Solar/Charging

• How efficient are they?

  • Seems to be about 30%
• MPPT
  • Yes
• Cell balancing (if more than 1S)
  • Yes
• Are they any issues we can run into with putting these in space?
• How many panels do we need??
  • Seeing commercial designs go up to 8 inputs
    • With 4 MPPT converters
• GaAs cells around 25-30% efficient
  • Triple junction solar cells
• Silicon cells around 16% efficient
• Getting assembled panels is stupid expensive
  • A few thousand dollars
  • https://www.endurosat.com/cubesat-store/cubesat-solar-panels/1u-solar-panel-x-y/
  • https://nanoavionics.com/cubesat-components/cubesat-gaas-solar-panel/
  • https://www.cubesatshop.com/product/single-cubesat-solar-panels/
  • Can pay more to get integrated sun sensors, gyros and magnetorquers, built onto the back
  • Just seems like a standard PCB with cells on the front and hardware on the back
• Getting cells and assembling it ourselves seems more affordable
  • Brown said their design ran them $250 in cells (2.50-4 bucks per cell)
• Manufacturers
  • Spectrolabs
    • Brown
    • https://www.spectrolab.com/photovoltaics.html
  • TrisolX
    • Ambasat and Brown
    • Shop link broken
    • https://trisolx.com/contact.html
  • Azurspace
    • [email protected]
  • Emcore
    • [email protected]
  • SolArero
    • [email protected]
  • https://www.digikey.ca/en/products/detail/anysolar-ltd/KXOB25-14X1F-TR/9990479
    • Cells that the $1000 cubesat guy uses
      • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqz5tTbY_hI&ab_channel=RGSATRGSAT
• Might be worth asking midsun what kinda cells they use and if they have any old ones we can buy/steal for testing