Topic summary
Pyranometers
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Pyranometer.
Thermopile pyranometers
A thermopile pyranometer (also called thermo-electric pyranometer) is a sensor based on thermopiles designed to measure the broad band of the solar radiation flux density from a 180° field of view angle. A thermopile pyranometer thus usually measures from 300 to 2800 nm with a largely flat spectral sensitivity (see the spectral response graph) The first generation of thermopile pyranometers had the active part of the sensor equally divided in black and white sectors. Irradiation was calculated from the differential measure between the temperature of the black sectors, exposed to the sun, and the temperature of the white sectors, sectors not exposed to the sun or better said in the shades.