Ideas for a Senior Project in Photovoltaics

[Moneer81]

Hello,

I am trying to come up with a good senior project for my physics degree. I am really interested in PV and I have spent a lot of time researching the literature and whatnot but haven't been able to come up with an original idea for a project. My first idea was improving the efficiency of a solar cell using some kind of a lens setup but so far everyone I've been consulting assured me that it won't work. My professors aren't much help because not too many of them are very knowledgeable about solar technology and I don't feel like changing my project into something else completely different. Any suggestions on an experiment or a project I could do? I need to give a half hour presentation on it and write a report so it should be slightly detailed but it doesn't have to be real advanced. The goal is to show that I know how to perform an experiment, write a report, and present my findings, even if the experiment was a failure. That being said, I'd like to do something slightly original and challenging, or something that I could investigate its physics.

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Reshma]

I don't know what your budget is, but the best project I can think of using PV cells is a solar tracker. If you are good at programming you can make use of a stepper or a dc motor (to orient the sensor array) that can be controlled by a microcontroller like PIC, Atmega etc.