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Listening to a back number of BBC Inside Science I was stopped in my tracks by the section which described solar panels producing more current when they were played loud /heavy rock music

BBC Inside Science November 7th 2013 at 11.00 mins

Most people usually believe the BBC but i wondered if somebody can confirm whether this is true or not? 

I am a retired musician by profession so am well aware of the therapeutic affects of different kinds of music and sound.  I still work out every day (at 68) and find AC/DC, Metallica etc better than Mozart when working with weights.  In contrast I play 'om' or Tibetan singing bowls when relaxing with less strenuous exercise such as yoga or pilates

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If it were true then it would have to be to do with the vibrational frequency of the music resonating some how with the way the photons are absorbed.....  IF it is true then I wouldn't mind betting that the power required to provide the rock music would be more than the extra power you'd get from the resonances. -  But, I'll confess I do not know, I'm just speculating.

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15 minutes ago, DrP said:

If it were true then it would have to be to do with the vibrational frequency of the music resonating some how with the way the photons are absorbed.....  IF it is true then I wouldn't mind betting that the power required to provide the rock music would be more than the extra power you'd get from the resonances. -  But, I'll confess I do not know, I'm just speculating.

It could be this. Silicon is an indirect-bandgap material. To absorb a photon it needs to have enough energy, but there must also be a phonon involved (i.e. vibration) to conserve momentum. So it's possible that acoustically-driven vibrations allow for more photon absorptions for a given photon flux.

 

edit: but if it's this

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029424-600-pop-music-makes-solar-cells-produce-more-electricity/

then it's a matter of acoustically-driven stress creating an electric field, which improves conversion efficiency in zinc oxide

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1 hour ago, swansont said:

It could be this. Silicon is an indirect-bandgap material. To absorb a photon it needs to have enough energy, but there must also be a phonon involved (i.e. vibration) to conserve momentum. So it's possible that acoustically-driven vibrations allow for more photon absorptions for a given photon flux.

 

edit: but if it's this

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029424-600-pop-music-makes-solar-cells-produce-more-electricity/

then it's a matter of acoustically-driven stress creating an electric field, which improves conversion efficiency in zinc oxide

 

Could be a bit of both even?   That article suggests a 50% increase!  That seems quite a lot, so something must be happening.

 

 

Edited by DrP
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26 minutes ago, DrP said:

Could be a bit of both even?   That article suggests a 50% increase!  That seems quite a lot, so something must be happening.

I don't know if other materials have the same response to stress as ZnO, or are indirect bandgap. 

It's a 50% increase of a low efficiency (some commercial panels are >20% efficient). There's no guarantee that improvement would hold for a higher-efficiency material that had the same property.

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