I’d like to share some information on designing the new 3D printed solar-powered reflective thermal blinds.
First I’d like to mention that these blinds are designed to be a part of 1x1x1 meter cube - fully autonomous aeroponics system. The mini greenhouse has all four walls covered with these blinds, and on the outer side, it’s covered with solar cells, while the inside is just light reflective material.
The inside of these blinds is 3D printed mesh with 1mm spaces. The inspiration for this comes from Nature Scientific Reports article: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep24871
I’ll add more details later if there’s interest in design or people would like to discuss and contribute to this design.
Above is the picture of the temporary stand to test solar cells at different angles to have an idea how much electric power we can produce. Each cell is 156x26mm in size and delivers 0.5 volts. The cells are wired in series and currently generating about 6.7V (as expected). There’s a power meter mounted on a side, and it shows voltage, but 0.0W and 0.0A. To understand it, we need to investigate this further.
Based on the reading from Rapitest DM10 multimeter we can generate about 3.2A, so there seems to be 21.44W of electrical energy produced by this stand or 21.44/12 = 1.78W per cell.
Of course, the amount of energy will vary by time of the year and time of the day, but as a starting point, it’s an interesting indicator.
Next steps could be to mount a Raspberry Pi and have real-time monitoring perhaps with the auto-adjustable angle of the blinds.
