Re: [GBlist] Building one's own solar panel

["Tom Thomas" <tomthomas@uswest.net>]

Susannah,

        I think you would only need 24 cells in series (24*.5=12).  I believe
that this would affect your other calculation too.  Also, I believe you could
not effectively wire only a portion of the 24 cell series and therefore some
rounding up is needed.

Tom Thomas
Macurco, Inc.
"Gas Detection"

Susannah Meininger wrote:

> Hi folks --
>
> This is my first real post to the list, although I've been reading it for a
> while.  I recently found out (by cruising eBay) that a person can buy
> pounds of individual solar cells and solder them together to make a
> panel.  It's not something a person would want to do for a client, but have
> any of you done this for your own use?  Is it is easy as it sounds?
>
> Also, it's been a long time since college physics.  I understand that if
> the individual cells are a .5 V, 450 mA each, then to get 12 volts I wire
> 48 of them in series, and the result is still 450 mA.  But am I right to
> think that watts = amps x volts, and that if I want, say, 50 watts, then I
> need to wire in parallel 50/12 = 4.17 total amps desired, divided by .450
> amps = 9.26 sets of 48 cells, for a total of 444 cells?  That seems like an
> awful lot, so hopefully my math is wrong.  Any help would be greatly
> appreciated!
>
> -- Susannah (an extremely small-time builder/rehabber in western Oregon,
> who is currently building a small electric vehicle and would like to
> solarize it)
>
> ______________________________________________________________________
> This greenbuilding dialogue is sponsored by REPP/CREST, creator of
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> ______________________________________________________________________


______________________________________________________________________
This greenbuilding dialogue is sponsored by REPP/CREST, creator of
Solstice http://www.crest.org, and BuildingGreen, Inc., publisher of
Environmental Building News and GreenSpec http://www.BuildingGreen.com
______________________________________________________________________