The LED is on all the time, whenever the battery is at least slightly charged up. The other thing to notice about this circuit is that it’s pretty darned inefficient. For our 1300 mAh battery cells, C/10 is 130 mA, so we should keep our charging below 130 mA not a problem since our solar panels only source up to 90 mA. For NiMH batteries and sealed lead-acid batteries (the two types that are most suitable for this sort of un-monitored circuit) it is generally safe to “trickle” charge them by feeding them current at a rate below something called “C/10”. In this design we are continuously “trickle charging” up the battery when sunlight is present. We’re using a garden-variety 1N914 diode for reverse blocking, but there are also higher-performance diodes available that have a lower “forward voltage.” ![]() That’s actually an important concern because small solar panels like these can leak up to 50 mA in the reverse direction in the dark. This one-way valve allows current to flow from the solar panel to the battery, but does not allow current to flow backwards out of the battery through the solar panel. Between the two is a “reverse blocking” diode. In this circuit the solar panel charges up a 3-cell NiMH battery (3.6 V). In this next circuit, we use the solar panel to charge up a NiMH rechargeable battery and also LED off of the power, which will stay on when it gets dark out. A rechargeable battery can of course provide that function, and also provides a fairly consistent output voltage that a capacitor cannot. While interruption resistance is nice, a capacitor generally does not provide sufficient energy storage to power a solar circuit for extended periods of time in the dark. After it’s fully charged, the circuit can be removed from the sunlight and still drive the blue LED for about 30 s to 1 minute– a very effective flywheel for light duty applications. (Note: be careful adding capacitors of different values in series– the voltage ratings may scale in non-obvious ways.) When first exposed to the light, this circuit takes about 30 s to 1 minute to charge the capacitors enough that the LED can turn on. To get around this limitation, we used two of the caps in series, for which the voltage ratings add, giving us a barely-okay total rating of 5.5 V. That’s because the supercaps that we had on hand are rated for 2.75 V– not enough to handle the 4.5 V output of the panel when sunlight is present. Instead of adding a single supercapacitor, you might notice that we’ve actually added two. Our next circuit design adds a supercapacitor as a “flywheel” to provide continued power during brief interruptions. For other cases, like powering a microcontroller or other computer, a brief power interruption can be disruptive. For some applications, like running a small fan or pump, that may be perfectly acceptable. They provide no energy storage, and so are quite vulnerable to blinking out when a bird or cloud passes overhead. The “direct drive” circuits work well for their design function, but are rather basic. ![]() (The LED is the same type that we used for our high-power LED blinking circuit.) The reason that we’ve used a high-power LED here is that it can easily withstand 50-90 mA from the solar panel– a “regular” LED designed for 20 mA would be destroyed by that current. On the right we’ve hooked one of the panels right up to a high-power blue LED. When you set it out in the sunlight or bring it close to a lamp, the motor starts to spin. On the left, we’ve hooked up one of our little solar panels directly to a small motor taken from an old CD player. Here are a couple of examples of this in practice: ![]() The most obvious way to use power from a solar panel is to connect your load directly to the output leads of the solar panel. (While you can solder directly to the terminals, be sure to stress-relieve the connections, e.g., with a blob of epoxy over your wires.) In full sunlight the panel is specified to produce 4.5 V at up to 90 mA, although 50 mA seems like a more typical figure. On the back of the panel are two (thin) solderable terminals, with marked polarity. This is a monolithic copper indium diselenide solar panel, apparently printed on a 60mm square of glass and epoxy coated for toughness. The panel that we’re using for these circuits is this one, part number PWR1241 from BG Micro, about $3 each. To keep things simple, we’re using a single nicely made small solar panel for all of these circuits. The first part of a solar circuit is… a device for collecting sunlight. Use the sun to power small solar and battery powered night lights, garden lights, and decorations for halloween. How to get started adding solar power to your small electronics projects.
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