Dear Pradeep,
Solar panels do not need to have a curved shape.
Maximum radiation is captured from a plane surface.
Curved shapes as seen in solar thermal plants are used to focus the radiation to a single point, thus magnifying the local energy density.
Focusing is not necessary in PV, therefore you don't get to see curved panels.
Cheers - Martin
I guess this is a old tradition of the wafer-like semicondutors constructions. The hexagon construction is more suitable for PV-panels.
Dear Pradeep,
Solar panels do not need to have a curved shape.
Maximum radiation is captured from a plane surface.
Curved shapes as seen in solar thermal plants are used to focus the radiation to a single point, thus magnifying the local energy density.
Focusing is not necessary in PV, therefore you don't get to see curved panels.
Cheers - Martin
Why should a photovoltaic panel be curved? If it would be, the loss would outweigh the gain.
(There have been similar questions before, have also a look at them:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/If_I_have_a_set_of_solar_cells_uniformly_distributed_on_the_surface_of_a_spherical_body_How_I_can_used_it_to_determine_the_direction_of_sun
and
https://www.researchgate.net/post/photocells_in_spherical_shape)
1. Flat-shape batteries are scaled-up for any length at solar-farm without shuding.
2. What variant (A or B) of PV-system with two identical panels is more effective?
A) Both panels oriented to South-S. B) The panels oriented to different directions: SSW and SSE.
A guess that more effective A-variant (both panels oriented to S). This is equal to flat shape of composite panel.
Argumentation: To get maximum energy from single sub-panel it must be oriented to South (to zinith near equator).
Well, since PV module prices have come down considerably and since already many large-area PV installations are south-oriented, meanwhile it makes sense to have an alternating east/west-oriented installation, since this leads to a temporal broadening of the electricity generation profile (cf., e.g., https://www.agora-energiewende.de/en/service/recent-electricity-data/ for Germany) over the day.
If as Jan-Martin suggests you have an East oriented array and a West oriented array I believe that you could usefully have a separate inverter for each array as their peak power points will be different except when the angle of incidence of the solar irradiation on both panels is identical. If your local geography allows it, I suggest that you would get more power from an Eastward facing panel then an identical Westward facing one, as it will get its maximum irradiation in the morning when it's cooler and the panel is more efficient.
Picking up Tony's argument about having to use separate inverters for the east- and west-oriented PV modules (in order to be able to perform MPP tracking), it becomes clear that -- coming back to the starting question -- for a curved PV module (of cylindrical shape, say), in order to connect them to the relevant inverter, one would need separate leads to the electrically separated cell strings inside the module that face different directions. This means that as many different orientations there would be, the same number of independent inverters were needed. I'm not an engineer, but I guess that's not worth the effort.
Dear Pradeep,
i dont think there is any need for curvature in the solar panel..our aim with a panel is to obtain maximum radiation in a maximum area.flat surface is best suited for it.curvature is needed when u need to concentrate the light like in CSP.
For a recent publication about this subject, see https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304766125 (where my previous argument about separate strings is substantiated).
Conference Paper A simulation based optical and electrical approach to estima...
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