Update solar water maker pleasant beach test system 6-26 | solar water maker

In the article Pleasant Beach Solar water generator produced 1.7 times Goal for Summer June-3-2016  I mentioned that we were going to add some additional power and see how it affected production.  At the time we were hoping for an increase of 20% compared to baseline power.     Unfortunately as soon as I added the power we went through a period of cloudy weather so 6/26/2016 was the first fully sunny day after the change.

On 6/26/2016 the system produced  203% of our original target which represents 16.6% increase.  This didn’t quite reach our original estimate of 20% but it is close enough to confirm the hypothesis  that increasing airflow efficiency through the cooling side of the condenser will yield a net positive benefit.   Changes in solar intensity from 6/3 to 6/26 will account for some of the change but I didn’t have sufficient room at the test site for single variable change testing.  On several other days it produced more than it did on 6/3 but the largest production so far was on 6/26.

During this test period I found that with the current set of fans and blowers and the extra power the condenser was able to remove heat so fast that it prevented the main chamber for the solar collector from reaching an optimal temperature.  We modified the software to detect and compensate for this effect just in case one of our customers add an additional PV panel on their units in the field.

We need to revert the test unit back to it’s default state for a trade show trip to Texas but will let it run in this mode for a few more days and then remove the larger panel.

As a reminder we are currently accepting orders for the model A2WH-83S which is built on the same plan as the pleasant beach test model.

Thanks Joe Ellsworth