High Power Leds as converter from optical to electrical energy

Thread Starter

Burnin

Joined Aug 30, 2011
2
Reading on the web about solar panels I found out that transistors and led diodes can be used to convert light into electricity. The only thing I found was some tests on old low wattage leds.

I would like to know can High Power Leds such as 10W be used to convert light into electricity.
 

kubeek

Joined Sep 20, 2005
5,794
Especially NOT white LEDs, as these have luminofor, which converts UV light produced by the led to visible light, and this doesn´t happen the other way.
Some other types may be better at conversion, but still it will be nowhere close to actual photovoltaic panels.
 

Thread Starter

Burnin

Joined Aug 30, 2011
2
they would take less space

could fiber optics be somehow used for conversion

what transistors or diodes work the best

what is the cheapest meterial that can be used for solar cells and is avaliable to common people
 

kubeek

Joined Sep 20, 2005
5,794
Lots of mirrors, radiator from a car, some water and a steam turbine with generator :)

Have you seen the size of the chip inside a LED? Do you really think that buying thousands of them would to get some useful output would be cheaper than the same amount of power from a photovoltaic panel?
 

iONic

Joined Nov 16, 2007
1,662
If your thinking about building a solar panel with LED's you will be very disappointed in the
output power. Photocells are designed expressly to do this. They are far more efficient than an LED. And you'll have an awful large array of LED's at a greater cost.
Some people use Clear green LED's and voltage comparators to track the movement of the sun. Solar panels can track the sun's movement in this way.
I once used 6 green LED's, three parallel leg of two LED's each to try to light a 7th LED.
The theory was that since each green LED was producing about 1.6V each I would get 3.2V out and triple the current out as well. But the 20mA LED did not even flicker, thus it's current was probably less than 5mA. Probably far less than that.
 
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