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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

#121

Post by dwild »

tpxl wrote: post #114
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power course at the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales (~10 years ago, so perhaps this into may be somewhat out of date) and they'd calculated that the extra energy generated by moving a panel to the optimal direction during the day was less than the energy it took to move the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…

Can you make a purely mechanical solution to the tracking problem, at least along a single axis? If you put a water container on the left and the right side of the solar panels, the one in the sun will get hotter, expand, and that can move the solar panel. It's moving parts and extra cost, but no energy consumption. I'm no engineer, so I can't determine whether it would work, but on the surface it looks like it shoul…

I remember a guy in a community that I frequent that build a small trailer that had fixed solar panels, he had build one for a reason I don't remember and afterward some companies were interested and that post was showing his second one he had just sold. It was a bunch of panels on an A frame so essentially one side had awful sun visibility but not the other. People wondered why he did it in such ways, as that meant that half the time they would be useless, why not a moving platform on a central pivot that you can adjust? Well turns out it was cheaper to add panels on the other sides than building a more complex frame that allowed pivot. I'm sure it could have been cheaper to build a system sure (maybe not in his case considering it was on a trailer), but I have an hard time believing the maintenance cost and failure potential is worth it. You can just add more panels... they are starting to become that cheap.

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

#122

Post by rtkwe »

teleforce wrote: post #15

Sorry for the off-topic. I think if just 10% of the efforts were put on improving mini/micro/pico hydro electric generator rather than on solar systems, most of the rural areas will probably better off now with reliable power supply than relying solely on the intermittent solar power[1], [2]. [1]Micro hydro: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_hydro [2]Micro hydro power with turgo generator: https://youtu.be/njNYuE…

The issue I always see on those is the pipe from the upstream reservoir to the generator gets knocked around and dislodged a lot when there's high water. It's less reliable and more maintenance intensive compared to solar it seems. Though it is more mechanical maintenance which is more friendly to more rural areas.

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

#123

Post by DonHopkins »

Dyson Sphere Program - Solar Ring vs. Polar Solar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qguTFa9tj3c

Dyson Sphere Program · Covering Half a Planet with Solar Panels

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKxkWgknkco

Dyson Sphere Program - Solar Panels

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yO78pXYnjFA

Full day night cycle of solar panels | Dyson Sphere Program

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmJr4HiVCwE

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

#124

Post by xboxnolifes »

0_____0 wrote: post #115
xxs wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

the US is a metric country that's in denial

The US is a country that just does the engineering and doesn't constantly whine when they see a unit they don't like.

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

#125

Post by Gravityloss »

sgtnoodle wrote: post #100
snovv_crash wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do this without jitter by having the panel with a bend in it and comparing power from the 2 sides. The difference drives a motor controller directly.

I raced solar cars in college. One car we built had a solar concentrator system made up of 1D parabolic mirrors. This was a several hundred thousand dollar system due to the use of specialized concentrator cells, and required multiple team members to temporarily move to LA for months to delicately manufacture the cells in a Spectrolab clean room. The concentrator mirrors had to be aimed within about 2 degrees to aim…

Very fascinating story. What's your opinion on the Lightyear partially solar powered up oming commercial car?

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

#126

Post by freemint »

recuter wrote: post #31
mcdirty wrote: post #13

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

I raise you a wax motor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiADday0mDA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wax_motor tl;dr - sun rises, temperature rises, wax material expands, motor actuates, solar panel tracks the sky as if it was a sun flower. Maybe the gloop is sentient or something.

Variation in temperature between days (summer vs winter) is larger then variation between morning and afternoon.

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

#127

Post by sgtnoodle »

Gravityloss wrote: post #125
sgtnoodle wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I raced solar cars in college. One car we built had a solar concentrator system made up of 1D parabolic mirrors. This was a several hundred thousand dollar system due to the use of specialized concentrator cells, and required multiple team members to temporarily move to LA for months to delicately manufacture the cells in a Spectrolab clean room. The concentrator mirrors had to be aimed within about 2 degrees to aim…

Very fascinating story. What's your opinion on the Lightyear partially solar powered up oming commercial car?

This is the first I've heard of it. The physics of it seems fine. The engineering is going to be very hard for them to get right.

Just skimming their web site, range is qualified as "WLTP drive cycle". I assume that means software enforced torque and speed limits, and no one is going to want to drive with that enabled.

Using 4 independent motors implies they're using in-hub motors. They don't seem to mention a top speed anywhere. Unless their motors have dynamically adjustable air gaps (which I am guessing they don't), the motors will have a fixed KV constant. That means the top speed of the vehicle will be limited by battery voltage at some point. Maybe that limit is high enough not to matter, but it's funny they don't specify it.

Using in-hub motors also means there's a lot of mass on the wheels themselves. I'm not a mechanical engineer, but my understanding is that adding wheel mass makes suspension design a lot more difficult. On top of that, the rest of the car is presumably a couple hundred lb of batteries, and then a bunch of lightweight composites. The batteries will likely be in the floor, which is good for vehicle dynamics. The overall car will be significantly lighter than what people are used to. I think it's possible that the car will have a relatively rough ride, and could possibly have more noise than usual in the passenger compartment.

Crash-safety wise, I wouldn't want to drive that car on a busy highway. In the US, it would likely struggle to pass crash safety testing. I wonder if they are certifying it as a low speed vehicle, which would put it in the same regulatory class as a golf cart. It would have to have a 40kph speed limit on level ground.

It will probably cost more than a Tesla. At the end of the day, slapping a solar roof on a Tesla would probably get a lot of folk to the grocery store and back every few days. Mounting the same panels on the ground and plugging in the Tesla would be even more effective.

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

#128

Post by walrus01 »

xxs wrote: post #108
walrus01 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

if you're buying construction supplies in north america you're not going to get metric sized pipes for like, sticking a robust mast in the ground.

whereas 54, 60, 72-cell pv panels with aluminum frames made from 156mm cells are manufactured in metric dimensions.

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

#129

Post by colordrops »

liftm wrote: post #88
colordrops wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It provides reasoning as to why it is a better solution than just pointing at the sun.

No evaluation then.

Comments are speaking to it like it wasn't even addressed. Do you need data to understand that moving a cell out of a shadow would increase its capacity?

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

#130

Post by colordrops »

qayxc wrote: post #111
colordrops wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article states that it works for suboptimal situations with shade and reflections and whatnot.

Which is cool and all, but it's not like you don't know the exact environment before you install solar panels...

Yes, but that's a different topic. And isn't this just an exploratory project rather than an engineering effort or scientific research?

But even then, I got panels on my roof last year. A nearby tree that was trimmed when we installed them and now the shade partially covers panels in the morning. If we had gimbles perhaps they'd be more efficient. Maybe not, and maybe we should trim the tree, but the point is that perhaps there is a use case that hasn't been thought of yet. Say, dropping cells on mars in a relatively unknown environment.

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