Solar Environment Lab
The 7th grade technology class is starting to finalize the components for the Solar Environment Lab. The class was broken up into teams; each team was assigned a phase of the project to do research on.
- Team one – solar panels.
- Team two – proposed equipment that is used only with DC current.
- Team three – proposed equipment that is used only with AC current.
- Team four – will use the Excel program to develop a spreadsheet and chart showing a graph of the cost between using solar or the public utility electrical supply (daily, weekly, monthly and yearly).
- Team five – will take all information gathered by the teams and prepare a Powerpoint presentation.
The class needed to use Ohm’s Law after they obtained the equipment electrical characteristics, to find either the watts or amps used by the equipment. Once they found all the equipment loads, we were ready to discuss which solar panel size would best meet our requirements.
Team one has found that the Photovoltaic (PV) panels mainly absorb infrared rays of the sun to convert into electric energy. The other rays in light spectrum coming from the sun are not absorbed and is lost as heat. This is what reduces the panel efficiency to between 5 – 18 percent.
Team one is in the process now of finding which company makes the most efficient solar panel and would be cost effective or should they lower the efficiency to bring the cost down.
The 7th grade technology class is a quarterly (9-10 weeks) class, so portions of the project will not be accomplished during this quarter, but continued in the second, third and fourth quarters with the new 7th grade technology classes. This is also by design, so I can explore new avenues with the each class.
