jb@aablue.com (John B Scalia) (09/17/90)
Hi all-
I'm not sure if this has ever been discussed, and no guide that I
have discusses this issue, but I'm working on a project powered by solar
cells that will need to function for at least 3-5 years, preferably without
changing the cells. What I can't find is any specification detailing how
the output of the cell will be affected over time. Does any hard data
exist for terrestrial cell output? Would NASA documents of space born
cells be of any accuracy as we get a far different spectrum down here?
Just wondering where to look,
jb@aablue.com
--
A A Blueprint Co., Inc. - Akron, Ohio +1 216 794-8803 voice
jb@aablue.com or {uunet!}aablue!jb (John B. Scalia)
Just a little more nonsense to clutter up the net.henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (09/18/90)
In article <1990Sep17.135311.1308@aablue.com> jb@aablue.com (John B Scalia) writes: >... Would NASA documents of space born >cells be of any accuracy as we get a far different spectrum down here? Not likely to be relevant. The dominant factor in lifetime of solar arrays in space is radiation exposure from the Van Allen belts and solar flares. Particle radiation is really hard on solar cells. (That big solar flare early this year -- the one that caused the Quebec blackout, among other things -- knocked years off the lives of some spacecraft in a few hours.) A further complication is that spacecraft solar cells are cost-is-no-object hardware which might have somewhat different characteristics from what you're likely to find down here. -- TCP/IP: handling tomorrow's loads today| Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology OSI: handling yesterday's loads someday| henry@zoo.toronto.edu utzoo!henry