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I built an open-source, AI-powered solar panel that's 95% optimal

jackogrady.me

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Re: I built an open-source, AI-powered solar panel that's 95% optimal

#101

Post by fy20 »

bushbaba wrote: post #37
psyguy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are panels cheaper than the servo motor & Arduino used in this tool? Not to mention that at mass produced scales chip costs are usually 1/5 the price of an Arduino. What if every panel used these tools, we could increase the amount of power we gather from solar.

Yes. A 400w watt panel is 250$. When you account for labor and cost of all. The parts for a moving panel that can withstand high wind speeds…Placing more fixed panels is cheaper.

In Europe they are even cheaper as we don't have high tariffs on Chinese panels. I can buy a 350W panel for €150 including taxes, or €100 if I go to the equivalent of Craigslist and don't care about warranties.

Re: I built an open-source, AI-powered solar panel that's 95% optimal

#102

Post by sgtnoodle »

hawski wrote: post #95
liftm wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're forgetting about orientation (and altitude)? The observed position also varies a bit with air pressure and temperature, but iirc that's less than a few degrees. Anyway, you grab yourself a nice ephemeris library like skyfield, do a little bit of your_location.at(now).observe(sun).apparent().altaz('standard'), and there's your angles. The trickiest part might be getting an accurate time on whatever cheap contro…

Radio time signal stations broadcast time and I would hope it would be cheap enough as we have radio controlled clocks, that do not cost a fortune. Otherwise a small battery and a RTC would be enough and probably a better solution.

A GPS receiver can be had for like $15 these days. That will give you time and position, and require less maintenance than an RTC.

Of course, a $15 receiver might not have the best sensitivity, so reception might actually be a practical concern. On the other hand, you only need 4 satellites for a coarse fix, and you could seemingly tolerate a many minute cold fix time.

Re: I built an open-source, AI-powered solar panel that's 95% optimal

#103

Post by hetspookjee »

frereubu wrote: post #98
snickmy wrote: post #86

I used to be like OP. (have a similar background and have similar interests in tech for the planet) Then I realised couple of things, an humbling experience: 1) given any position on earth, you can compute exactly what's the optimal inclination at any given point in time for a PV to maximize the energy production. Sure, there are reflection and secondary irradiation conditions (eg.: there is a lake close to it), but…

I went on a solar power course at the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales (~10 years ago, so perhaps this into may be somewhat out of date) and they'd calculated that the extra energy generated by moving a panel to the optimal direction during the day was less than the energy it took to move the panel, let along the extra costs of the mechanics. Bear in mind that in Wales there's plenty of cloudy weather durin…

I can imagine that this kind of research is done once 15 years ago, as I remember that too, but perhaps with the recent advance of technology might actually not be true anymore. I don’t have sources but in general some types of things get reiterated so long that time overtook it

Re: I built an open-source, AI-powered solar panel that's 95% optimal

#104

Post by wastra »

snickmy wrote: post #86

I used to be like OP. (have a similar background and have similar interests in tech for the planet) Then I realised couple of things, an humbling experience: 1) given any position on earth, you can compute exactly what's the optimal inclination at any given point in time for a PV to maximize the energy production. Sure, there are reflection and secondary irradiation conditions (eg.: there is a lake close to it), but…

Yes, I agree this is vastly over-engineered. There are commercial solar farms that actively point toward the sun, but many (most?) do not, because they may fail. Before medicine, I studied and worked in renewable energy: in medicine, simplicity in critical engineering problems is more obviously important.

In this solar project, the metric should be a comparison to the yield from pointing at the sun based on lat,long, and (earth) time.

Really, the analysis would have to include anticipated costs of installation and maintenance in comparison to a dumb array.

Perhaps the ingenious author could consider xy or xyz movement in an intermittently shadowed environment instead of 2-axis rotation. This might be be a better job for machine learning, or just a well-known control system problem.

Re: I built an open-source, AI-powered solar panel that's 95% optimal

#105

Post by barney54 »

ncmncm wrote: post #26
mcdirty wrote: post #13

I'll just leave this here... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wL9PcGu_xrA&t=174s

Nowadays panels are cheap enough that if you want more power than you get with them fixed in place, you just add more panels.

Not necessarily. Yes, they are cheap, but most current solar installations use single axis trackers. They are simple and increase yield.

Re: I built an open-source, AI-powered solar panel that's 95% optimal

#106

Post by wongarsu »

hetspookjee wrote: post #103
frereubu wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went on a solar power course at the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales (~10 years ago, so perhaps this into may be somewhat out of date) and they'd calculated that the extra energy generated by moving a panel to the optimal direction during the day was less than the energy it took to move the panel, let along the extra costs of the mechanics. Bear in mind that in Wales there's plenty of cloudy weather durin…

I can imagine that this kind of research is done once 15 years ago, as I remember that too, but perhaps with the recent advance of technology might actually not be true anymore. I don’t have sources but in general some types of things get reiterated so long that time overtook it

As GP argued, the movement can be entirely precomputed, and even if it isn't "move the panel to face the brightest spot" is trivial to solve with simple components. The only real advances I can imagine to make this profitable would be better motors that are cheaper and use less energy, or new types of solar panels that are more directional (e.g. a solar concentrator setup where you move mirrors to hit a smaller collector).

The latter exist but don't seem more profitable (in the case of PV panels because of lifetime problems due to more heat), and while we have gotten a bit better with motors I don't think there even is a lot of headroom to gain much efficiency.

Re: I built an open-source, AI-powered solar panel that's 95% optimal

#107

Post by throw0101a »

snickmy wrote: post #86

I used to be like OP. (have a similar background and have similar interests in tech for the planet) Then I realised couple of things, an humbling experience: 1) given any position on earth, you can compute exactly what's the optimal inclination at any given point in time for a PV to maximize the energy production. Sure, there are reflection and secondary irradiation conditions (eg.: there is a lake close to it), but…

> 3) Economics is a key component of engineering. There is a cost to everything, the computational power, the energy needed by the servo, etc, etc. Given 1 and 2, a dynamic solution simply has a lower ROI than a static one.

A 'joke' we had in engineering school: Anyone can design something to do X for $5, but it's an engineer's job to get the same results for $3.

Re: I built an open-source, AI-powered solar panel that's 95% optimal

#108

Post by xxs »

walrus01 wrote: post #89
snickmy wrote: post #86

I used to be like OP. (have a similar background and have similar interests in tech for the planet) Then I realised couple of things, an humbling experience: 1) given any position on earth, you can compute exactly what's the optimal inclination at any given point in time for a PV to maximize the energy production. Sure, there are reflection and secondary irradiation conditions (eg.: there is a lake close to it), but…

On a large scale motorized sun tracking photovoltaics is very costly. The systems that can take the wind loading of six 1.65 x 1.00 meter size 60-cell panels on a pole cost more than the panels. Needs like a 6" OD sch80 pipe set into a concrete foundation. Commodity fixed angle ground mount photovoltaics arrays are low cost. If you do the dollar and kWh produced in year calculation for spending $40,000 on fixed mount…

Gotta admire the effortless mix up of metric and imperial units.

Re: I built an open-source, AI-powered solar panel that's 95% optimal

#109

Post by thechao »

frereubu wrote: post #98
snickmy wrote: post #86

I used to be like OP. (have a similar background and have similar interests in tech for the planet) Then I realised couple of things, an humbling experience: 1) given any position on earth, you can compute exactly what's the optimal inclination at any given point in time for a PV to maximize the energy production. Sure, there are reflection and secondary irradiation conditions (eg.: there is a lake close to it), but…

I went on a solar power course at the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales (~10 years ago, so perhaps this into may be somewhat out of date) and they'd calculated that the extra energy generated by moving a panel to the optimal direction during the day was less than the energy it took to move the panel, let along the extra costs of the mechanics. Bear in mind that in Wales there's plenty of cloudy weather durin…

Y'all have plenty of water in Wales: it feels like a simple water clock could do a trivial repositioning of the panels to do precomputed solar tracking.

Re: I built an open-source, AI-powered solar panel that's 95% optimal

#110

Post by taneq »

walrus01 wrote: post #89
snickmy wrote: post #86

I used to be like OP. (have a similar background and have similar interests in tech for the planet) Then I realised couple of things, an humbling experience: 1) given any position on earth, you can compute exactly what's the optimal inclination at any given point in time for a PV to maximize the energy production. Sure, there are reflection and secondary irradiation conditions (eg.: there is a lake close to it), but…

On a large scale motorized sun tracking photovoltaics is very costly. The systems that can take the wind loading of six 1.65 x 1.00 meter size 60-cell panels on a pole cost more than the panels. Needs like a 6" OD sch80 pipe set into a concrete foundation. Commodity fixed angle ground mount photovoltaics arrays are low cost. If you do the dollar and kWh produced in year calculation for spending $40,000 on fixed mount…

Yeah, exactly. Tracking photovoltaics used to be worth it back when photovoltaics were $5 per watt. The price has dropped so much that even for fixed angle ground mounts, the mounting frames and labour to install them costs far more than the panels themselves. Sun-tracking is just not economical compared with cheap static panels.

(I spent quite a lot of time on an idea for rooftop solar thermal power and was trying to build a prototype when the solar panel prices started crashing. It pretty soon became inescapable fact that small scale solar thermal with all its moving parts just wasn't viable any more. I'd be surprised if even the large mirror-farm CSP is competitive these days.)

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