflectors
(iv) Solar Power Tower Technology (Heliostat Solar System)

Power Tower technology is similar to solar trough

technology in that it uses mirrors to concentrate sunlight on
a working fluid which is then used to superheat steam to run
a turbine.

The difference is that the mirrors concentrate all the

sunlight onto a single receiver at the top of a tower

This allows for higher temperatures, but leads to

engineering problems because of the high temperature at the
receiver

Lower price per watt is theoretically possible compared to
trough technology because of the higher temperatures.

20 MW heliostat powered solar tower power plant which

started operation in Seville, Spain, in mid 2009 is a very
good example.
Solar Power Tower
 Photovoltaic (PV) systems

• Photovoltaics (PVs) are arrays of cells containing a solar

photovoltaic material that converts solar radiation into direct current
electricity.

• Materials presently used for photovoltaics include monocrystalline

silicon, polycrystalline silicon, microcrystalline silicon, cadmium
telluride, and copper indium selenide/sulfide

• The DC power is converted to AC power with an inverter and can

be used to power local loads or fed back to the utility .
 The history of Pv cell

Based on the discovery by Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel who noticed
that some materials release electrons when hit with rays of photons
from light, which produces an electrical current

The first solar cell was constructed by Charles Fritts in the 1880s.

Although the prototype selenium cells converted less than 1% of

incident light into electricity,

Following the work of Russell Ohl in the 1940s, researchers Gerald

Pearson, Calvin Fuller and Daryl Chapin created the silicon solar cell
in 1954.

These early solar cells cost 286 USD/watt and reached efficiencies of
4.5–6%.

As of late 2009, the highest efficieincy PV cells were produced
commercially by Boeing/Spectro Lab at about 41%.

These are expensive however, and are used only for the most exacting
applications

Thin film PV cells have been developed which are made in bulk and
are far less expensive and much less fragile, but are at most around
20% efficient.

The most recent development (from Caltech, March 2010) is the

experimental demonstration of a new design which is 85% efficient in
plain sunlight and 95% efficient at certain wavelengths.

It has only been produced in experimental laboratory examples, but

may have some possibility for low cost bulk production in the future.

The growth of solar electricity has been tremendous also but still come
behind wind power

Install capacity for solar is about 16,000GWh

It was initially known for off grid application. But in the year 2000, the
German started the large scale grid application.The PV application can
be grouped depending on the scheme of interaction with utility grid:
grid connected,
 stand alone, and
 hybrid.
(i) Grid-connected/Grid-tied System

A grid connected system is connected to a large independent grid
(typically the public electricity grid) and feeds power into the grid

Grid connected systems vary in size from residential (2-10kWp) to

solar power stations (up to 10s of GWp).

In the case of residential or building mounted grid connected PV

systems, the electricity demand of the building is met by the PV
system

Only the excess is fed into the grid when there is an excess. The
feeding of electricity into the grid requires the transformation of DC
into AC by a special, grid-controlled inverter
An Example of solar farm for grid connected application
(ii) A standalone system

A standalone system does not have a connection to the electricity
mains.

Standalone systems vary in size from watches or calculators to remote
buildings or spacecraft ,If the load is to be supplied independently of
insolation, the generated power needs to be buffered with a battery

Where weight is not an issue (e.g. buildings) lead acid batteries are
used.

A charge controller may be incorporated in the system to a) avoid

battery damage by excessive charging or discharging and

In small devices (e.g. calculators, parking meters) only DC is
consumed.

In larger systems (e.g. buildings, remote water pumps) AC is usually

required. To covert the DC from the modules or batteries into AC, an
inverter is used.
(iii) hybrid system

A hybrid system combines PV with other forms of generation, usually
a diesel generator.

The other form of generation may be a type to be able to modulate

power output as a function of demand.

However more than one renewable form of energy may be used e.g.
wind.

The photovoltaic power generation serves to reduce the consumption

of non renewable fuel.

Hybrid systems are most often found on islands. Pellworm island in

Germany and Kynthos island are notable examples (both are combined
with wind)

The Kynthos plant has reduced diesel consumption by 11.2%

A typical hybrid system
SOLAR CELL MODEL
Solar cell can be modelled as an ideal current in parallel with a diode

I = Iph − IS exp q(V + IRS) / kTcA −1 − (V + IRs) / Rsh