Kid brings new light to solar panels

Basically this kid observed some trees and noticed how they collect sunlight. Then he built a model of a tree using solar panels as the leaves and got a 20 to 50% increase in solar collection efficiency. The US school system isn't rock bottom yet!

This has already been debunked on several sites.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/08/blog-debunks-13-year-old-scientists-solar-power-breakthrough/41520/#.Tk_v5AAtGZw.reddit

Oh well. There's goes that theory.

Debunking article: Tree Theory Debunked

Actually there could be something there, solar cells like leaves have an optimal temperature to power ratio after which all excess solar energy is just lost due to decrease efficiency of the solar cell at high temperatures and ambient absorption by the non-conductive material.. Trees and plants arrange their foliage to maximize refelctive energy and still maintain optimal temperature to power efficiency.. Leaves like cells arranged in a collmumainry configuration arranged to capture bounced light and take advantage of convection cooling might just be more efficient than simple straight facing configuration which doesn't have any convection cooling..

That is the same reason why solar cars have cells on their underside to capture reflected solar energy off the road surface..

-ddn

The reason plants have multi layered and randomly oriented leaves is to compensate for a shortcoming of photosynthesis (from Wikipedia):

Photosynthesis by D.O.Hall & K.K.Rao says that photosynthesis increases linearly up to about 10,000 lux or ~100 watts/square meter before beginning to exhibit saturation effects. Thus, most plants can only utilize ~10% of full mid-day sunlight intensity. This dramatically reduces average achieved photosynthetic efficiency in fields compared to peak laboratory results. Real plants (as opposed to laboratory test samples) have lots of redundant, randomly oriented leaves. This helps to keep the average illumination of each leaf well below the mid-day peak enabling the plant to achieve a result closer to the expected laboratory test results using limited illumination.[5]
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Basically, plants need to process lower intensity light over a larger surface to avoid photochemical saturation, they simply can't make use of high intensity light over a small surface. Gathering low intensity indirect light makes sense in such a context. Solar cells however do not exhibit this low saturation point and can operate in a high intensity environment. Furthermore, modern solar cells are much more efficient than photosynthesis. As such, what is best for one model may not automatically be best for the other one, given the very different operational modes.

The important lesson to take away here is:

Marketing > Science

Always. Everywhere. No contest.

Bullshit. I am surprised you believed this in the first place!

Actually there could be something there, ... Leaves like cells arranged in a collmumainry configuration arranged to capture bounced light and take advantage of convection cooling might just be more efficient than simple straight facing configuration which doesn't have any convection cooling..

I don't quite get it. Packing the hot leafs closer would destroy the airflow pretty much in the same way. In terms of convection, nothing beats straight surfaces (wrt flow direction).

That is the same reason why solar cars have cells on their underside to capture reflected solar energy off the road surface..

You mean the "race" experimental cars?

[quote name='ddn3' timestamp='1313876377' post='4851731']That is the same reason why solar cars have cells on their underside to capture reflected solar energy off the road surface..

You mean the "race" experimental cars?
[/quote]
I thought he was kidding. o.O

Aren't most roads blacktop, which would make putting a solar cell underneath a car not worth it majority of the time?

Well my amazement was that a 13 year old kid came to this kind of conclusion in the first place. Which, as far as I know, isn't normal for most 13 year old kids.

Bullshit. I am surprised you believed this in the first place!

[quote name='ddn3' timestamp='1313876377' post='4851731']
Actually there could be something there, ... Leaves like cells arranged in a collmumainry configuration arranged to capture bounced light and take advantage of convection cooling might just be more efficient than simple straight facing configuration which doesn't have any convection cooling..

I don't quite get it. Packing the hot leafs closer would destroy the airflow pretty much in the same way. In terms of convection, nothing beats straight surfaces (wrt flow direction).

That is the same reason why solar cars have cells on their underside to capture reflected solar energy off the road surface..

You mean the "race" experimental cars?



[/quote]



I keep an open mind, also it's a well known fact that solar cells performance degrade with increase temperature so it doesn't take a stretch of imagination to see if u can control the temperature and absorb enough reflective energy you can beat a straight facing non-tracking solar array. Notice his "tree" is next to a white reflective wall which allows massive amounts of bounced light, either way I think there is something there.

Look at his design it isn't tightly packed, it colluminar loose packing much like a tree or plant. Put that next to a highly reflective surface and you might indeed beat a straight facing solar array esp since the straight facing one isn't tracking so it will only optimally absorb within a narrow time window vs the "tree" which will have much longer time of absorption enough though be less efficient. Again that's why trees have leaves all around in hemispherical because they don't have tracking. Why don't trees and plants have leaves just one level deep? Because as Yann L pointed out they can't absorb solar energy above a certain lum , the light diffuses through the first layers and they capture the indirect bounced and transmitted light. Same here, multiple level redundant arrays arranged in hemispherical random way will probably beat a straight facing non-tracking array as long as there is enough bounced light.

That's my theory anyways.

-ddn