Blog 0 - Beyond Sunlight: What Really Shapes Solar Performance

When people talk about solar panels, the explanation usually seems simple. More sunlight means more power. Once you start working with real panels however, that simplicity vanishes. Heat builds up, environmental conditions fluctuate, and performance doesn’t always follow predictions of ideal models. 

Welcome to my Senior Project. Over the next several weeks, I’ll be investigating how ambient environmental conditions, specifically temperature, humidity, and irradiance, affect the electrical performance of photovoltaic (PV) panels. While solar energy is often framed as straightforward, the physics behind it is far more complex once panels operate under real-world conditions rather than controlled or idealized settings.

Many existing studies examine how temperature impacts solar panels, but ambient temperature is often coupled with irradiance-induced heating. As irradiance increases, panel temperature rises, making it difficult to determine whether performance changes are due to the surrounding environment or heat directly generated from incoming sunlight. This introduces uncertainty in reported temperature coefficients, limiting our ability to isolate the true effects of ambient conditions.

The central research question guiding my project is: How does ambient temperature affect photovoltaic performance when irradiance is constant, and how do humidity and thermal stress patterns factor into this relationship? Simply, if the amount of incoming light remains fixed, how does the surrounding environment alone influence voltage, current, efficiency, and thermal behavior. Additionally, I am interested in determining how short-term humidity changes and non-uniform thermal stress patterns across the panel surface introduce measurable performance effects.

To explore this, I will be conducting experiments inside a controlled environmental chamber where ambient temperature and relative humidity can be adjusted while irradiance is held constant or varied independently. This research is being carried under the guidance of Dr. Sohail Zaidi at his IntelliScience Institute. Working in this high-end lab allows me to engage directly with experimental design, proper instrumentation, and data analysis in a professional research setting.

By combining electrical measurements with thermal analysis, I aim to isolate the effects of each environmental variable and develop a clear understanding of photovoltaic behavior beyond simple assumptions. By the end of my project, I plan to produce a formal research paper documenting my findings, along with a clear and accessible presentation that connects lab-scale results to real-world renewable energy applications.

So why does this matter to me? As someone interested in physics and engineering, I believe in understanding the limitations of technology, something just as important as celebrating its accomplishments. If solar energy is to provide a meaningful role in future systems, we need to not just understand how it works in theory, but how it performs under the environmental conditions it is actually deployed in.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll provide updates on my experimental process, challenges, and insights as the project develops. I’ll also keep you updated on what goes on in my personal life. Thanks for reading, and I hope you’ll follow my journey as I work to better understand the role ambient conditions play in shaping photovoltaic performance.