100W Solar panel || DIY or Buy

for one hour I've had those monocrystalline solar cells laying around and by adding a bit of flux to them we can solder a so-called solar tapping wire to its front and backside and measure a voltage potential between both sides now of course the low voltage of one cell is not sufficient to power anything useful that is why commercial solar panels like this 100 watt one puts a lot of those cells 36 to be specific in serious in order to create a voltage of nineteen point three five volts a short-circuit current of five point five three amps and a maximum power of 100 watts the only problem with such commercial solar panels is that they're not very cheap but on the other hands you can get 40 individual solar cells for half the price of the commercial panel and simply combine 36 of them to get a born-on at watt panel as well sound this episode of DIY or buy let's find out what goes into creating a solar panel by making a DIY version and in the end let's evaluate which version was cheaper let's get started this video is sponsored by jlc PCB one fact about them jlc PCB boards are widely used in the industrial aerospace and medical fields as well as DIY projects upload your OPA files to order high quality PCBs for low prices to start off I got myself aluminum you channels with those dimensions out of them I wanted to create the frame of the solar panel so I got myself a miter saw set its angle to 45 degrees and created to 131 centimeter pieces and to 61 centimeter long pieces from the U channels this task was certainly a bit exhausting but after half an hour and a bit of rust treatment for the sharp edges I cut my four frame pieces next I connected two pieces one after the other to form the four edges of the frame and used to bracket on them to mark the necessary mounting holes after then drilling the holes will be six point five millimeter drill bits I formed the frame by utilizing the brackets and five screws washers and self-locking nuts once that was done I added paper towels to my work surface because it was about to get messy due to the molarity sieve that I used but before that I properly cleaned the aluminum frame and brought in a three millimeter thick piece of clear plexiglass with dimensions of 138 by 60 centimeters and after removing its protective film on one sides it was time to utilize the mirror adhesive by adding a thick line of its all around the frame I made sure to use a lot of the adhesive since the seal has to be waterproof later on but anyway as soon as that was done I carefully pressed the plexiglass in its frame which was a bit messy at first but after doing some cleanup with additional adhesive it did not look that terrible and while the adhesive was drying it was time to prepare the 36 solar cells for that I grabbed my soldering iron set to 350 degrees Celsius and followed the now stated rules for the soldering technique it flux to the white lines on the front side of the cell connect the solar tapping wire to the white lines by soldering it to them make sure to keep the wire straight and flat move the surface leave a length of about a Nava solar cell of the tapping wire before cutting it repeat this process 36 times and try to not lose your mind while doing so and just like that you can get four piles with nine wired up solar cells each which we will need for the frame whose adhesive should be dry by now that means I removed the second protective film of the Plexiglas and started placing these solar cells onto its the first row work requires nine cells of the wires facing to the left the following rows though will always need the virus facing the opposite direction then the row before this way we can later connect all the cells in a snake formation to create a long serious connection and according to the scheme I placed the remaining cells onto the Plexiglas and find adjusted their position to get a similar distance between all the cells the next step was once again tedious by turning the backside pads of the cells and soldering the overlapping front side wires to them this represents the serious connections in the rows which means all and all I had to do 34 of those but nevertheless once that was done we should be able to measure a higher voltage between the front and back cell of each row which was in fact true that means we can move on by adding solar tapping wire route to the remaining cells and utilizing thicker bus while route to create the serious connections in between the rows thankfully though there were only three of them and after adding a longer bus wire to the middle point of the cells and double checking that all voltages at the main terminals were presents it was time to seal the deal for that I got myself this epoxy resin but before trying this method on the bigger solar panel I created myself a small foam plastic container placed a single solar cell inside it and filled it up with the resin after waiting for day D resin hardens and the end results look pretty decent these solar cells it's also not crack due to the pressure which was important and also still worked before any problems that means it was time for me to mix up a bigger batch of the resin and slowly cobble all the 36 solar cells with its it took me a total of around three kilograms of the resin but in the end all solar cells were completely covered in it and as soon as the resin was hard I added to bypass diodes between the three terminals just like the commercial panel deserts if you're interested in what the function of those diodes is then definitely have a look at my basics video about solar panels and charge controllers anyway after I cleaned up the panel I drill two holes in the side of its push to six square millimeter wires through its and solder those to the positive and negative terminal of the DIY panel after then covering the terminals with duct tape I lifted up the old commercial solar panel on my brush tool to holds through its frame as well positioned the DIY panel on the roof and pushed it solar wires into the commercial bond and also afterwards through my roof PVC pipe after then reattaching the commercial solar panel to the roof would be two men and mounting the DIY panel needs edges it was finally time to connect the DIY panel to the solar charge controller which revealed a power harvest of 59 watts that is the exact amount of power that the commercial panel also delivered a few seconds later that basically means that my DIY panel according to the power outputs was a success and thus by connecting the two panels to the charge controller we can get a power output of above 100 watts easily but if we add the costs of all the components we would get a price of approximately 140 euros for 100 watt one had a been counting the time it takes two credits also I highly doubt that my design will survive the elements as long as the commercial bond and probably also features worse heat transfer characteristics the only meaningful use for such a DIY panel would be when you have to create an oddly shaped solar panel but for everything else I would recommend the buy version which is also the winner of this episode if you enjoyed this video then don't forget to Like share and subscribe stay creative and I will see you next time

Channel: GreatScott!

Views: 2,468,620

Keywords: diy, or, buy, solar, panel, tutorial, how, to, make, project, 100W, cell, wire, tapping, bus, wiring, series, parallel, diode, blocking, bypass, commercial, compare, comparison, price, performance, resin, epoxy, aluminium, aluminum, U-channel, U channel, plexiglass, acrylic, glass, adhesive, mirror, test, mount, mounting, frame, charge, controller, greatscott, greatscott!, electronics, electronic

Id: 6_3gK83bePQ

Length: 9min 6sec (546 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 22 2018