I have been thinking on how to claim every energy that comes on my plot. Technology goes more and more into harvesting the smaller left over energy. Ive seen examples in the Netherlands where startups try to get energy from a chip (I have been thinking on how to claim every energy that comes on my plot. Technology goes more and more into harvesting the smaller left over energy. Ive seen examples in the Netherlands where startups try to get energy from a chip (http://www.nowi-energy.com, https://memsys.nl) and a transparent solar panel layer on windows etc. Here in Lithuania sometimes the whole day has an overcast sky and that is the solar energy that we are getting. I know that with heavy overcast days a standard solar panels output can be as low as 10%. So a 5kWp can generate instead of 3.75kW produce only a meager 370W. My question to you, arent there other solar technologies that are adjusted to this overcast circumstances? So to gain more efficiency from diffuse lighting or from frequencies that can pierce the clouds more (like infrared spectrum)?
Some sunday morning pondering…
A friend has bought vacuum thermal solar heaters: glass tubes with vacuum in it and a black copper thermal conductor that simply heats from the sun’s radiation but loses very little energy. He was getting boiling water on an overcast day, I was very surprised to see this passive system going so much over he ambient temperature.
Very good direction. I can could look into this as heat is the highest energy requiment in a house. I heard these vacuumtubes are quite expensive though
They are, but I have been wondering how hard and how efficient it would be to make partial vacuum: have a transparent enclosure, a pump to remove 80% of the air in it, and see if it doesn’t work a bit too.