re: a stupid question SOLAR.KnowledgePublications.com

re: a stupid question
4 feb 2004
>>> the air-plastic interface would have a fresnel loss of about 4%, with
>>> a lot less for polyethylene-water and polyethylene-glass interfaces,
>>> with some sort of matching goo. you might look up the refractive indices
>>> and work this out.
>
>glass is 1.526. water is 1.33... 

and low-density polyethylene is 1.51, so we have about 0.96 transmission
into the poly, 1-((1.51-1.33)/(1.51+1.33)^2 = 0.996 from poly to water and
water to poly, and almost nothing from poly to glass (compared to 0.96 with
panels in air?), so it looks like the net penalty is less than 1%.

nick