There’s a weird thing the contestants in the solar car challenge that Australia has been hosting since forever where they generate more power on haze or partly cloudy days than on sunny. I don’t know if they ever sorted out why. Speculation was reflected light off the clouds, but I suspect panel temperature also played a role. And road temperature affects panel temps.
What the UK cannot do is concentrating solar. The efficiency absolutely crashes in diffuse light.
Yeah. The temperature issue would have been my first guess.
Regarding concentrating solar: are people still trying to make that work for commercial generation? I thought this had generally failed to pan out for electricity generation.
There are many variations of concentrating solar. There’s the tower, there’s the curved mirror with the tube of oil, and there’s the magnifying glass with a small, exotic solar cell that can handle 10 Suns’ worth of light.
None of them work on overcast days because they rely on parallel rays of light.
What the UK cannot do is concentrating solar. The efficiency absolutely crashes in diffuse light.