PHGN419 Principles of Solar Energy Systems

• Page Contents
• Office Hours
• Grading
• Schedule
• Homework

"PHGN419 Principles of Solar Energy Systems" is both a physics elective and part of the Renewable Energy track of CSM's Energy Minor. It started as "PH398A Introduction to Photovoltaic Energy Conversion", which was offered in the Spring 2009 and 2010 semesters.

The class is a broad survey of the solar photovoltaic issues. It included sections on:

• why we are interested in solar energy
• the solar energy resource
• basic photovoltaic cell theory
• basic photovoltaic cell characterization methods
• wafer and thin film photovoltaic cell designs and processes
• photovoltaic module designs
• photovoltaic electricity applications
• basic photovoltaic system design

Office Hours

I am required to have office hours, so I will declare them to be M-F 4pm-5pm. In the past, most students have come to me at times outside of office hours. I'm happy to meet with students outside of office hours, just email me to set up an appointment.

Grading

The first two times I taught this course, the grades were 40% homework and 60% tests. By the end of the second time I taught the class, I realized that the test scores tracked the homework scores very well, so giving the tests seemed to be a waste of three class periods. In 2011, we tried a new grading method. Homework was be 60% of the grade, and the other 40% was a project that was due at the end of the semester. That worked out well, so we will continue it this year.

In general, late homework will not be accepted. This is really as much to benefit the students as it is to make life easier for the grader and me. Students should turn in what they have completed when it is due so they are able to move on to the next assignment. Otherwise, the hole just gets deeper as the semester progresses.

Schedule

I will post a tentative schedule based on the 2011 class next week.

Homework

Homework #1 questions.
A Solar Grand Plan article from Scientific American.
Description and some data for the Production Experience Curve.

Homework #2 questions.

Homework #3 questions.

Homework #4 questions.

Homework #5 questions.

Homework #6 questions.

Homework #7 questions.

Specification sheets for:

• A Sunpower horizontal single axis tracker.
• A Sunpower tilted single axis tracker.
• A Solon dual axis tracker.

Homework #8 questions.

Specification sheets for:

• A Fronius Plus string inverter.
• An Enphase microinverter.
• A Sharp 224 W solar panel.

Homework #9 questions.

Homework #10 questions.

Homework #11 questions.