Solar panel door

1 Posts
Jan 25, 2000 10:02 am
Solar panel door

Is there such a thing as a solar panel door?  Or can a solar panel be installed on a door?  Our front door gets full sun and gets very hot!!! We would like to take advantage of this.

Please email back.  Thank you.


 
65 Posts
Jan 25, 2000 12:13 pm
Re: Solar panel door

You may have an interesting invention here!

I've never heard of a solar panel door.  One problem with placing a solar panel on a purely vertical surface (like a door) is that it will not optimially be collecting energy from the sun.  Since panels aren't all that cheap, most people like to try to get every milli-Watt*Hour they can out of their panel.

You generally want to have the panel angled at the same degree as your latitude.  And even better, since the sun is lower in the winter and higher in the summer you want to again adjust its angle so that it is optimized to receive the sunlight.

If you just wanted to mount a panel on the door, there's other concerns you'd want to take into account, such as most panels aren't made to take the day in and out impact of shutting and closing of a door and how to run the wires so that the will not break after hundreds of openings and closing of the door.

Good luck!


AltE
"Making Renewable Do-able" (tm)
http://www.altEstore.com/
 
1 Posts
May 19, 2001 05:33 pm
Re: Solar panel door

If you find out if you can get solar panel for your front door, I sure would be interested as, the front of our house gets full sun also. What a great idea. Maybe they would have a single panel that we hook up in front of the door. Thanks Mrs.Gunderson
 
16 Posts
Jan 3, 2005 08:50 am
Re: Solar panel door

panel on front door sounds good , like you were told you will not get 100% out of them and it will be tricky to wire it but theres no reason not to try ...you could instill it on a slight angle and allow enough wire to bend on hinge side..i can picture it and ive instilled alott of doors .please tells us how your doing on this,im a new member to this sight.
 
462 Posts
Feb 14, 2005 12:04 pm
Re: Solar panel door

Susi, if you have a storm door with a full glass panel, then open your inside door and let the sun shine in for free heat and light. So you are basically using passive solar.
 
5 Posts
Feb 23, 2009 09:45 am
Re: Solar panel door

You might want to check into "passive solar heating". If you glaze the outside of the door and air enters low and exits out the top, you could circulate the heat.  Come summer time you might want to close off the system.  You would also want a damper to close off the system in the eveings when there was no sun. There are even examples of tiny solar powered heaters that would circulate the air.  These are designed to stuck on top of car windows to circulate the air.  They might even shut down enough to "close things off " in the evenings.
 

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