Novel approach at a see-through solar panel

OutsourcedGuru

Once I get my greenhouse constructed I plan to build/install see-through solar panels along the south wall.

There are a variety of people on Youtube who are confused. They keep building CD-based solar panels, putting them on a voltmeter and asserting a success in generating power. The only problem I see is that it's actually the glass-based diodes they use which are creating the electricity involved.

You could solder or spot-weld together a line of diodes, shine light on them and generate power. In my own design I plan to begin with standard chicken wire, cut a small bit away from that wire and then spot-weld a diode in its place, repeating throughout the mesh. If I put vertically-oriented diodes throughout the mesh, this should yield increasing voltage with height and increasing current with width. The mesh arrangement should be fault-tolerant to shading situations. Each "panel" (window) then would be ganged together with its neighbors using MC-4 connectors and this input would go into an MPPT charger. The chicken wire assembly would be hung from the inside of a typical glass window frame.

This should allow plenty of light to pass through the panels for the sake of the greenhouse yet generate sufficient power for activities inside. The price for, say, 1000pcs of zener diodes is likely to be less than US$30. A roll of chicken wire at 3'x50' is less than $40. You can get ten pairs of MC-4 connectors for about $10. You can get 30' each of red/black PV wire for $40 for a total BOM of perhaps $120 plus labor.

How much power will it produce? Honestly, I haven't reached that point in the project. A 3.3V glass-based diode can generate this same amount when you shine light on it as seen in the video from the second link I provided. Just doing some density numbers here, a 6'x3' mesh of these diodes on chicken wire should have 8 x 4 diodes per square foot or 24 diodes up/down by 24 diodes across. The voltage component per panel should be approximately 80V with an unknown current.

Wildly guessing here, if the current of each zener diode in direct sunlight is 100mA then each panel would produce 192W. Four panels (windows) then would produce 768W. This is completely theoretical, of course. Essentially, solar panel cells are diodes and diodes are solar panel cells.

I intend to do some measurements with zener diodes of different specifications and then make a determination of whether this would be feasible. Note that I could marry together these see-through panels with standard solar panels on the roof of the greenhouse as well. (Note that the greenhouse design looks more like an earthship than a typical glass greenhouse you're familiar with.)