Concentrating Solar Energy Science Fair Projects

New Twists

If you are going to work with a popular topic you need to take a new twist on that topic. Otherwise your project is going to be boring.

Power House Experiments Science Kit	SCG-125 Snap Circuits Green Alternative Energy	Solar Cars & Vehicles Experiment Kits	Solar Energy Science Fair Projects Kits
Age 12 and up	Ages 10 and up	Grades 3rd thru 12th	All ages

Objectives/Goals

The purpose of this project is to see if there is some way of increasing the amount of power you can get out of a solar cell without having to make some complicated changes to the silicon in the cell. The objective was to concentrate a beam of light on a photovoltaic cell using a concentrator and measure the energy out of the cell to see if it will be maximized when the concentrator is at its focal point relative to the surface of the cell.

Methods/Materials

100w light bulb, lamp, concentrator(magnifying glass), tape, tape measure, solar cell, multi-meter, and hight varying clamp. The basic method is to set the lamp with the 100w bulb at a fixed hight and focus its light using the concentrator onto the cell. Change the focus of the light while measuring the output energy of the cell.

Results

The results show an increase in output voltage that appears to be somewhat independent of the focus of the light. I believe that this had to do with the surface area of the concentrator being almost twice as large as that of the cell.

Conclusions/Discussion

Focusing the beam of light on one spot on the cell does increase the amount of energy by a small amount but a significant increase will come if you use a concentrator with a larger surface area than that of the cell. 3rd party contributor