Using only basic equipment and a bit of wiring, one will know how to make a solar powered battery charger that will keep small appliances on the go. Solar battery chargers don't belong to the glamorous gadgets but they are the ones responsible in keeping gadgets alive and functional, especially most people these days are using a lot of mobile electric devices.
Here is a list of things that we will need :
- A clean old window
- Multimeter (about .5 volts per cell)
- 12 cells
- soldering iron
- AA battery holder
- adhesive tape
These are the steps on how to make a solar powered battery charger :
1. Lay out all the cells on your window and make sure everything will fit in. use the deeper side of the window to allow more room for a backing.
2. In making a one 3 volt array we will need 6 cells. Handle them with care as they are really so easy to break. Get three cells and wire them back to front several times. The bottom cell should have two pieces of wire soldered from its back to the next one's front and so should the second one.
3. Solder the 3 cells going back to front by putting the wire down and touching the iron to it and then touch the solder to it and pull the iron off. Make sure the wire lines are soldered to the cell, as these lines are the ones responsible for allowing the electrons form the panel to flow into the load.
4. Solder the second set, this time you need to go from front to back because these three will connect to your first three.
5. Cells should be laid out in a stacked pattern because the window could not hold all of them in a long line and it would be harder to get the sun to shine on something that long without shadow.
6. Get the other six cells and solder them using the same procedure. When done you should have two 3 volt arrays. You should have now two 3 volt arrays that have a positive (front) and negative (back) wire coming of them.
7. Wire them in parallel by simply twisting the two positive wires together and two negative wires together. The two positive wires will now become one positive wire and the two negative wires will now become one negative wire.
8. Attach the positive wire to the red lead of the radio shack AA battery holder, while the negative wire to the black lead of the battery holder.
9. Affix the blocking diode to the negative lead that goes to the battery. This will help in keeping the current from flowing back out of the battery when the cells are shaded.
10. Duct tape each cell and put some parts from a cardboard box on the back. Put it out in the sun.
So this is how to make a solar powered battery charger. And remember these tips:
- Watch your charger if the sun is too bright because too much charging can ruin the batteries.
- Check batteries with a multimeter every hour to keep them from overcharging.
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