Make Your Own Solar Panels

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Make Your Own Solar Panels

Dec 19, 2012

Once you have made up your mind and decided to go for a homemade solar panel, you need to make sure you already have all the supplies you need to build it. To make your own solar panel you need to buy tabbed photovoltaic cells. You should keep in mind that these are not cheap, but the more cells you use, the more power you can obtain from of the panel. Deep picture frames or shadows boxes and a clear plastic cover are also required. You need a solder and soldering iron, as well as Popsicle sticks, insulated and non-insulated wire. Make sure you have a multimeter, an AC inverter and a battery holder. RTV silicone and a schottky diode are necessary, too. Now you can get to work and make your own solar panel.

First of all you need to put the cells facing down onto the plastic pane in order to place the lined side facing the sun. If you want to increase the voltage, you should place the cells aligned on one wire. To increase the current they should be lined connecting to separate parallel wires. As you already know, each solar cell has positive and negative sides. Current will flow across the cells in a series when the negative side is connected to the positive through the tabs on the side. That is why all the tabs should be oriented to the same direction and they should go from the top of the cell to the bottom of the next one.

After you have done that, you should solder the tabs together. To do so, you need to peel back the tab of each cell, and then you should wet the end of the tab with soldering iron. Next you need to be fast and pressure the bottom of the cell onto the tab with a Popsicle stick. You should do that until all the cells are attached, with tabs sticking off. The following step is gluing the cells to the frame by applying silicone to the facing up sides. Make sure there is no silicone between the solar cells and the plastic, because it can be an obstacle to the normal sunlight flow.

Then you need to align the frame onto the sheet and press down so the back of the cells can bond to the frame. You should turn over the panel and remove the plastic cover. To connect the wires you should check that the tabs are actually sticking out of the cells on the sides of the panel. One side has the negative tabs and the other, the positive tabs. Negative tabs should be attached to the lined sides of the cells and the positive tabs should be poking out from the bottom of the cells.

With a solder and soldering iron, you should solder a wire which connects all the negative tabs. Once you have chosen one side of the panel for the cords to stick out of, you can solder the end of an insulated wire to the corner or the center of the non-insulated wire. Then you should glue it towards that side. Enough wire should be left to connect to an AC adapter or a battery holder. You need to repeat the process with the positive tabs and other piece of insulated wire. Finally you can put the plastic cover on top, and two wires should be coming out from the panel.

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Posted: Wednesday December 19, 2012, 7:37 am
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James R.

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male, age 29,
Glendora, CA, USA

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