Effects Of Clouds On A Solar Panel
Solar panels hold a wealth of benefits, both for individuals and for the world at large. Economically, solar panels promise to lower the cost of electrical power. Environmentally, solar panels can give us cleaner power, sustainable power that will not require further damage to the environment. Solar power can reach remote areas. It can carry education, or urgently needed medical information.
The effects of clouds on a solar panel, though, might diminish those and other promising benefits.
The effects of clouds on a solar panel might make it far less efficient in certain parts of the world and at certain seasons.
For that reason, people who are considering solar panels for their homes are often heard to ask: will clouds affect my solar panels?
Will Clouds Affect My Solar Panels?
Clouds do affect solar panels. The amount of power your solar panels can produce is directly dependent on the level of light they receive.
In full, bright sunlight, solar panels receive maximum levels of light. During those “peak” sunlight hours, your solar panels will produce power at their maximum capacity.
When clouds cover the sun, light levels are reduced. This does not shut down power production, however. If there is enough light to cast a shadow, in spite of the clouds, your solar panels should operate at about half of their full capacity. Thicker cloud cover will reduce operations further. Eventually, with heavy cloud cover, solar panels will produce very little useful power.
The Good News!
The effects of clouds on a solar panel can be surprising good, however. Incredibly, your solar panels will put out their ultimate amount of peak power during cloudy weather!
As the sun moves into a hole between the clouds, your solar panels will see something wonderful. They will see full direct sunlight “plus” reflected light from the clouds! They will drink in more energy than they could on a cloudless day!
The effects of clouds on a solar panel could then produce peaks at or above 50 percent more than its direct-sun output!
Meeting the Challenge
There are ways to meet the cloud challenge.
1. If you often have clouds in the afternoon, but mornings are clear, aim your solar panels slightly toward the east.
2. Be sure you use a large enough battery system to maximize the amount of power stored for use when the clouds arrive.
3. Make sure your controller has plenty of headroom over the rated panel output power so that it can absorb the surges when the sun reflects off the clouds.
Those tricks and more are practiced in cloudy regions of the world where people have sprinted far ahead of the United States in their use of solar panel energy.
Effects of Clouds on a Solar Panel in Germany
Germany is typically a very cloudy country. Read about the climate of Germany, and you will find that it is “temperate and marine; cool, cloudy, wet winters and summers; occasional warm mountain (foehn) wind” according to Nation Master’s website.
In spite of its cloudy climate, though, Germany is by far the world’s biggest user of solar panels. If you lived in Germany, you could sell back to the main power grid all of the excess electricity produced by your solar panels. Why would I even care in such a cloudy climate? If clouds affect my solar panels too much, I would not worry about selling back to the main grid.
In 2006, Germany opened the largest solar park in the world. Germany also has Europe’s most modern solar housing project – a solar village of 50 solar houses that produce more energy than they use!
Will clouds affect my solar panels? Even if I lived in Germany, the effect would not be enough to forego solar power.
Tip: There are few places that are so consistently cloudy that solar power is out of the question. Improvements are being made constantly, and even solar panels small enough to fold into a briefcase can produce helpful amounts of power.
Anna Hart
http://www.articlesbase.com/computers-articles/effects-of-clouds-on-a-solar-panel-136546.html
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Is the science just doublespeak?
Temperatures in the lower troposphere have increased between 0.12 and 0.22 °C (0.22 and 0.4 °F) per decade since 1979, according to satellite temperature measurements. This is the claim.
But, The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes that most of the observed temperature increase since the middle of the 20th century was caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases resulting from human activity such as fossil fuel burning and deforestation. The IPCC also concludes that variations in natural phenomena such as solar radiation and volcanoes produced most of the warming from pre-industrial times to 1950 and had a small cooling effect afterward.
While claiming that fossil fuels and deforestation are the primary culprits, the assertion is also made that solar irradiation and volcanoes produced a cooling trend. Aresols and Co2 from volcanoes cool the stratosphere, but manmade aresols and Co2 heat the stratosphere. Am I reading this right?
Most studies focus on the period up to the year 2100. However, warming is expected to continue beyond 2100 even if emissions stop, because of the large heat capacity of the oceans and the long lifetime of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
So how are pre-80′s emissions levels going to reverse the trend?
If the atmosphere is warmed, the saturation vapor pressure increases, and the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere will tend to increase. Since water vapor is a greenhouse gas, the increase in water vapor content makes the atmosphere warm further; this warming causes the atmosphere to hold still more water vapor (a positive feedback), and so on until other processes stop the feedback loop. The result is a much larger greenhouse effect than that due to CO2 alone. Although this feedback process causes an increase in the absolute moisture content of the air, the relative humidity stays nearly constant or even decreases slightly because the air is warmer.[48]
My understanding of gas laws, says that the increased pressure will cause the water to condensate and rain back to Earth. The above statement is in direct contradiction to Henry’s law. Furthermore, the average RH of Denver CO. is about 50%. The average RH of Atlanta GA. is around 78%. Humidity is denser in lower altitudes.
Warming is expected to change the distribution and type of clouds. Seen from below, clouds emit infrared radiation back to the surface, and so exert a warming effect; seen from above, clouds reflect sunlight and emit infrared radiation to space, and so exert a cooling effect. Whether the net effect is warming or cooling depends on details such as the type and altitude of the cloud. These details were poorly observed before the advent of satellite data and are difficult to represent in climate models.[48]
If we can not predict the nature of cloud formation, what good are climate models for predicting the future?
Cooler water can absorb more CO2. As ocean temperatures rise some of this CO2 will be released. This is one of the main reasons why atmospheric CO2 is lower during an ice age. There is a greater mass of CO2 contained in the oceans than there is in the atmosphere.
Tim Patterson[29], paleoclimatologist and Professor of Geology at Carleton University in Canada: "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth’s temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years. On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century’s modest warming?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming
And many thanks to my college profs.
This is not a rant. This is a point by point debate of the science.
Ohm’s law and Pythagoras(?) theorem are quite easy to explain and simple to prove.
AGW takes volumes to explain and is therefore not in the same ballpark, nice try though.
If you compress gas enough, it turns to liquid. If you remove pressure from a liquid, it turns to gas.
AGW is a lie, not doublespeak. The lie is promoted by people who think that they can use any means necessary to change the behavior of people.
References :
We are currently in the fairly unscientific position of needing to disprove CO2′s actual effect on global temperatures. However, this may be coming soon: http://masterresource.org/?p=4307
Any guesses on whether or not this study is published before the Copenhagen Summit?
References :
If we can’t do this, how can we do that? Or the reverse "If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we cure the common cold?" Cold is what these arguments leave me. I can’t predict the cloud cover on next June 21 or even whether it will rain but I feel fairly safe in predicting that, in the USA, it will be warmer than it was on the previous Dec. 21. Eschew obfucation.
References :
Science just observes analyzes and reports, it is by nature multi-speak. I believe AGW is a farce. There is not enough observable data to blame CO2.
References :
Yeah, AGW makes about as much sense as E=IR or A²+B²=C².
References :
"Aresols and Co2 from volcanoes cool the stratosphere, but manmade aresols and Co2 heat the stratosphere. Am I reading this right?"
No, you’re not. All aerosols cause cooling. Human aerosol emissions played a large roll in the global warming ‘pause’ from 1940-1970. Also, CO2 primarily heats the troposphere.
"So how are pre-80′s emissions levels going to reverse the trend?"
Not really sure what you’re trying to get at here. However, the reason is that the natural carbon cycle has a bit of a buffer zone (absorbs slightly more carbon than it emits). Currently either 40% or 60% (can’t recall which) of human CO2 emissions are absorbed by natural sinks and don’t end up accumulating in the atmosphere. So if we reduce our emissions sufficiently, we will no longer be increasing the amount of atmospheric CO2.
"If we can not predict the nature of cloud formation, what good are climate models for predicting the future?"
There is a large uncertainty associated with clouds and water vapor in climate models. But they’re treated exactly as that – uncertainties with error bars. Thus the models can predict future warming will be within a given range, plus or minus a certain amount.
"In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years."
This is a perfect example of cherrypicking. 450 million years ago there was a cooling period, which (not coincidentally) was preceeded by a huge drop in atmospheric CO2 levels of about 40%.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/PageMill_Images/image277.gif
Coincidentally, CO2 levels have increased 40% over the past 150 years. Besides which as we always seem to need to repeat, it’s not as simple as CO2 = hot. There are other factors which effect the global temperature – solar activity, volcanic activity, orbital cycles, etc. Cherrypicking one cold period 450 million years ago is irrelevant.
References :
I only have time to address a couple of points. The direct effect of aerosols, whether man-made or from volcanoes, is to block sunlight and act to cool things. Secondary effects are less clear. Volcanoes emit so much less CO2 than people (less than 1%) that is not really necessary to take that into the equation.
We do need to understand clouds better, but the models will get better and better because they soon will be able to resolve them, and won’t need to use the "parameterizations" that are currently used..
References :
Before I consider answering any portion of this question could you answer something for me first? You said two things that caught my attention-
1.`“My understanding of gas laws, says that the increased pressure will cause the water to condensate and rain back to Earth. The above statement is in direct contradiction to Henry’s law.” And
2. “And many thanks to my college profs.”
Could you please tell me what faculty these “profs” belong to and possibly the actual names of the courses you have taken that they have taught?
Past experience tells me you could not care less about understanding climate change and no matter how much effort people put into answering your question you will simply ignore their efforts in order to encourage ignorance. http://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Aj.BDzk.IKjogQ4ANYp_gF7BFQx.;_ylv=3?qid=20091108062306AAkiPpV&show=7#profile-info-Mg9kPjIMaa
References :
*** My understanding of gas laws, says that the increased pressure will cause the water to condensate and rain back to Earth.
=> Well there is a high relative humidity in the Middle East… obviously this does not trigger rain.
Frankly said, most of the rain comes from an intermixing with cooler masses which decrease the mixed enthalpy to the saturation level. I have rarely seen rain being triggered by solely the pressure.
"Liquid water formation through pressure" is more often observed on high speed rotating parts such as steam turbines where local cavitation on the blade might occur.
*** Clouds:
=> See why the hypothesis of Spencer and John Christy has not been proven.
References :
HERE is a mollier diagram to play with the concept.
That might help you a bit.
http://energytower.org/calculations/AmmoniaAbsorptionDownDraftModerateCalc1_html_m15f2d570.gif
(Spent 6 month of my life on thermodynamics)
How does the increase in the partial pressure of water vapor with increasing temperature contradict Henry’s Law? Henry’s Law describes the relationship between the concentration of a dissolved gas in solution, and the partial pressure above that solution. It has nothing to do with evaporation.
"Cooler water can absorb more CO2. As ocean temperatures rise some of this CO2 will be released."
*This* is an application of Henry’s Law. But if you’re trying to make the argument that the rise in CO2 is natural, then you’re ignoring the primary statement of the law, which is that as partial pressure rises, more of the gas is forced into solution. The fact that this effect dominates is quite clear, and can even be directly measured.
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/sabi2683/sabi2683.shtml
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