Newsgroups: comp.robotics
Path: brunix!cat.cis.Brown.EDU!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!MathWorks.Com!news.duke.edu!news-feed-1.peachnet.edu!umn.edu!gold!roger034
From: roger034@gold.tc.umn.edu (Brynn Rogers)
Subject: Re: Solar Insolation Levels
Message-ID: <Cu2Es6.I48@news.cis.umn.edu>
Sender: news@news.cis.umn.edu (Usenet News Administration)
Nntp-Posting-Host: gold2.tc.umn.edu
Organization: University of Minnesota
References: <ykgcqc4w165w@sfrsa.com> <af.6906.33.0NAF8FC6@mecheng.fullfeed.com> <Cu1v1p.JqB@armory.com>
Date: Fri, 5 Aug 1994 13:59:36 GMT
Lines: 35

In article <Cu1v1p.JqB@armory.com>,
Richard Steven Walz <rstevew@armory.com> wrote:

>Even in Death Valley, according to my passive solar technology instructor,
>you cannot get over about 150 Watt's per meter squared at noon in the
>summer on a clear day. I don't know why you think the atmosphere passes
>that amount of flux so well. We'd all be par-boiled!! The reflectance is
>much higher than that. I was instructed that orbit has, as a rule of thumb,
>11 times more solar flux for conversion to heat, such as for smelting, etc.
>We could melt steel in a pot with a 1' square Fresnel lens if that were
>true, at its focus! We can only melt lead with a 1 footer.
>
>The 100 to 150 Watt figure was the one used very successfully to predict
>the hot water ouput of all the old turn of the century hot water heaters on
>roofs in Los Angeles and much of southern California till the natural gas
>and petroleum got cheap!!! Few people know that the passive solar water
>heater was well on its way to over 50% usage till cheap petrochemicals!
>-Steve Walz 
>

This 150 W per square meter, is that what you can get out of the cells
or what you think the total solar flux is?

My source worked on Mankato States SunRaycer solar car and with the
8 square meter panel they would get 900W in bright sun, maybe even 
1000W occasionally.  Either their cells were way better than they
paid for (%15 is what they had) or your number is what a solar cell
can convert to power, NOT the total solar flux.

Brynn


--
Brynn Rogers     roger034@gold.tc.umn.edu

