Systems and the future
Solar panel
housing school retail parking public building
A module that converts sunlight into electricity through photovoltaic cells, almost always silicon. It is installed on roofs, facades, pergolas or on the ground.
Solves
What it solves
It produces clean energy at the same place where it is consumed. In the tropics it takes advantage of a high sun all year and also shades the roof.
Today
Orient it toward the greatest radiation and avoid shadows from trees, tanks or neighboring buildings. Near the equator a low tilt is best, but enough for the rain to wash it.
Common mistake
Installing it flat or stuck to the metal sheet, where it collects dust, heats up and performs worse.
Tomorrow
The roofs of schools, community halls and markets can produce shared energy for the neighborhood. With batteries each roof stores energy for the night and for a blackout after a storm.
Fact A minimum tilt of 10 degrees helps the rain clean the panel by itself.
Where it comes from
- 1Experimental physics France, 1839
Edmond Becquerel demonstrated the photovoltaic effect for the first time, the electric current born from light. - 2Research laboratory United States, 1954
The first practical silicon cell, the basis of today’s panels, was presented in public.
Masters
- Renzo Piano California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, United States, 2008
He integrated some 60,000 photovoltaic cells into the glazed canopy around the green roof, so the panel also gives shade. He teaches how to make the solar panel a piece of the architecture and not an add-on.
Appears in the routes
See also
Also in Systems and the future
Diagrams and texts by LDB Arquitectura. They are shared under the CC BY 4.0 license, which allows them to be used and adapted with credit to the source.