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Registered Member #96
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4062
Hi all. Upon dismantling my hacked (glass cut down and reattached) ICP solar panel to find out why it broke..
Turns out that there was a microscopic break in the insulation where it went into the panel. This had let water in and corroded right through the +V lead.
Not a big problem as there were two soldered joints before the lead got to the actual panel. Reconnected those, looks fine now. About 1.8V indoors under fluorescent lighting, a couple of mA.
Sooo... has anyone managed to hack one of these to show current into load? I am aware there are panels with internal MTTP (maximum power transfer point) circuitry that compensates for high/low voltage and adjusts current accordingly to maximise power into load ie shaded panel.. I have calculated that the panel had 7 ohms internal Thevenin resistance at its rated current, so a 0.1 ohm 10W ought to be more than adequate for a current meter etc as it has nice robust leads. For extra bonus points make it transmit its readings via 433MHz once every five minutes with load current and panel voltage.
This might be a good application for my otherwise useless LiFePO4 18650 cells which have great capacity but lousy internal resistance- stack them on the panel back with heat transfer pads then a good casing to ruggedise the assembly, and an automatic switch to control the pack and shunt energy into the load if the battery is full. As these cells can tolerate 140C unlike regular Li-Ion 85C without damage this would work well.
Another observation, some phosphors are IR transparent (ie ZnS:Cu), fluoresce green and yellow when exposed to blue and UV light, but this stops when also exposed to infrared + visible. So painting thin lines of phosphor with IR filter on top on the interconnects only should boost efficiency a bit, maybe by 4% on a hot day. Highlighter ink also might work but orange and pink seems to degrade the least when heated.
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