Solar Power: How Different Colors and Distances affect Voltage

In order to better understand the way solar panels work, we must understand how different factors affect it. What we focused on in this project is different light filters and light sources being different distances to the light source. Different colors of light have different wavelengths, which is why different amount of voltages were produced with different colors.

No light light (1 cm) light (10 cm) light (15 cm) Blue (1 cm) yellow (1 cm) red (1 cm)
-0.1045 0.0238 0.10078 0.07512 0.0238 0.31889 0.35738
-0.15582 -0.05318 0.11361 0.07512 0.17776 0.30606 0.24191
-0.1045 0.26757 0.10078 0.06229 0.16493 0.29323 0.24191
-0.13016 0.37021 0.1521 0.04946 0.20342 0.2804 0.25474
-0.13016 0.31889 0.10078 0.1521 0.22908 0.35738 0.22908
-0.14299 0.33172 0.08795 0.07512 0.25474 0.31889 0.34455
-0.14299 0.29323 0.19059 0.11361 0.26757 0.33172 0.25474
-0.13016 0.34455 0.08795 0.12644 0.20342 0.29323 0.25474
-0.13016 0.35738 0.17776 0.1521 0.20342 0.29323 0.2804
-0.14299 0.39587 0.1521 0.1521 0.20342 0.34455 0.34455

 

Our voltage versus filter color contradicts some of our original opinions about the correlation between the two. What we must know is that different wavelengths have different energy levels, wavelengths that are too short will pass right through a solar cell, but wavelengths that are too long will not have enough energy to ‘excite’ the electrons in the solar cell to produce energy. What we expected was lower wavelengths to produce the most energy because they have the most energy, but the result was the opposite. From our results we determined that the best filter color is between yellow and red, so a wavelength of anywhere between 600 nm to 700 nm. The larger we get, the small the voltage would be produced because the wavelengths are getting to large to power the solar cell. According to our data as well, no color filter is actually less than the yellow color filter which is surprising because we would expect white light to produce the most energy because it is the same as the sun.

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Voltage vs Filter Color

Voltage versus distance is pretty self explanatory. The larger the distance between the light source and the solar cell, the smaller amount of energy that will be produced. This is because light spreads out as soon as it leaves the source, but the amount of light does not change. So as the area that the light covers grows larger, the amount of light per a certain area also gets smaller and weaker.

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