{"id":946,"date":"2010-08-09T15:54:39","date_gmt":"2010-08-09T23:54:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/?p=946"},"modified":"2012-01-17T14:41:05","modified_gmt":"2012-01-17T22:41:05","slug":"solar-panels-ahoy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/?p=946","title":{"rendered":"Solar Panels Ahoy!"},"content":{"rendered":"

A little while ago I found a good deal on a pile of solar photovoltaic cells on ebay, so I decided to make myself a solar panel. After getting some tabbing wire, a chunk of plywood, and a chunk of plexiglas, I went ahead with assembling the panel.<\/p>\n

To summarize, you connect a bunch of cells together front to back to form strings. Like in this next picture, where there is a string of four cells face down, and some other cells around it, showing the tabbing wire soldered to the front.<\/p>\n

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After connecting four rows of nine, then connecting those rows together, I end up with the whole setup, which I glued to the plywood, placed the plexiglas sheet over, and sealed it with silicone. This is the final product sitting on my roof.<\/p>\n

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So now I have a completed panel. However, I’m not sure that it’s producing power at it’s peak capability. I’m thinking that perhaps the plexiglas is blocking UV light which would reduce the amount of power generated by the panel. This is something I’ll have to play with, but for now it’s on my roof, and charges a deep cycle battery that I run one of my ham radios on, as well as some desk lights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A little while ago I found a good deal on a pile of solar photovoltaic cells on ebay, so I decided to make myself a solar panel. After getting some tabbing wire, a chunk of plywood, and a chunk of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ham-radio","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=946"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":949,"href":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946\/revisions\/949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalnigel.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}