How do I measure solar irradiation?
Question:
Answer:
That's easy! You measure it with a tape-measure and a stopwatch! Next question.
Temperature is measured in the normal way (thermometer).
Radiation is difficult. If you dont have money to buy a meter, you would need to do something indirectly. Something like measure the amount of water that evaporates from a glass overnight, then measure the water that evaporates under your solar collector ... or such. Be creative.
If you're making a solar collector then you can use it directly to measure the amount of solar irradiation. Measure the amount of voltage produced by your solar cells (or heat if it's one of those old reflective pipe heater things) and then callibrate it to the known response of the solar cell (the manufacturer will have this information if you don't know).
If you've got a suntracker installed (easy to do a few motors with a closed loop control) then it will be pointing directly at the sun and you'll receive the most amount of power. Otherwise you'll have to correct for the angle that the sun makes with respect to the solar cell (this can be calculated based on the time, time zone, latitude, longitude and season). However, if you're after the irradiation with respect to the Earths surface it will be the other way around (i.e. the correction will be needed for the suntracked collector).
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