Minimum light bulb wattage for solar simulator

Thread Starter

joey_hanks

Joined Nov 19, 2022
3
I am trying to design a simple homemade PV solar simulator. I have picked metal-halide lamps as my light source.

If the PV panel has an area of 1m^2 and I wanted to achieve spatial uniformity across the irradiated surface with an irradiance of 1000 W/m^2, how do I go about selecting what wattage of lamp I need?

I understand that the solar irradiance is going depend on a number of factors including the number of lamps I use within a given area and the distance of the light source from the test bed. I have read research papers on others using multiple 400W metal halide lamps to achieve the 1000 W/m^2 irradiance but I don't quite understand how that works.
 

Thread Starter

joey_hanks

Joined Nov 19, 2022
3
I guess my real question is do I just need to make sure that 1000W of power reaches a 1m^2 surface to achieve an irradiance of 1000/m^2? Putting aside efficiency and diffusion of light, if I had 5 lamps each producing 200W laid out evenly in a 1 meter squared area, does that achieve what I need?
 

Ian0

Joined Aug 7, 2020
9,671
Yes. You have to collect all the light produced by the lamps and reflect it on to your solar panel, using mirrors, lenses etc. but there will be some losses (say 2%) involved whenever it is reflected.
But when you say producing 200W, make sure you don't mean consuming 200W.
 
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