Samuel Benge <stb### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>
> MustardMan,
>
> How efficient does the panel absorb light? At what angles? How many
> points of reference will you use for your calculations? I can think of
> two ways to do what you want.
>
> First way. You can shoot several rays (using trace()) from the camera,
> to see if a shadow is cast onto parts of the panel or not. From there
> you can get the normal of the panel's surface and calculate how much
> light would be absorbed.
>
> The second option uses MegaPov's projection pattern. You make the
> pattern utilize a copy of the sun, and test the resulting pigment with
> eval_pigment. These tests would be averaged together to achieve an
> approximation of how much solar energy is absorbed per-panel. This won't
> take surface normals into consideration, though.
>
> Just some ideas. With any luck they made sense. Hope you succeed!
>
> ~Sam

Hi Sam,
Solar panels conversion ability is about 17% best case. What I have done for
my simulation is to specify an orientation angle (Pt) and using Az and Al
from SUNPOS, use the (simplified) calculation cos(Al-Pt)*cos(Az). This
gives the efficiency as a 'percentage' of the maximum available power [ie.
0 to 1].

The result can be negative (the sun is behind the panels for a short time in
the summer). I am outputting the percentage to a file for later integration,
but the "problem" I have is that the calculation I am doing does not take
the shadowing of objects into consideration, hence I have to manually look
at the scene, decide if the panels are in shade, and make sure I only
integrate over the corresponding time period. If a shadow from a tree (for
example) passes in front of the panels, I have to note this time and make
sure these times are excluded from calculation.

What I would like to do is to get POVray to output another variable to the
file which tells me if a point (on one or more panels) is in shade. Then
the integrating program can calculate merrily away, and I don't have to
worry about shadowing at inconvienient times!

Thanks,
MM.

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