Photovoltaic Cover Material For A Solar Challenger Vehicle With Solar Tracking, Evaluation And Evaluation Instrument

摘要

The Sasol Solar Challenge is an event where teams from across the world design and build solar vehicles to travel across South Africa. Solar challenger vehicles main design aspects are weight, power and aerodynamics. Photovoltaic panels, the power source, produce more energy when in direct sunlight. It would be beneficial to do solar tracking in a solar challenge however; the aerodynamics makes solar tracking difficult to implement on solar challenge vehicles. An Aerodynamic tracking solution could be a transparent cover over the panels. The purpose of this paper is twofold; firstly, to demonstrate a designed and constructed instrument to investigate power loss of covering materials and secondly, investigating the results of power losses of the suggested covering mineral to benchmark against future covering materials. The instrument designed in the paper measures power losses at different angles of incidence. Polycarbonate (PC) covering was evaluated as the literature review indicates Polycarbonate to be the most suitable cover solution for its minimal amount of irradiant power loss. Results show power losses and/or gains at specified angles if incidence under the Polycarbonate cover dome. One would expect power loss through a cover material to increase at noon but there where unexpected power advances of a cover material at specified angles of incidence. Conclusions drawn, discuss the power loss over incidence to consider in aerodynamic design. Results of varying covering material would also influence the Photovoltaic diode bypass placements of the solar panels. The instrument could also be used to test other covering materials as they are developed. The results of this paper could be used in the Sasol Solar Challenge or other relevant applications. Solar power production is on the rise and as a growing number of applications start to incorporate as a power source, especially in aerodynamic covered applications, one would need an instrumentation to evaluate cover materials as well as characteristics to consider the type of cover materials that can be used.