SuperCapacitors (500F x 6) and Solar Panel (15W)

good morning all I'm going to play with this super capacitor array today so I thought the first thing I do is start scraping a little bit of this coating off of the board to expose the copper and then I'm going to solder a blue LED on there so I've done the first one let's do the second one just go get the screwdriver flat to the board so that it exposes a copper there that are they and then on the other side I'm not actually on the capacitor contacts because the capacitor connection is there that then goes through a MOSFET to this arm of all these resistors so it's only if I short out that to that that there could be an issue I don't really know whether these are going to be very well charged I suppose I could put a DVM across them actually let's do that right DC volts let's check one of these capacitors let's check this one and the voltage is OH quite low 388 millivolts let's go across two of them 754 millivolts let's go across all of them plus two - and we've got almost exactly two volts for the whole array well that should take 16 point two volts maximum across those six capacitors alright let's carry on scraping the copper it's easier to do it this way around just want to expose a little copper square there on each of these six protection circuits so that I can put my little blue LED on there cuz I like to see when these protection circuits switch on because there's no indication without these LEDs and it's something I think is important to see well just finish that off right that's a bit a bit of solder on these exposed copper areas which is where I'm going to tack on my LEDs and then these are quite close together so I don't need to bend the legs on the blue LEDs just cut them short and sort of them onto these little solder pads so how's this going to work I think the flat of the LED which is on the right here will go to negative on the capacitor because when that MOSFET turns on then this these resistors will be just directly across the capacitor so we want positive on the + and the flat cathode anode on the + and the flat which is cathode on the - so that's sort of those on now right there are my six blue LEDs soldered across these resistors so they should light up and I can see that from the top they should lights up whenever one of these protection circuits kicks in now I'm sort of working out how to fix a socket on here for the solar panel I've got a spade terminal here which can go on the negative a big thick piece of wire on there and then I think what I'll do is I'll put a fuse I think there's a 10 amp inline fuse in here or there's something in there these are a bit thin and weedy but to be honest I'm not sure I'm not really that bothered whether this wire blows or the fuse blows I just want something thin to blow if there's a dead short so I should better run that down to the far end and attach it to the positive somewhere let's see how we go with that right so I've got a 2.1 millimeter connector negative through to the negative connection on the PCB positive going through one of these fuses to the positive connection I just scraped a bit of the coating away there and sort of that on so now I can plug my solar panel in and charge this thing up then problem is the sun's gone in so that might take longer than it would have done earlier on right here's my setup there's the solar panel I'm pretty sure it's 15 watts but I'll check that in a moment so that's plugged into the super capacitor PCB via the 2.1 millimeter socket and I've got a DVM on that PCB showing the voltage and it's three point two volts and climbing so I'm going to wait till that gets up to about well sixteen point two or a bit beyond and then those LEDs should start coming on right this is the label on the back of the panel and it's a shenzhen a polite high tech limited PM power max 15 watts VMP looks like 11.5 but it's going to be 17.5 i MP that looks like naught point 2 amps but it's going to be a lot more than that what would that be right looking at that more closely that looks like 0.8 amps which I guess sounds about right alright there's a little bit of hazy sunshine now and voltage is up to 5 volts so there's a little way to go yet I'll just have to wait all right so let's sum that's up at six point three volts now let's work out how much power will be dissipated in these resistors power is V squared over R so when these are at full voltage and the protection circuits come on that'll be 2 point 7 volts so it'll be 2 point seven times two point seven is that divided by the resistance so that's four 10 ohm resistors in parallel that's two point five ohms two point five equals all right yeah I think that's right so it's 2.9 watts per set of four resistors so it's that time X is the total current is 17 and a half watts and since that solar panel is only 15 watts and that's under maximum Sun conditions then these resistors should be able to burn off that whole 15 watts and protect the super capacitor board from going over voltage right before the voltage on this thing gets too high I want to solder on my buck boost converter I've scraped a couple of positions so I'm going to solder that on but I want to put a fuse holder in here so I've got this one with the 10 amp fuse I'll replace the red wire with that and solder it on right there we are that's the buck boost connected with a fuse the fault light is on because the voltage on here is lower than the battery protect circuit on here I can probably just that by turning this yeah there we go so the red light has gone off the blue light has come on indicating that the output is on and my little light bulb is on I'll probably put a more powerful light bulb on there anyway let's turn that fault light back down so that that doesn't come on to the bout I don't know 12 volts or something like that right well this thing's slowed down to an absolute crawl now it's really not climbing out very quickly at all because it's actually quite gloomy now let's have a look at the sky yeah usual story heavily overcast nothing doing no Sun on the horizon no nothing doing this is gonna take ages to write well since the clouds aren't behaving themselves let's do this with a power supply I've got one of the min-hee buck boosts to 18 volts 0.75 amps I could raise that up a bit actually let's take that up to one amp yeah I like that to be absolutely bang-on one amp right 18 volts one amp so let's switch that on and that 12.8 and climbing is it yes it's still climbing okay so when we get up to about 16 we should start seeing these LEDs come on so let's leave that pumping at 1 amp that solar panel was rated at 0.8 amps so even with full Sun it wouldn't have been this quick so this is better I'll sit and watch this for a bit of course I'm not reading the exact voltage on the super capacitors here because I've put this Schottky diode in there but that's only going to be about 0.3 of a volt drop probably so the super capacitors are probably at about thirteen point two now but I've got these blue indicators here anyway so I'll know when this thing gets up to full voltage right this lights come on on the buck boost here because it's gone over the threshold that I'd set this thing to so let's turn that a couple of turns so that we don't have any problems with that coming on otherwise it just slows down the charging 14.8 right now I might wind the current down on this actually because the solar panel I calculated wouldn't overwhelm these protection circuits so I probably should stick to that let's go to current that's one amp let's take that down to eight hundred milliamps which was what the solar panel can kick out so that's now constant current the yellow light at eight hundred milliamps voltage is fifteen point three I've just on the red insulation tape trick on the display works really well doesn't it that's totally visible now right we're coming up to sixteen point two not expecting these protection circuits to kick in until this is about sixteen point four maybe sixteen point five oh there they go oh that's quite accurate isn't it although that one is probably higher than all the others so that one's come on will that take that capacitor down in voltage sufficiently to turn this circuit off and some other circuits on let's find out right we've got three protection circuits kicked in now sixteen point four that might not go up now it's actually going down because there's enough wattage being consumed in these resistors that the voltage is now stable this lamps also on on the back end actually I could turn that off and it's turn that clockwise turn that off for protection circuits are now on will the other two come on presumably they will because as these consume energy from the capacitors that the lights are on on they the voltage on them should go down if this is holding about steady then these two should the voltages should still be coming up so we should get them all on in due course that is trickling down just ever so slightly but then we have got a common how many watts these were each of that ones now had enough and that ones backed off would like to see these two come on and then I'll be happy that all the protection circuits are operating so I've not seen that second one come on yet which is a bit of a concern let's just check the voltages on there so that first capacitor is at 2.8 which is a tad high this one though well the two added together are at 5.2 so I don't think that second one has actually hit 2.7 yet because 22.7 s would be 5.4 Dannette so that one seems low but it seems very low I'm hoping that one wasn't sat there considerably negative while this thing was shipped but I'll sit here and just wait for that second one to come on it should come on eventually because it is going to be charging up 5.2 minus 2.9 whatever that is yeah the second one is quite low 2.3 seven but it is coming up yes that is coming up so I think it will get to two point seven two point eight eventually and that one should light its little protection LED the others those three they're lighting their LEDs now yeah that one must have been substantially negative or it has an enormous capacity a much bigger capacity than the others something like that I don't quite know why it's so low yeah so there's the first ones protection circuit on but still not seen the second really want to see that before I just let this thing sit and protect itself yeah I'm surprised they don't fit some LEDs to these boards as standard because they're really essential you need to see this thing protecting itself and they don't consume any power other than when it's a personal no other than when the resistors are consuming power so they don't really change the circuit in any way yeah they could just put little tiny PCB mounting LEDs on and then you can see like number five there when the protection circuits kick in is really odd that they don't do that right well the protection circuit for number two has finally come on it's not on at the moment it's gone back off and I measured the voltage across it and it is very high I think the tolerance on that if a voltage detector is a little 3 pin SOT 23 device there must be a bit higher on that one which is a bit alarming because it term didn't come on till about two point eight five and then it went off at about two point seven four it should go off at two point seven the one on the far right actually went off at two point six something so there must be quite a wide tolerance on these things and certainly that number two which has now come on I should measure it really was really way over two point seven volts so I'm trying get the DVM in and the light the light's gone off yeah 2.74 and that's creeping back up because that protection circuit is off yeah that one is a bit high and I'm just wondering if that capacitor is not hasn't fared very well and is a bit damaged which is why it took so much longer for that one to initially turn its protection circuit on than all the others I mean all the others had done theirs well at least ten times each before that second one actually switched on so don't know quite what's going on there but maybe because that voltage detector is set so high there is a bit of a problem I don't really know anyway I've seen all of these turn their protection circuits on now so they are all working so I can turn the output on this device on let's just do that now why not anti-clockwise yeah and the little bulb has come on so that's fine they're still absolutely no Sun of course so will I tell a lie there's a tiny sliver of blue up there but the sun's over there stuck behind a big dark clouds no nothing doing today so I think I've had enough of this experiment now solar panel up there on that green house thing and the secretary under that umbrella because I was concerned at one point that it might rain and also I was using it to darken the stuff down here a bit so that we could see those blue LEDs come on but I'm actually feeling quite cold now because there's bit in those Sun and when there's no Sun it comes right down and maybe when it's a little bit warmer I'll come out and have another play with this much bigger super capacitor bank but that's it for today so cheerio you

Channel: Julian Ilett

Views: 699,033

Keywords: electronics, EDLC, super capacitor

Id: r7M6Pb2roLs

Length: 17min 39sec (1059 seconds)

Published: Thu May 04 2017