Looks like this morning that the futures are rolling over a little bit as expected. Still early, so we'll see what develops. Next turn date is monday, Jan 4th, 2010 and is a low. Very subdued markets over the holidays, enough to put you to sleep. On to other things this morning.
Below is a picture I took of the beginning of my solar project.
These are just some of the components that go into building a do-it-yourself solar panel. What you see here is a 2'x4' piece of 5/8" plywood, some pegboard, 3 of the total of 36 polychrystalline solar cells that will be joined in series to make the complete solar panel, tabbing wire, a solder flux pen, gloves for handling the very fragile solar cells, and 4 small diodes which act like check valves so that the power generated from the cells can only go in one direction.
The cells, diodes, tabbing wire and flux pen all came in the fed-ex box you see in the picture. This stuff came in a package kit I bought on ebay. The cells are 3" x 6" and are very fragile, sort of like a potatoe chip. The general idea here is to connect 36 of these cells in series to get an output from the panel of about 18 volts, since each cell should put out .5 volts under direct sunlight. Anyway, we'll delve deeper into the project in future blogs. Right now I have the panel box built and painted and am about to begin soldering the cells together. Steady as she goes, matey!
2 comments:
Great fun! It brings back fond memories of camping in a VW bus off grid in the Sierras of CACA-land with two panels, two marine batteries, two dogs, one espresso maker, and one wife....
If you were to leave it unattended in the sun and wired into a 12 volt deep cycle battery (or whatever is used for that type of work these days) you might need a voltage regulator. Then you need an inverter if you want to run 110v appliances out of the battery pool. For camping in Maine you will need a "skeeter killer" at night...:))
duexous...agree with the second paragraph ...spot on. But the first paragraph needs some fixin...I'd go with one dog, two espresso makers and two wifes (or more!)..:)
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