how do solar panels work for camping purposes?
366441
Typically a solar panel would be used to charge a 12 volt battery in circumstances where 110volt is not available.  12 volt power can be used for a lot of different things.
711472
Solar energy is used for two types of devices: thermal, and photovoltaic.  For your water heater, you are talking thermal.  Put tubing into a black box with a clear cover, put the box in sunlight, and you have a solar water heater -- details vary, but they don't matter much.  Photovoltaic use silicon cells (usually called solar cells, or solar panels) to generate electricity.  Solar-cell powered garden lights, where the light is a light-emitting diode, are becoming popular and inexpensive.  The solar cells charge a nickel-cadmium battery during the day, and the battery powers the lamp at night.
21613
Each solar panel produces 60w of power. You'd have to look at your bill and see how many kwh you use and divide that by 60w/hr. By the way, prices have gone down. Solar panels cost about $300 now. And if you get enough and produce more power than you use, you can sell that to some electric companies.\n\nAs far as oil, do that for the whole world and see, remember though, the solar energy is always there, going to waste if we don't use it we lose it.
257927
Photons from the light of the sun strike atoms in a solar cell and cause electrons to move.  This electricity coming out of the cell (assuming a completed circuit) goes to a storage battery and/or an inverter which converts the DC (what batteries and solar cells generate) to AC (which household appliances use).
34286
depends on the climate. Certain weather conditions such as cloudy days, rain and light and dark hours affect how effective the photoelectric cell collectors are. Usually such collectors are built in places with very low probability of adverse weather and very high number of intense sunny days. Countries such as Norway may not be able to harness such energy as they have very little sun light days and countries in the equator fare better in utilizing such technologies.
662168
My dear asker\nThe solar energy costs only the big amount of initial investment. And then the maintenance cost is quite low. The combination of both costs is lower than that used with the conventional fuel. \nWhat you need is first you construct the solar structure to collect the sun's energy, store it and distribute it to the place of use. After this initial investment, what you need is only to keep it in good conditions. Unlike using the conventional fuels, you don't need to buy more fuel to run your machhine.\nI want to install the new type of solar collector if I can later since it saves money long time.
311950
There are 2 kind of Solar Panelz: Solar hot water panel and solar photovoltaic panels. The latter is harder to make, and is what akshaytruss is talking about. It is a solar panel that converts sunlight into electricity, while Solar Hot Water Panel converts sunlight into heat, in the form of hot water.\n\nHere is a link to create some "simple" photovoltaic solar panels. Don't expect them to be as good as factory made though. Factory made panels uses materials and processing that might be way too inconvinient to make at home\nhttp://www.thesolarplan.com/articles/your-own-solar-panel-collector.html\n\nOtherwise if you meant the solar water heater, that's easy to make, just a bit of piping and pumping and tanking
9993
The major applications of solar thermal energy at present are heating swimming pools, heating water for domestic use, and space heating of buildings. For these purposes, the general practice is to use flat-plate solar energy or evacuated tube collectors with a fixed orientation (position).\n\nThe highest efficiency with a fixed flat-plate collector or evacuated tube collector is obtained if it faces toward the equator and slopes at an angle to the horizon equal to the latitude plus about 10 degrees. Solar collectors fall into two general categories: nonconcentrating and concentrating.\n\nIn the nonconcentrating type, the collector area (i.e. the area that intercepts the solar radiation) is the same as the absorber area (i.e., the area absorbing the radiation).
820704
Good Idea..but probably expensive to hook up the equipment to some sort of generator....gotta keep the place looking clean.\n\ninresponse to answerman....(below)\nIt could be possible to keep a battery bank charged and use an inverter to run a small a/c.\nSort of like a solar setup or windmill.
708373
Take an old cardboard box and line it with aluminum foil. then cover the flaps of the box with foil as well. take this outside in the sun and use the flaps to shine all the rays on a biscut or cookie dogh. it will cook it, it may take a while but it is a solar cooker.\nLet me know how it works out.
59686
There are several ways to do this:\n1. thermocouples\n2. thermionics\n3. thermophotovoltaics\netc\n4. thermal diodes
674011
The sunlight dislodges electrons from the material making up the solar panels (mostly silicon).  These electrons create an electric potential, hence current can be created.  Panels are installed where there is direct sunlight and pointed toward the average position of the sun (local south, at some angle above the horizon) or on a device which follows the course of the sun.  The panels create direct current, so can be thought of as batteries, but they do not store electricity.  The current can be used to 1)power a device, 2)recharge a battery, or 3)create alternating current by means of an inverter.
369509
1.) Solar heat collectors that store sun energy in oil or water. Walls that are a foot thick will heat up during the day and release the heat into the house at night.  \n2.) Burn renewable fuels like alcohol/ wood/ charcoal/ biogas/ natural fat candles\n3.) Compost/fermentation - Decomposing organic material generates heat, it was used to heat greenhouses years ago. The irish used to make poteen by fermenting potatoes, sugar and water. The pot filled with the mash gave off heat so they would put the pots in their beds to warm them up.  \n4.) Body warmth - fill your home up with animals or friends (humans generate about 60 watts depending on size)\n5.) Reversible exothermic (give off heat) chemical reactions - certain salts and water mixed together generate a lot of heat. The japanese are developing self heating cans using this concept. \n6.) Friction rub the house walls to warm them up.\n7.) Drop heavy objects from a height and when they hit the floor the kinetic energy turnms into thermal energy\n8.) If you are not living n the house fill the house up with radioctive material like plutonium that will make the house hot.
458802
Well, if you can't even spell "solar" I doubt you would have the skills to mount and solder more than 2,000 4"x4" solar cells together, add blocking diodes, and wire the whole thing up in a weatherproof frame without breaking about half of the delicate little buggers.  If you need that much power, you're not going to save much of anything by trying to build your own.  Buy some ready made.
607273
Honestly, it is because solar panels alone are too unreliable (cloudy days, etc.) and WAY too expensive to use and maintain. It would not be economically feasible.
105865
Solar energy is available in a large quantity, in fact much larger than all other safe energy sources put together. Energy obtained from coal, petroleum, other carbon based products and that obtained from nuclear fusion/fission is not safe for the enviornment.\nSo Solar energy has two major advantages -\n1. Abundant, hence making it cheap.\n2. Environmental friendly.
527293
You aren't going to get much sun light at night for your solar panel. There are MANY CHEAP nicad battery powered yard lights on the market that use a small solar panel to charge the battery in the day time. They have IR sensors that turn the light on at dusk and off when the sun comes back up. I doubt if you can build one cheaper than you can buy one, if only as a hobby, Edmond's Scientific and Radio Shack sell kits for that use.