SparkFun Forums

[fgcity]

Does anyone know how to get voltage measurment out of a solar Wafer?

What i mean is does anyone know what type of light can be applied to the solar panel (exept Sunlight ) that can produce power on the panel?

[leon_heller]

They need quite a lot of light. What do you intend to use it for?

Leon

[fgcity]

I need to measure ither the voltage output irger the Resistance of the Wafer in order to establish if the wafer is good or not.

What would be the optimum solution?

[leon_heller]

The specification should have the output for a given luminous flux,you need to test it the same way.

Leon

[fgcity]

What do you mean?

[Philba]

what he means is that the datasheet should have test data. Or, at least, data you can test with. luminous flux means a specific amount of light and it should say how much voltage and or current it will produce under those conditions. It should produce some energy even at low light levels. can you point us to a datasheet for the device? It may actually have a test procedure.

[fgcity]

i haven't got a datasheet but if there is one then i'll look for it. Just to make it clear i am talking about a solar Wafer. Not the folar panel. The solar wafer is the small peace out of which they make solar panels

[fgcity]

Here is the datasheet: http://www.ersol.de/en/datenblaetter/so ... ePower.pdf

But it doesn't have anything to tect it.

I was asking what kind of light would simulate solar light in order to read out the power from the panel?

What i mean is Would a Florecent light do the job?

[Kuroi Kenjin]

I wouldn't think it would matter, as long as the light produces the wavelength that the solar cell reacts to. As this one seems to have a very wide band it reacts well to... I should think it would work. 900nm would be your best bet... I duno what spectrum a florescent primarily produces though.

[leon_heller]

Here is the datasheet: http://www.ersol.de/en/datenblaetter/so ... ePower.pdf

But it doesn't have anything to tect it.

I was asking what kind of light would simulate solar light in order to read out the power from the panel?

What i mean is Would a Florecent light do the job?

It is intended for sunlight. You can buy sunlight simulators but they are *very* expensive.

Leon

[fgcity]

can i test it in someother way and not use the Sunlight Simulator?

[Kuroi Kenjin]

You should be able to get a light source within the spectrum of the solar cell (900nm would be the best since it's a factor of 1 on this), figure out how much light powr is getting to the solar cell per unit area, and calculate how much power the solar cell is outputting. Then you can get an efficiency calculation which you can compare to the specs. The hard part... how much power per area is getting to the panel? (remember this is not the same as the power rating on the light source... expecially an incandescent source.. that's mostly heat) I dunno what else you'd test on a solar panel (besides the obvious, is it working? how durable...etc.)

[fgcity]

every model has different power output. This one has 3.6W. Others have 3.4W - 3.2W and so on

I want to be able to measure the output of the panel and seperate them.

What power source would someone recommend in order to achieve some result?

[wiml]

I think it would be easier to just get another photocell with similar spectral response (like maybe a cheap silicon photodiode, if your wafer is silicon, which it probably is — I haven't looked at the datasheet link). Then illuminate that sensor with whatever light source is convenient, use that to figure out what the light source's intensity is, then see if the wafer produces the output you expect given that intensity.

Silicon's bandgap is somewhere in the infrared, so any light source that's mostly visible light ought to work fine, I would think.

[fgcity]

i don't think i am going to try that since i need more accurate readings. I'll propably get some lights to test the wafer and see how it goes. The thing is that i have seen how the people in the factory measure it and they do it in a dark room with a flash light while recording with digital measuring tools rhe curvature of the output.

What i need is a more simplyfied test that would do the result i require or atleast get the wafer to output some voltage.

with the normal indoor light bolb (65W) i get readings of about 5 mV from the wafer.

I am going to need allot more than that to get something more accurate.